Contemporary Authors

• The Motherless Oven Selfmadehero (London, England), 2014
• The Can Opener's Daughter Selfmadehero (London, England), 2016

1. The can opener's daughter LCCN 2016436056 Type of material Book Personal name Davis, Rob, artist, author. Main title The can opener's daughter / Rob Davis. Published/Produced London : Selfmadehero, 2016. ©2016 Description 157 pages: chiefly illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9781910593172 (pbk.) 1910593176 (pbk.) CALL NUMBER PN6737.D37 C36 2016 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms 2. The motherless oven LCCN 2015296214 Type of material Book Personal name Davis, Rob, artist, author. Main title The motherless oven / Rob Davis. Published/Produced London : SelfMadeHero, 2014. Description 153 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm ISBN 9781906838812 (pbk.) 190683881X (pbk.) Shelf Location FLM2016 002805 CALL NUMBER PN6737.D37 M68 2014 OVERFLOWJ34 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms (FLM2)

• A Place to Hang Your Cape - https://ap2hyc.com/2015/02/interview-rob-davies-author-of-the-motherless-oven/

  QUOTED: "The Motherless Oven is the story of Scarper Lee, a teenager who knows he has just three weeks left to live, this is because in Scarper’s world everyone knows their Death Day. We follow Scarper through his last days alive and discover more about his upsidedown world, where it rains knives, where parents are made by children and can take any form, from abstract beasts to walking hairdryers, and where the streets are policed by pensioners in jalopies."

  Comics
  INTERVIEW: Rob Davis, author of The Motherless Oven
  3 years agoby Fred McNamara4 min read

  Written by Fred McNamara
  Last year, we reviewed a rather strange title from the good folk at SelfMadeHero entitled The Motherless Oven, our review of which you can read here. We recently managed to have a chat with the book’s author – Rob Davis, where we discussed kitchen sink dramas, being on the verge of freedom, and potential trilogies…

  AP2HYC: Hi Rob! To kick things off, can you give our readers a brief overview as to what The Motherless Oven is about?

  Rob Davis: The Motherless Oven is the story of Scarper Lee, a teenager who knows he has just three weeks left to live, this is because in Scarper’s world everyone knows their Death Day. We follow Scarper through his last days alive and discover more about his upsidedown world, where it rains knives, where parents are made by children and can take any form, from abstract beasts to walking hairdryers, and where the streets are policed by pensioners in jalopies. Scarper is swept off his feet by the new girl at school, the mysterious Vera Pike, and takes off on an adventure with her and the oddball Castro Smith in search of Scarper’s brass sailing father who blew away in a storm.

  AP2HYC: The Motherless Oven strikes me has having a lot of dry, sarcastic wit and fuses that with an immensely odd set-up of children creating their parents – not to mention the actual plot. How exactly did something as idiosyncratic as The Motherless Oven come about?

  Davis: I wanted to do something new, create some new metaphors. I thought this was the best way to take a fresh look at something that has been written about many times – growing up. I also wanted to free the story from the familiar and from nostalgia. The book is about how it feels to be that age rather than how it seems when we look back at it through rose-tinted glasses. This meant I had to defamiliarise the reader and make things as shocking and strange as they are when we first encountered them.

  AP2HYC: Did you always have it in your mind that you would both write and draw the novel?

  Davis: It’s always been my intention to write and draw, so I can have absolute control over my vision. Writing a script for someone else to draw or drawing someone else’s script loses the organic growth of an idea that I believe is important to comics if you want a true blend of words and pictures. It works for some types of comic, and very well, I don’t think it would produce the kind of work I want to do.

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  AP2HYC: The black-and-white, sketch-like artwork of the book compliments its mood well, how did you decide what kind of artwork would suit the story, and vice-versa?

  Davies: I felt colour would be too seductive and would let the fantastical elements take over. I’m a big fan of British black and white kitchen sink movies of the early sixties and old black and white book illustration and comics. I felt that a black and white world would bind the ordinary and the fantastical together and give it a stark reality.

  AP2HYC: One element that struck me about The Motherless Oven was that Scarper, Vera and Castro all present themselves as rather normal young adults who inhabit a very strange world, perhaps best embodied by the book’s cover. How did you go about mixing the ordinary with the fantastic?

  Davis: The book treats the fantastical as ordinary and the ordinary as fantastical. The characters are on the verge of freedom which is where angst is born. It’s as depressing as it is liberating. Their environment reflects that. I wanted to create a sense of infinite potential and crushing realisation. We all reach that threshold in our teenage years and I didn’t want to let readers off the hook by just giving them a fantasy. I use fantasy to get closer to reality.

  AP2HYC: The Motherless Oven ends with what appears to be a rather open-ended climax. Can we expect to see more of Scarper and co. or you any other projects you’re working on at the moment?

  Davis: Yes. There is more to come, but this book is Scarper’s story and its ending is in keeping with Scarper’s world view. It can be read as a self contained story with its own ending even though it was conceived as the first part of a trilogy.

  Have you read The Motherless Oven? What did you make of it? Sound off in the comments or send us your thoughts on Twitter! You can buy your copy of The Motherless Oven here!

• Comic Book Resource - http://www.cbr.com/selfmadehero-to-publish-rob-davis-the-motherless-oven/

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  SelfMadeHero to publish Rob Davis’ ‘The Motherless Oven’
  01.02.2014
  by Mark Kardwell
  in Comic News
  Comment
  SelfMadeHero to publish Rob Davis’ ‘The Motherless Oven’

  One of the real thrills of the U.K.’s graphic novel renaissance of recent years has been the reemergence of Rob Davis as a major talent. Both his short works for various sources (like “My Family And Other Gypsies” and “How I Built My Father”) and the longer-form Nelson, the format-busting anthology he co-steered to the prize for Best Book at the first British Comics Awards in 2012, reveal an artist whose greatest theme might be familial dysfunction. Davis’ next work will be The Motherless Oven, which looks like it’ll also be mining that rich seam of material. It’ll be released by SelfMadeHero, the U.K. imprint that published Davis’s impressive adaptation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote.

  Here’s how editor Dan Lockwood describes the book:

  Scarper Lee lives in a different world: a world where children build their parents, where everyone knows their deathday, where knives rain from the sky and gods croon tunes in the front room. Against the mundanity of this startling backdrop, Rob Davis (The Complete Don Quixote) maps out a compelling teenage journey, as Scarper Lee finds himself forced out of his routines, striking out into the unknown, where friends can be enemies and nothing is quite as it seems. A fiercely original and disturbing take on the coming of age story, The Motherless Oven introduces us to Scarper Lee’s world: a world not so different from our own.

  Davis has delivered a wealth of preview art from the book, which has sent me from intrigued to actively frothing in anticipation. Some amazing-looking imagery.

