{"id":842,"date":"2007-03-08T23:52:57","date_gmt":"2007-03-08T23:52:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/worry-doll\/"},"modified":"2007-03-08T23:54:41","modified_gmt":"2007-03-08T23:54:41","slug":"worry-doll","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/worry-doll\/","title":{"rendered":"Worry Doll"},"content":{"rendered":"

Matt Coyle, Worry Doll<\/em> (MAM TOR, 2007) <\/p>\n

Written over the course of six years, Matt Coyle’s ambitious Worry Doll<\/em> is without doubt intricate, funny, captivating, a little depraved and very, very dark — everything that was promised, really: “gothic noir disguised as a children’s book.”<\/em> A worry doll — a little hand-made thing placed under a pillow to take away bad dreams and anxiety, similar to a dreamcatcher — takes on a whole new meaning under the direction of Coyle’s nib. In his story, a trio of children’s dolls — a golliwog, a ventriloquist’s doll and a rag dog with a Chapman brothers-like phallic nose — discover their family murdered in the living room, leave the crime scene and embark on a road trip that makes Kerouac’s jaunt in a jalopy seem well-mannered. <\/p>\n

worrydoll1.jpg<\/p>\n

At first, the story’s pint of view appears to belong to the dolls, but as it progresses, the voice we hear belongs to that of a man who has brought his cherished toys along in a suitcase to witness his crime, like a twisted version of that already-twisted (and over-looked) Anthony Hopkins film, Magic<\/em>. There is a very cinematic feel to Worry Doll<\/em>, and some of the panels are reminiscent of a film story-board. If Worry Doll<\/em> were a film, though, it would be less Richard Attenborough who, lest we forget, mined some pretty dark corners, and more David Lynch’s Blue Velvet<\/em>. <\/p>\n

worrydoll2.jpg<\/p>\n

The presentation of Worry Doll<\/em> only adds to the suspense and general unease: there are no word balloons, instead the narrative is told on the left hand page as prose, the drawings accompanying on the right, feeling less of a graphic novel and more of an art book. And the drawings… there is a photo-realist quality to Coyle’s work, like the paintings of Chuck Close except in Coyle’s case, they are rendered in black and white with fine-tip pens. The unsettling life-likeness of the dolls changes as the page is flipped; their are drawings within drawings; and the human figures that are present seem wooden in comparison to the puppets. In the graphic novel world, Worry Doll<\/em> probably comes closest to Dan Clowes’ internal world, yet the William Burroughs’ cut-up Naked Lunch<\/em> type narrative makes it something more grotesque and a little more psychotic. Executed with great force and a provocative quirkiness, Worry Doll<\/em> offers a minefield of multiple readings, and with the filmic quality to the work, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Matt Coyle’s Worry Doll<\/em> follows Persepolis<\/em> to the big screen. <\/p>\n

ABOUT THE REVIEWER<\/strong>
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<\/a><\/div>\n

Susan Tomaselli<\/strong> lives in Ireland where she edits the inimitable Dogmatika<\/strong><\/em><\/a> and is Comics Co-Editor of 3:AM<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"worrydoll1.jpg\"In the graphic novel world, Worry Doll<\/em> probably comes closest to Dan Clowes’ internal world, yet the William Burroughs’ cut-up Naked Lunch<\/em> type narrative makes it something more grotesque and a little more psychotic.<\/p>\n

\nSusan Tomaselli<\/b> on Matt Coyle<\/b>‘s Worry Doll<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criticism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}