  TAGS: Fifth Anniversary, Rob Davis, Self Made Hero

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  SelfMadeHero to publish Rob Davis’ ‘The Motherless Oven’
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• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Davis_(comics)

  Rob Davis (comics)
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (January 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
  Rob Davis is a British comics artist, writer, and editorial illustrator located in Blandford Forum, Dorset. British comics magazines and features to which he has contributed include Roy of the Rovers, Judge Dredd, Doctor Who Magazine and Doctor Who Adventures. He has also created the graphic novels Don Quixote (based on Cervantes' novel of the same name) and an original story, The Motherless Oven.

  Contents [hide]
  1 Profile
  2 Comics Bibliography
  2.1 Self-published
  2.2 Short comics and serials
  2.3 Graphic novels
  3 References
  Profile[edit]
  Davis' first strips were seen in the self-published Slang comic, which he published with Sean Longcroft. Davis' first professional work was on the football comic "Roy of the Rovers" relaunch as a monthly title in 1993. The original title was concluded in March 1993 with Roy Race having crashied his private helicopter, readers were left not knowing if he was alive or dead. In September 1993, Roy awoke from a coma to find his famous left foot amputated after the crash. The new Roy was 'Delroy' of the Rovers, Paul "Delroy" Ntende, a ragamuffin who played for Nigeria. The new approach by Davis and editor, Stuart Green, was committed to the Kick Racism Out of Football Campaign. Davis also designed posters for the campaign featuring Delroy and Rocky. The strip itself dealt with issues of racism in the game, among other subjects. Green and Davis introduced many other innovations. Among these, he split the history of Roy Race into three generations of Race: grandfather, father and son. In addition to the monthly stories in Roy of the Rovers, Davis drew another Roy strip in Shoot magazine as a two-page spread every week. Many of the changes made during Green and Davis' tenure on the strip were dropped in later revamps of the magazine.

  Davis went to work for 2000AD, drawing "Judge Dredd Lawman of the Future", a more child-friendly Judge Dredd spin-off based on the 1996 film. Davis then became disenchanted with comics and pursued a career as an illustrator before returning as a comics writer on "Bus Stop", "The Woman Who Sold the World" and "The Widow's Curse", published in Doctor Who Magazine. He work on other stories for Doctor Who Magazine solely as an artist, rather than a writer.

  Davis submitted a four-page comic strip to a 2010 graphic short story competition sponsored by The Observer. The submission, entitled "How I Built My Father" failed to win, it generated interest and Davis returned to comics with another short strip for the anthology Solipsistic Pop.

  In 2011, Davis conceived of the idea of a collaborative graphic novel which would showcase the talent of the UK comics scene, made up of chapters by many creators. The result was Nelson, co-edited with Woodrow Phoenix. Phoenix and Davis guided a team of 54 creators to produce 54 chapters of a single story about a woman named Nell. As a storytelling experiment, it won huge critical acclaim. The Observer newspaper awarded it its Graphic Novel of The Month, November 2011. The Times newspaper awarded it Best Graphic Novel of 2011, it was nominated for an Eisner Award and was voted Book of The Year in the British Comic Awards 2012.

  He then began work on a graphic novel adaptation of Don Quixote, which he made in two parts. The first volume was published in 2011 by SelfMadeHero and featured in many best of the yearlists. Davis released the second volume in 2013. The Complete Don Quixote (ISBN 978-1906838317) contains both parts. The collected was nominated for two Eisner Awards in 2014.

  The Motherless Oven, a surreal coming of age story based on "How I Built My Father", was published by SelfMadeHero in 2014. It was nominated for the Best Graphic Album – New Eisner Award. A sequel, entitled The Can Opener's Daughter, was published in December 2016.[1]

  Comics Bibliography[edit]
  Self-published[edit]
  SLANG Comic (with Sean Longcroft, self-published, three issues 1989–92)
  Short comics and serials[edit]
  Roy of The Rovers Monthly (art, script co-written with Stuart Green) (Fleetway Editions 19 issues, 1993–95)
  "Roy of The Rovers" (art only, scripts by Stuart Green) (Shoot Magazine weekly, [IPC Media|IPC]] 1994–95)
  Judge Dredd: Lawman of the Future’’ Fleetway 1995–96) (contributing artist)
  Dai Kamikaze! #3–6, 8–12 (Now comics, 1998) (script by Kirk Chritton, art only)
  "The Woman Who Sold the World" (script only, art by Mike Collins, Doctor Who Magazine, Panini Comics, #381–384, 2007)
  "Bus Stop" (script only, art by John Ross, Doctor Who Magazine #385, 2007)
  "The Widow's Curse" (script only, Doctor Who Magazine #395-398, 2008)
  "The Time of My life" (art only, script by Jonathan Morris, Doctor Who Magazine #399, 2008)
  "The Deep Hereafter" (art only, script by Dan McDaid, Doctor Who Magazine #412, 2008)
  "The Immortal Emperor" (art only, script by Jonathan Morris, Doctor Who Storybook, 2009, Panini UK)
  "The Professor, the Queen and the Bookshop" (art only, script by Jonathan Morris, #429, 2010)
  The Dunwich Horror" (script only, art by INJ Culbarb, adapted from the novelette by H.P. Lovecraft, The Lovecraft Anthology, SelfMade Hero 2011)
  "The Torturer's Garden" (Solipsistic Pop #3)
  "My Family and Other Gypsies" (Respect – International Comics)
  Graphic novels[edit]
  Don Quixote (based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes) (Volume 1)(SelfMadeHero, 2011) ISBN 978-1906838317
  Nelson (conceived of, contributed to and, with Woodrow Phoenix, edited, a collaborative graphic novel) (Blank Slate Books, 2011) ISBN 978-1906653231
  Don Quixote (based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes) (Volume 2) (based on the novel by Cervantes) (SelfMadeHero, 2013) ISBN 978-1906838614
  The Complete Don Quixote (based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes) (Harry N. Abrams, 2013) ISBN 978-1906838652
  The Motherless Oven (SelfMadeHero, 2014) ISBN 978-1906838812
  The Can Opener's Daughter (SelfMadeHero, 2016) ISBN 978-1910593172
  References[edit]
  Cardwell, Mark (30 December 2011). "Rob Davis Gathers the UK Comics Scene to Chronicle “Nelson”". Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  Priego, Ernesto (26 May 2012). "A Conversation with Rob Davis". The Comics Grid. Archived from the original on 8 January 2014.
  Jump up ^ "Launching at Gosh! Comics: The Can Opener’s Daughter by Rob Davis". selfmadehero.com. 22 November 2016. Retrieved 22 January 2017.

QUOTED: "Davis crafted a wholly original world with surrealist and satirical flourishes."

10/6/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507340837206 1/3
Print Marked Items
The Can Opener's Daughter
Publishers Weekly.
264.7 (Feb. 13, 2017): p59.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Can Opener's Daughter
Rob Davis. SelfMadeHero, $19.95 trade paper (136p) ISBN 978-1-91059-317-2
In The Motherless Oven, Davis crafted a wholly original world with surrealist and satirical flourishes, in which storms
of knives fall from the sky, children build their own inanimate object parents, and everyone knows the day of their
death. In this follow-up, the middle book of a trilogy, Davis expands this world by revealing the backstory of his
mysterious schoolgirl heroine Vera Pike, focusing on her relationship with her parents, most notably her weather-clock
mother. Davis also picks up the cliff-hanger from the first book as Vera and her friend, Castro, help the protagonist of
the previous book, Scarper, to survive his death day. Davis has crafted a universe totally lacking in derivative concepts
or even references that the reader can cling to. The dialogue is filled with philosophical ideas and pull quotes of crafty
wisdom, and the scrappy black-and-white art offers frenetic action within an absurd reality that leaves other dystopian
fictions in the dust. (Feb.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Can Opener's Daughter." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 59. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA482198191&it=r&asid=60c45d630de3f7e36eaf88b2af3f6d6f.
Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A482198191

QUOTED: "The art by Davis ... is well conceived, ... but the narrative feels like a fairly normal coming-of-age story."

10/6/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507340837206 2/3
The Motherless Oven
Publishers Weekly.
261.41 (Oct. 13, 2014): p45.
COPYRIGHT 2014 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Motherless Oven
Rob Davis. SelfMadeHero (Abrams, dist.),
$19.95 trade paper (160p) ISBN 978-1906838-81-2
Scarper Lee is. facing his death day in a world without birthdays where lives proceed in reverse. His dad is a metal
leviathan on wheels, chained to the ground in the family's garage; gods sing and scream throughout the house; and
knives rain from the sky. Scarper does his best to stick to his schedule, even as his new schoolmate, Vera Pike, tries to
shake up his routine. Scraper, Vera, and their pal Castro are pursued across the country by the law, in the form of an
elderly couple riding around in some sort of horseless carriage, after Scraper's father disappears. This is a weird story
with a lot of potential, but Scarper and his heavy and moody eyebrows never make much of a connection with the
reader. The art by Davis (Don Quixote) is well conceived, full of shadows and strange shapes, but the narrative feels
like a fairly normal coming-of-age story that has had some strange visuals layered onto it. The last third is the best,
when Scarper and the gang are on the run. Davis leaves room at the for a sequel; if there is one in the words, hopefully
Davis will find a way in it to breathe more life into his surreal world. (Oct.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Motherless Oven." Publishers Weekly, 13 Oct. 2014, p. 45. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA386341389&it=r&asid=c2b95d9d9f4082e6457174d3d3202ca4.
Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A386341389

QUOTED: "Wonderfully odd and oddly wonderful."

10/6/2017 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1507340837206 3/3
The Motherless Oven
Peter Blenski
Booklist.
111.4 (Oct. 15, 2014): p37.
COPYRIGHT 2014 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Motherless Oven. By Rob Davis. Illus. by the author. Oct. 2014.160p. SelfMadeHero, paper, $19.95
(9781906838812). 741.5. Gr. 10-12.
When Scarpers father mysteriously disappears, he and his friends Vera and Castro skip out of school to try to find him.
Only ... his father is a talking boat. And his mother is a hair dryer. It rains knives, and lions roam the school grounds.
And Scarper only has three weeks until his deathday, if he can even survive long enough. Although Scarpers surreal
world is upside down compared to ours, it doesn't take long for the reader to find the method in the madness and realize
that our worlds are more similar than we would ever care to admit. With Orwellian authoritative overtones behind a
Lynchian backdrop, Davis has created a bizarre yet familiar world that asks more questions than it answers and
provides poignant commentary on a range of topics from consumerism to conformism. His stark, high-contrast blackand-white
illustrations reinforce the oppressive and avant-garde tones of the overall piece. Wonderfully odd and oddly
wonderful. --Peter Blenski
Blenski, Peter
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Blenski, Peter. "The Motherless Oven." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2014, p. 37. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?
p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA388966004&it=r&asid=0e9981503a757213be797a0fa7007401.
Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A388966004

"The Can Opener's Daughter." Publishers Weekly, 13 Feb. 2017, p. 59. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA482198191&it=r. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017. "The Motherless Oven." Publishers Weekly, 13 Oct. 2014, p. 45. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA386341389&it=r. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017. Blenski, Peter. "The Motherless Oven." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2014, p. 37. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA388966004&it=r. Accessed 6 Oct. 2017.

• The Guardian
  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/jan/20/the-can-openers-daughter-review-rob-davis
  Word count: 284

  The Can Opener’s Daughter review – knives fall like rain in twisted graphic novel
  Children make their parents and gods speak from inkpots in Rob Davis’s dystopic take on a coming of age tale
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  James Smart
  Friday 20 January 2017 12.30 EST Last modified on Wednesday 20 September 2017 05.41 EDT
  It’s a world in which mothers are hard-drinking, poorly adjusted machines, fathers are simple appliances and children plot their own demise. Rob Davis introduced the Bear Park and Grave Acre in his surreal The Motherless Oven, and the second book in his gripping trilogy continues the tale of three rebellious children in a fantastic, perilous world. There are plenty of wonders here – children make their parents, strange bear-babies dwell in the woods and gods speak from ink pots. But this is a dystopia of mandated suicides where knives fall like rain, ruled by a vindictive weather clock who happens to be Vera Pike’s mum. The Motherless Oven saw Pike and her friends Cas and Scarper flee the police in a bid to avert Scarper’s death day, and The Can Opener’s Daughter delves back into the mysteries of Pike’s childhood, and forward as the trio probe secrets and face monsters and bureaucrats. It offers a dark, disorientating twist on the classic tale of kids against the world, setting school rivalries alongside talking trumpets and the crushing hand of destiny.

  • The Can Opener’s Daughter is published by SelfMadeHero. To order a copy for £11.04 (RRP £12.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.

• Down The Tubes
  http://downthetubes.net/?p=35864
  Word count: 1904

  British Comics Featured Reviews
  In Review: The Can Opener’s Daughter by Rob Davis
  December 29, 2016 John Freeman 119 Views
  The Can Opener's Daughter by Rob Davis

  By Rob Davis
  Published by SelfMadeHero
  Reviewed by Stephen L. Holland of Page 45

  The Book: In the British Comic Award-winning The Motherless Oven, Scarper Lee asked: “Who the hell is Vera Pike?” Now, we get a chance to find out.

  Vera lives in the cruel world of Grave Acre. Her mother is the Weather Clock, the megalomaniacal Prime Minister of Chance. Her father is a can opener. Charting Vera’s childhood, the second part of Rob Davis’ trilogy takes us from her home in Parliament to suicide school, and from the Bear Park to the black woods that lie beyond. In the present day, Vera and Castro Smith are determined to see their friend Scarper again – but is he even still alive? Can anyone outlive their deathday?

  A darkly inventive sequel, The Can Opener’s Daughter answers many of the questions posed in The Motherless Oven, while asking plenty more of its own…

  The Review:

  “Making sense is overrated… It’s just confirming what people already think. Making new sense is more important.”

  Making eloquent new sense is Rob Davis’ forte; making a nuisance is Vera Pike’s.

  “Mum wouldn’t tell me what was going on. She wouldn’t speak to me at all. I tried asking Dad, but she confiscated him and locked him in a kitchen draw.”

  We first met Vera in The Motherless Oven, my favourite book of that year, wherein we learned that although it is commonly acknowledged that children are the products of their parents – both by nature and nurture – in The Bear Park the parents are very much the product of their children. They are fashioned by their children before they are five in the Motherless Oven itself. They can be quite complex and caring. Certainly they are sentient.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Page 2

  Scarper Lee’s Mum was a barber-shop hairdryer and ever so maternal. Vera Pike’s Mum is the Weather Clock, Grave Acre’s bipedal, fully mobile, ruthless, dictatorial Prime Minister. She doesn’t do maternal.

  Her Dad is a can opener. The sort with a bayonet blade you have to thrust in to puncture whatever it is you want opening, then wrangle the lid off by force. He doesn’t have a leg to stand on.

  You will find everything here so very familiar, yet looked at anew, askew or turned on its head. Words may have multiple meanings depending on intonation or a minor adjustment. Almost every panel demands a quotation, so dense is the wit on display. Perspectives are important, the fresher the better, so here is the second in Rob Davis’ trilogy, dovetailing precisely into the first to illuminate elements of what went before and leave us gasping desperately for more.

  It is a phenomenal work full of surprises which ends up making perfect sense.

  For a start – just like The Motherless Oven – it explores the generational gap opened up even further by the conceit that all mums and dads are constructs of their children. As mechanical objects, most are dismissively pigeon-holed in their parental role rather than regarded as individuals, then consigned to the scrap head once that role is over.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Kitchen Scene

  “Parents are made to make children feel guilt. They exist to deny your freedom so they can make you believe it is theirs to give.”

  That’s Vera’s take, and she has indeed been denied her freedom by being shut away in Grave Acre’s equivalent of Number 10, to be home-schooled initially by the household Ink Gods. These are vocal bottles of indelible ink, and I promise that they’re making sense right from the very first panel they appear in, however random their proclamations might sound. It’s that sort of book.

  It’s also the sort of book which presents multiple perspectives. Here’s Vera’s mother:

  “They say that parents exist to give children something to rebel against, something that prevents them rebelling against anything that really matters… But what happens when a parent rebels…?”

  And it is most definitely a great big book of rebellion. Vera Pike is welcome whirlwind of vital rebellion – a natural impulse in the young – but she’s not alone. Not everyone is content to be constrained by their roles. Most parents choose to have children. As we have seen, that’s not the case in The Bear Park and, without giving too much a way, there is a satisfyingly circular structure to so much history here.

  The Can Opener's Daughter Art by Rob Davis

  Time to pull back: The Motherless Oven was set in The Bear Park, a working class area with very specific and absolute boundaries. There was nowhere else. There were plenty of parents, but no brothers or sisters that I can recall. Instead of birthdays, everyone had a deathday. Scarper Lee’s was imminent.

  The Can Opener’s Daughter begins in the much more affluent Grave Acre where everyone has a double-barrelled name and we see no such parents. Indeed the reigning (and raining) Weather Clock is terrified of being referred to in public as “Mum”. It may not surprise you to learn that it’s partly a class thing, but I won’t explain why.

  In The Bear Park’s schools they teach Circular History and Mythmatics. In St. Sylvia’s School of Bleak Prospects and Suicide, the boarding school to which Vera is banished after a big breach of etiquette, they teach Probable History and Terminal Vertices.

  “Everyone paid attention in Terminal Vertices, not because Miss Cavendish-Hole was any less dull, but because your life depended on it.”

  In Grave Acre you aren’t assigned a deathday; you plot your own suicide graph using desolation logarithms found in Cullculus. You choose your fate. Vera Pike chooses not to have one. She hides her graph, unplotted, under the mattress.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Page 7

  It may be by now that those who’ve already read The Motherless Oven are starting to see the connections. They’re ever so clever once revealed, and I’ll just jog them along a little here when Vera speaks up during a class in Hauntology where they’re studying The Bear Park and deathdays.

  “Sir, how do we get to Bear Park?”

  She’s met with roars of laughter.

  “C’mon, Pike. It’s as impossible to travel from Grave Acre to The Bear Park as it is to travel from today to yesterday.”

  But Vera’s Mum originally came from Bear Park before she got ideas above her station, as did Vera and her Dad. So what’s up with that?

  The Can Opener's Daughter

  The art is deliciously British with nods at St. Sylvia’s to older boarding school comics and if I detected a Gorillaz / Jamie Hewlett vibe in The Motherless Oven, in The Can Opener’s Daughter I’m minded of the likes of Steve Parkhouse in The Bojeffries Saga and, while watching the Weather Clock herself – with her spikes, claws, long, curved neck and grotesque in-your-face face – I couldn’t help thinking of Gerald Scarf’s work for Pink Floyd’s ‘The Wall’.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Page 1

  The Can Opener's Daughter - MumIt’s partly on those grounds that I couldn’t shake the notion that the Weather Clock and the Can Opener were riffs on a strident Margaret and a cowering Dennis Thatcher, even if it’s the Weather Clock constantly sozzled after using her husband to uncork the bottles. Talk about enabling.

  Speaking of ascensions, I loved Vera’s growth in the book from a baby-faced brat with bunches, through uniformed pudding-bowl private-school girl, to chic, commanding rabble-rouser by simply untucking her shirt and ditching the pinafore dress.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Flight

  The animation of the Ink Gods – the glass, stoppered jars sat on small pedestals – is exquisite and all the more remarkable for being accomplished purely by the lettering. They don’t move, but they are emphatically alive.

  If The Can Opener’s Daughter dovetails as wickedly as I’ve asserted with The Motherless Oven you may be wondering how. I’ve barely mentioned the latter’s narrator, Scarper Lee, and Castro Smith not once. Castro, you may recall, has Medicated Inference Syndrome kept in check with a surgically implanted Brain Aid which stops all the signals becoming noise.

  It is Castro who can see all the connections. He figured out who Vera’s Mum was long before everyone else. He’s writing a Book of Forks.

  “Forks are choices, forks are everywhere. My book is a theory of everything.”

  As The Motherless Oven concluded we left Vera and Castro alone together on the other side of The Bear Park’s fence, while Scarper’s deathday was still looming large. So how do we get there from here? I’m not telling you.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Book of Forks Explained

  “My interest is piqued – you are a source of intrigue, Mr. Smith. What is a Book of Forks and what can it offer me?”

  “It’s an encyclopedia of all possible histories and a post-mortem of all possible futures. It explains deathdays, how weather works, where Gods came from, why the Immortals died out and how to repair a kettle.”

  He can be quite practical, can Castro.

  “The forks… three paths into one… one path into three…”

  Next: Rob Davis concludes his own Book of Forks.

  The Can Opener's Daughter - Bookplate• Buy The Can Opener’s Daughter (Bookplate Edition) and read the original Page 45 review here, reprinted here with the kind permission of Stephen L. Holland

  At the time of typing, all copies of The Can Opener’s Daughter on sale from Page 45 come with beautiful, free bookplates signed by Rob Davis. The Motherless Oven is also available from Page 45

  “This is where the end starts…”

  • Watch: Artist and writer Rob Davis on The Can Opener’s Daughter | Follow Rob on Twitter @RobGog

  Rob Davis began self-publishing his own comic, the highly experimental SLANG, in 1989. From there Rob made the leap from experimental into traditional when he was employed by Fleetway to reinvent British comics’ icon Roy of the Rovers. After a time drawing Judge Dredd, he began working as an illustrator and cartoonist for newspapers (including the Guardian) and children’s book publishers (including Scholastic). In the last few years Rob has returned to comics, writing and drawing Doctor Who for Panini. He has recently produced a short story for Solpsistic Pop 3, and is currently adapting and illustrating Don Quixote for SelfMadeHero.

• Big Comic Page
  https://bigcomicpage.com/2017/01/13/review-the-can-openers-daughter-selfmadehero/
  Word count: 578

  QUOTED: "This is a book which deserves every bit of the praise it’s guaranteed to get, and serves as a fantastic example of just how creative comics can truly be. Highest of recommendations for this one."

  Review – The Can Opener’s Daughter (SelfMadeHero)
  Posted on January 13, 2017 in SelfMadeHero Reviews
  Click to enlarge

  Publisher: SelfMadeHero
  Writer/Artist: Rob Davis
  Release Date: 8th December 2016

  Following on from the British Comic Award-winning Motherless Oven, writer and artist Rob Davis brings us the second part of his trilogy, The Can Opener’s Daughter. Set in the same strange-yet-familiar world as the first book, a world where children build their own parents, knives fall from the sky like rain and ordinary household objects are Gods, this second volume delves a little deeper into the story of the enigmatic Vera Pike, showing us a little more of her family life and the events which led to her turning up on the doorstep of young Scarper Lee.

  The first half of the book examines Vera Pike’s relationship with her mother, the Weather Clock, and her father, a literal can opener, and sees her enrolling in St Sylvia’s School of Bleak Prospects & Suicide. As with the first book, the themes of rebellion and self-discovery permeate this volume, with Vera’s sheltered life as the daughter of the Prime Minister of Chance prompting her to challenge the constraints of her society time and time again, with rapidly escalating results.

  The latter half re-joins the continuity of the Motherless Oven, and sees Vera and Cas – and the Home Gazette – trying to save Scarper Lee from his deathday. Once again, Davis’s storytelling is wilfully unconventional, featuring some incredibly dark themes – children working hard at school charting the ‘suicide curves’ which predict the time of their death, for example – mixed in with what is otherwise a quintessentially British coming of age story. This second book also gives a whole new perspective to the events of the first, with more information about the relationship between Bear Park and Grave Acre being gradually revealed.

  Visually, Davis delivers an angular and vaguely menacing world with a lively and expressive protagonist in Vera Pike. His carefully shaded black and white artwork is filled with detail and sublime character design, with Vera’s jagged, menacing ‘Weather Clock’ mother serving as a definite highlight. It’s a great looking book, albeit an unconventional one, and Davis deserves high praise for providing such an unapologetically unique aesthetic for his story.

  Relentlessly creative from start to finish, The Can Opener’s Daughter is packed with seemingly absurd concepts and surreal ideologies that gradually start to make more and more sense the deeper you sink into the bizarre yet worryingly familiar world that Davis has created. I devoured all 160 pages in a single sitting, and found myself immediately wanting to go back and read The Motherless Oven again as soon as I’d finished. This is a book which deserves every bit of the praise it’s guaranteed to get, and serves as a fantastic example of just how creative comics can truly be. Highest of recommendations for this one.

  Rating: 5/5.

  PREVIEW ARTWORK
  [Click to Enlarge]

  ceejThe writer of this piece was: Craig Neilson-Adams (aka Ceej)
  Article Archive: Ceej Says
  You can follow Ceej on Twitter

• SciFi Now
  https://www.scifinow.co.uk/reviews/hold-back-the-stars-by-katie-khan-book-review/
  Word count: 403

  THE CAN OPENER’S DAUGHTER BY ROB DAVIS GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW
  Find out what we thought of Rob Davis’ The Can Opener’s Daughter in our review

  By Laura Sneddon 30-01-17 60,281 0

  Share on Facebook Share via Twiter Share on Google Plus Add to your Stumbleupon Likes Share via Email
  Publisher:
  SelfMadeHero
  Released:
  8 December 2016
  Writer:
  Rob Davis
  Artist:
  Rob Davis
  Buy on Amazon
  IF YOU LIKE THIS, TRY...

  Through The Woods by Emily Carroll
  Ramp up the horror with this spine-tingling collection from the master of macabre.

  The British Comic Award-winning and Eisner Award-nominated The Motherless Oven landed in 2014 to great acclaim.

  This, then, is the sequel to that surreal and unique dark tale, a world in which parents don’t make children; children make parents. Scarper Lee’s father is wind-powered with a sail, his mother is a Bakelite hair dryer, and Scarper knows his upcoming deathday – only his is in three weeks, and on that adventure he asks, “Who the hell is Vera Pike?”

  Vera Pike is the Can Opener’s Daughter, and this is her story. Daughter too of the Weather Clock, the omnipotent, ruthless and megalomaniacal Prime Minister of Chance, Vera is sent to St Sylvia’s School of Bleak Prospects and Suicide, where classmates know little of her true importance. Meanwhile, she hunts for Scarper with his friend Castro Smith, determined to outlive their deathdays, and desperately trying to convince her father that her unhinged mother must be stopped.

  Rendered in monochrome, Davis weaves his new tale around the skeleton of the last, picking up on class differences and to modern day politics. There is great detail here, hidden on almost every page that ensures a second read is quite inevitable.

  While much of this landscape is set up in the first graphic novel, Davis has ensured the second is easily read as a standalone, no doubt enticing new readers to furrow backwards once hooked on the macabre goings on. He takes the trope of young troubled teenager twice over as they struggle to understand their place in the world, and places those narratives in a world that is upside down and back to front, making for a compelling work that will stay in the reader’s memory.

• The Woolamaloo Gazette
  http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/?p=5480
  Word count: 1095

  Reviews: Rob Davis returns with the Can Opener’s Daughter
  Posted on January 11, 2017
  The Can Opener’s Daughter,

  Rob Davis,

  SelfMadeHero

  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_cover

  “I thought boys were great. I wanted to punch every one of their cheeky little faces till they bled. Well, that’s what I thought I wanted to do to them.”

  Here’s a book I have been eagerly waiting to get my ink-stained paws on, the follow-up to the frankly brilliant Motherless Oven (reviewed here by Richard) by Rob Davis. Where the first volume focused on Scarper Lee, the schoolboy whose Death Day was fast approaching, this book gives us some of the answers behind one of Scarper’s questions about the strange girl who arrived in his school then, with his friend Cas, turned their lives upside down – “who the hell is Vera Pike?” We start with a younger Vera, who like Scarper and everyone else in the previous book, has a mother and father that she made. In her case, as you may infer from the title, her dad is a can opener. Her mother? Her mother is a terrifying looking being, an incarnation of the Weather Clock (the very one that caused events like the rain of knives we saw in the previous book). She is also the Prime Minister. And she drinks a lot.

  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_01

  But not of the Bear Park, that strange and compelling mixture of the everyday British suburbia and the often disturbingly bizarre. No, they live in Grave Acre, clearly a much more upmarket place. And as the kids here don’t make their mums and dads, she isn’t allowed to let anyone know that the weather clock is her mother. And as we slowly come to realise, she may not even be the actual weather clock but another version who has challenged her for supremacy. And like many hungry for power she’s increasingly paranoid, using and abusing anyone around her for her own ends, happily bringing forward people’s Death Days if they anger her or could possibly be a threat. Even she can’t do that to her own daughter though, so she does the next best thing to infanticide – she ships her child off to a boarding school, the wonderfully named Saint Sylvia’s School of Bleak Prospects and Suicide, peopled by horrid posh girls like Fonella Bonelli-Magee. Of course they look down on the new child, especially as she only has “half” a name and, shudder, she doesn’t have a name-plate…

  “Ever the rebel, eh? Of course, everyone is a rebel when they’re young. Then they grow out of it. That’s because real change means taking power, and power makes monsters of us all. It requires that we do monstrous things.”

  I don’t want to get too deeply into the narrative though – this is a book to get lost in, and I really don’t want to risk any spoilers here ruining your experience of it. As with Motherless Oven the book is suffused with some remarkable imagery throughout – the strange, recursive artwork of the “immortals”, the people who invented death, hanging up in the Prime Minister’s residence. In fact there is so much delicious detail throughout this is a book you’re going to probably want to re-read pretty quickly – I read this just before Christmas and planned to get a review up in time to include this in my Best Of the Year list, but I had to go back and give it another, slower read to let more of the details – and the atmosphere – seep in (so I’ll doubtless include this in my 2017 Best Of list now).

  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_03

  The use of the school is clever, giving us a chance to learn more about this strange, familiar yet alien world through the odd lessons Vera is forced to sit through. It also gives Rob a chance to work in some St Trinian’s homages, which is no bad thing. There’s a lot more world-building going on here – as well as exploring some of Vera’s back-story and the events that lead up to her coming into contact with Cas and Scarper which we saw in Motherless Oven we really get much more of a sense of this reality Rob has conjured up, and a much deeper handle on Vera, why she is as she is, perhaps we even get to understand her more than she understands herself, and with that understanding also comes an inkling of subversion and change to how that world has been ordered up till now, just waiting to happen, perhaps already starting to happen…

  There are disturbing scenes – ruthless enforced “suicides”, strange creatures in the woods (an almost Terry Gilliam-esque moment), the vile, monstrous, terrifying Stour Provost, the literally jagged mother, but also lots of humour, much of it gallows-dark or deligtfully absurd. There’s the eternal push-pull dynamic between parents and child, of social class, of youthful fire and rebellion (and that rebellion where you know you want to fight against.. Well, not exactly sure, but you know you need to do it and it makes you angry), of the hunger for power and control and answers – but they may be answers you don’t like and that power you so covet comes with a hard price…

  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_02

  The art is superb, from the cheeky smirk frequently found on Vera’s face to the varied designs of the mothers and fathers, with so many fine touches like the heavy black background for scenes in a chamber of horrors below the police station (home of the awful Stour Provost) that bleeds out a feeling of wrongness and oppression, the comical statue gods in the gardens, or the haunting paintings of the immortals that are endlessly recursive, images repeating and looping back again and again on themselves.

  This is some of the best contemporary British comics has to offer – clever, compelling, immersive, brilliantly illustrated, and it’s one of those books you will want to come back and re-read again and still find more details you didn’t spot before. Simply brilliant.

  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_04

  This review was originally penned for the Forbidden Planet Blog

• Forbidden Planet
  http://forbiddenplanet.blog/2017/reviews-hell-vera-pike-can-openers-daughter/
  Word count: 1109

  QUOTED: "This is some of the best contemporary British comics has to offer – clever, compelling, immersive, brilliantly illustrated, and it’s one of those books you will want to come back and re-read again and still find more details you didn’t spot before. Simply brilliant."

  Published On January 10, 2017 | By Joe Gordon | Comics, Reviews
  The Can Opener’s Daughter,
  Rob Davis,
  SelfMadeHero
  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_cover
  “I thought boys were great. I wanted to punch every one of their cheeky little faces till they bled. Well, that’s what I thought I wanted to do to them.”
  Here’s a book I have been eagerly waiting to get my ink-stained paws on, the follow-up to the frankly brilliant Motherless Oven (reviewed here by Richard) by Rob Davis. Where the first volume focused on Scarper Lee, the schoolboy whose Death Day was fast approaching, this book gives us some of the answers behind one of Scarper’s questions about the strange girl who arrived in his school then, with his friend Cas, turned their lives upside down – “who the hell is Vera Pike?” We start with a younger Vera, who like Scarper and everyone else in the previous book, has a mother and father that she made. In her case, as you may infer from the title, her dad is a can opener. Her mother? Her mother is a terrifying looking being, an incarnation of the Weather Clock (the very one that caused events like the rain of knives we saw in the previous book). She is also the Prime Minister. And she drinks a lot.
  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_01
  But not of the Bear Park, that strange and compelling mixture of the everyday British suburbia and the often disturbingly bizarre. No, they live in Grave Acre, clearly a much more upmarket place. And as the kids here don’t make their mums and dads, she isn’t allowed to let anyone know that the weather clock is her mother. And as we slowly come to realise, she may not even be the actual weather clock but another version who has challenged her for supremacy. And like many hungry for power she’s increasingly paranoid, using and abusing anyone around her for her own ends, happily bringing forward people’s Death Days if they anger her or could possibly be a threat. Even she can’t do that to her own daughter though, so she does the next best thing to infanticide – she ships her child off to a boarding school, the wonderfully named Saint Sylvia’s School of Bleak Prospects and Suicide, peopled by horrid posh girls like Fonella Bonelli-Magee. Of course they look down on the new child, especially as she only has “half” a name and, shudder, she doesn’t have a name-plate…
  “Ever the rebel, eh? Of course, everyone is a rebel when they’re young. Then they grow out of it. That’s because real change means taking power, and power makes monsters of us all. It requires that we do monstrous things.”
  I don’t want to get too deeply into the narrative though – this is a book to get lost in, and I really don’t want to risk any spoilers here ruining your experience of it. As with Motherless Oven the book is suffused with some remarkable imagery throughout – the strange, recursive artwork of the “immortals”, the people who invented death, hanging up in the Prime Minister’s residence. In fact there is so much delicious detail throughout this is a book you’re going to probably want to re-read pretty quickly – I read this just before Christmas and planned to get a review up in time to include this in my Best Of the Year list, but I had to go back and give it another, slower read to let more of the details – and the atmosphere – seep in (so I’ll doubtless include this in my 2017 Best Of list now).
  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_03
  The use of the school is clever, giving us a chance to learn more about this strange, familiar yet alien world through the odd lessons Vera is forced to sit through. It also gives Rob a chance to work in some St Trinian’s homages, which is no bad thing. There’s a lot more world-building going on here – as well as exploring some of Vera’s back-story and the events that lead up to her coming into contact with Cas and Scarper which we saw in Motherless Oven we really get much more of a sense of this reality Rob has conjured up, and a much deeper handle on Vera, why she is as she is, perhaps we even get to understand her more than she understands herself, and with that understanding also comes an inkling of subversion and change to how that world has been ordered up till now, just waiting to happen, perhaps already starting to happen…
  There are disturbing scenes – ruthless enforced “suicides”, strange creatures in the woods (an almost Terry Gilliam-esque moment), the vile, monstrous, terrifying Stour Provost, the literally jagged mother, but also lots of humour, much of it gallows-dark or deligtfully absurd. There’s the eternal push-pull dynamic between parents and child, of social class, of youthful fire and rebellion (and that rebellion where you know you want to fight against.. Well, not exactly sure, but you know you need to do it and it makes you angry), of the hunger for power and control and answers – but they may be answers you don’t like and that power you so covet comes with a hard price…
  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_02
  The art is superb, from the cheeky smirk frequently found on Vera’s face to the varied designs of the mothers and fathers, with so many fine touches like the heavy black background for scenes in a chamber of horrors below the police station (home of the awful Stour Provost) that bleeds out a feeling of wrongness and oppression, the comical statue gods in the gardens, or the haunting paintings of the immortals that are endlessly recursive, images repeating and looping back again and again on themselves.
  can_openers_daughter_rob_davis_selfmadehero_04
  This is some of the best contemporary British comics has to offer – clever, compelling, immersive, brilliantly illustrated, and it’s one of those books you will want to come back and re-read again and still find more details you didn’t spot before. Simply brilliant.

• A Place to Hang Your Cape
  https://ap2hyc.com/2017/08/electrifying-throughout-can-openers-daughter-freakishly-awesome-sequel/
  Word count: 934

  QUOTED: "The Motherless Oven didn’t quite have the reckless sense of dark, limitless adventure that The Can Opener’s Daughter deservedly boasts. It’s too weird to not get engrossed in, too thrilling to avoid skipping pages, too tragic to not crush your heart."

  Comics • Features • Reviews
  Electrifying Throughout, The Can Opener’s Daughter is a Freakishly Awesome Sequel
  2 months agoby Fred McNamara5 min read

  Written by Fred McNamara
  Reading SelfMadeHero comics for the past few years, I’ve had the good fortune to experience their preference for the weird and wonderful in sequential story-telling first-hand. None balanced the thin line between being as weird as it was wonderful as Rob Davis‘ The Motherless Oven, a coming-of-age adventure drama that read as if it was pieced together by Monty Python and Guillmero del Toro.

  This freakish comic told the story of Scarper Lee’s routine of maintaining his self-constructed parents is thrown asunder as his looming deathday forces him to break away from this twisted normality. The comic ends on the kind of finale that leaves you yearning for more, not just because of how damn good it is, but of how the story itself comes to an abrupt halt. What a joy therefore to find that Davis has penned a sequel, The Can Opener’s Daughter. At least, half of it is a sequel, and the first half is something of a prequel, but in the tradition established by The Motherless Oven, it’s a prequel that twists and turns in unexpected directions, blossoming into everything a sequel should be.

  Where The Motherless Oven focused on the drab, introspective Harper being forced into a life of turbulent adventure, The Can Opener’s Daughter throws us without warning into the life of Vera Pike, who’s every bit the opposite of Lee. This clash of character gives us one of The Can Opener’s Daughter key sources of enjoyment. Where The Motherless Oven drip-fed us intel on this tortured reality through the soft eyes of Harper, Vera’s spunky, inquisitive nature leads us down the rabbit hole in an execution of this comic’s world that’s more brash and bolder than what Harper could ever show us.

  The world of this comic alone is worth exploring, even if there were no story attached to it. Akin to The Motherless Oven, Vera constructs her mother out of a weather clock, her childhood plagued by her very creation being illusive in her parental duties. The world might be the same as The Motherless Oven, but the difference in perspective gives us a deeper layer to this world that shows it really is as dangerous as it looks. Fans of The Motherless Oven will no doubt thrill in the subtle teases The Can Opener’s Daughter gives us regarding how this world came into existence, specifically how the children can exist before creating their ‘parents’. Again, this is made possible by Vera’s impulsive personality. It’s a real thrill to see her pry into her mother’s duties as the Prime Minister of Chance and uncover what exactly she gets up to.

  From this first prequel-half of the comic, we venture where we left off as the consequences of Harper avoiding his deathday anyway he can grow monstrously into something that neither Harper, Vera or Castro could have foreseen. What then looks like it should really be two separate comics on paper fuse together into a cohesive whole thanks to Vera’s growth throughout the comic. Her drive to separate Harper from his routine drove The Motherless Oven to its thrilling conclusion, and her resilience against the world is once again on full display here, proving how The Can Opener’s Daughter is an extravagant, Gothic-flavoured exercise in brilliantly executed character arcs.

  Once more however, what makes The Can Opener’s Daughter stand apart is the desperation on Vera’s part in the second half. She grows into a confident manipulator throughout the comic’s first half, but the second half, with the events of The Motherless Oven occurring in-between, sees the trio’s situation balloon into a death-defying chase that’s a fusion of Baby Driver and Just William.

  My favourite aspect of The Can Opener’s Daughter might just be something that it actually doesn’t deliver, but rather teases. When we reach the comic’s blitzkrieg conclusion as Vera’s mother traps her, the stage is set for a final chapter that promises to be nothing short of world-changing for our endearingly hapless trio. I do hope Rob Davis has a third instalment in mind here, because I’m hooked on this world.

  The Can Opener’s Daughter does everything that a good sequel should do – build on what works in the first chapter of the story without repeating it. Even if it may seem like The Can Opener’s Daughter appears content with being a Vera-version of The Motherless Oven, it tricks you into thinking this way. The Motherless Oven didn’t quite have the reckless sense of dark, limitless adventure that The Can Opener’s Daughter deservedly boasts. It’s too weird to not get engrossed in, too thrilling to avoid skipping pages, too tragic to not crush your heart.

  The Can Opener’s Daughter can be found from SelfMadeHero. Are you a fan of Rob Davis’ weird and wonderful work? Let us know in the comments section below or send us a Tweet!

• The Comics Journal
  http://www.tcj.com/reviews/the-motherless-oven/
  Word count: 1565

  QUOTED: "Rob Davis is strong at world-building. ... The book is also beautifully drawn. Davis’s stark monochrome style works well with cityscapes and portraits alike. Page structures are dynamic, and the action is strangely driven by facial gestures instead of elaborate action scenes. ... The whirl of absurd elements makes it possible to feel Scarper’s emotional turmoil as authentic. In fact, the authenticity of feeling is the common ground where the reader can access the world of The Motherless Oven."

  REVIEWS
  The Motherless Oven
  Rob Davis
  SelfMadeHero
  $20, 160 pages
  BUY IT NOW

  REVIEWED BY ESZTER SZÉP FEB 22, 2016
  resize“Better sorry than safe.” That’s the first sentence of Rob Davis’s The Motherless Oven. Many who have risked reading the book and posted disturbed or embarrassed reviews on social media might not have considered the full spectrum such a motto might entail. Do not forget, dear reader, to pay attention to warnings. Remember what Dante shared with you back in 1320: “All hope abandon, ye who enter here.”

  If you consider the warning, you might also consider the recommendation: The Motherless Oven won the British Comic Award in 2015 in the category of best book. Weighing the odds, it’s high time to decide. It’s knife o’clock. It is raining deadly knives outside, and the program you enjoy watching on the Wednesday wheel is constantly crying for help. Not easy.

  The world of The Motherless Oven is a carnival gone wrong, a wonderfully hopeless world populated by teenagers and machines. The only organic element is possibly the deadly lions guarding the school that the teenagers attend to learn Herogeometry, Mythmatics or Circular history with the help of the textbook The Four Cycles of Life: A Practical Guide to Gods, Immortals, Woman, and the Sea. Machines fall into two categories: parents and gods. Both would be considered as authority figures in our world, but in this graphic novel any small household appliance can be a god, for example an egg-timer, a radio, or a bedside lamp. Parents are/have been made by our teenager heroes from scare mechanic parts: wheels, pipes, hairdryers. They look grotesque, are usually monstrous and are used as means of transport. Teenagers and younger kids regularly race their dads in the streets. But not Scarper Lee, our protagonist and narrator. He hates those races, and his parents are strangely absent. His mother is self-closeted: chooses to hide whenever something scary happens, that is, all the time; and his dad, a gigantic brass on wheels and with sails, is chained up by Scarper in the shed to be safe. Scarper loves to keep to himself, and like anyone in this world, he knows exactly when he is going to die. He has three weeks left until his deathday.

  Motherless website
  Rob Davis is strong at world-building. The above listed bits and pieces reveal how creative this world is, but the book is also beautifully drawn. Davis’s stark monochrome style works well with cityscapes and portraits alike. Page structures are dynamic, and the action is strangely driven by facial gestures instead of elaborate action scenes. The story could actually be told with the expressive eyebrows of the protagonists. The self-proclaimed aim of the author was to create a world that has never been created before, so that he can address the big questions of adolescence and growing up that have been asked innumerable times. The whirl of absurd elements makes it possible to feel Scarper’s emotional turmoil as authentic. In fact, the authenticity of feeling is the common ground where the reader can access the world of The Motherless Oven.

  The atmosphere is deadly, the ideas are witty, and the protagonists maneuver in this unwelcoming world with a shocking ease. They keep their cool while the reader is biting her fingernails. Scarper knows this world, but does not explain it in his narration, so the reader has to be so flexible that the knives falling from the sky do not harm her but slide off or bounce back. Scarper lives in a world without restrictive parental interference but with the endless responsibility to maintain them. He has almost unlimited freedom to hang out with friends – their habit of sitting on the remains of someone’s mother reminds me of a cryptic and morbid carnival. The world is subversive, yes, but all the joy and liberation and interaction and energy and mischief are gone that are the characteristic of the Bakhtinian carnivalesque. The most mischievous character is the girl — of course there is a girl — Vera Pike, who is mayhem incarnate. She practically bullies Scarper out of his passivity and gives him no other choice but to run away from school and explore the menacing world they live in and to find Scarper’s missing dad. Vera and Scarper are accompanied by Castro, a boy of mental disorder wearing a brain aid. With this device Castro is a go-between to link the world of the teenagers and the machines (gods and parents). No wonder he is an outcast in the first one and a prophet in the second. He is very good at repairing gods, seeing their logic, understanding to them, and is a most needed help on Scarper’s quest to find his missing dad.

  Motherless website1
  In the meantime the police, led by Stour Provost, constantly pursue them. This is not a chase Voldemort or President Snow would undertake. Stour Provost and the local police force are mean, old and ugly people with grotesque bodies and perfect hair. They wear the exact same cardigans my granny does. They walk with sticks but travel by ancient three-wheeled jalopies at a speed just below walking pace. They never give up. They never stop. They find you and grind you up. Do they know in advance where you are going to be?

  Time and foreknowledge are central issues in The Motherless Oven. The book begins with a definition of which day it is (Wednesday) and what the time relative to the weather is: “It’s knife o’clock.” Moreover, Scarper has no future. He should both use time and that he should let go of it – he would really enjoy taking future, the infamous drug in Max Andersson’s similarly dark and truly carnivalesque Pixy (1992). Motherless Oven is in fact a countdown: the reader is constantly reminded about which day of the week it is and what Scarper normally does on these days. There is a foreboding feeling that in spite of the irregularity of action (running away, looking for the motherless oven, meeting weird people, hiding from Stour Provost), time is ticking in its fearful regular ways.

  Motherless website2
  In order to keep track of time, Scarper is recording the daily events with the help of a so-called home gazette. It is a tricky device which looks like a vase holding a book. It does not only record what is dictated to it, it is also capable of answering questions, or it takes its share in the narration process. Instances of interaction with the home gazette were the spookiest moments of the story for me – is it possible, that the events we see happening to Scarper are prerecorded, that his life is actually told by the device? Is his life read from the book? Is it the same book I am holding? Is Scarper predestined to skip school and live as a runaway in the last few weeks of his life? Does Scarper have to die when the three weeks are gone? Has everything happened already in this world of cyclical history? I am not going to give answers, but remember the cover: Scarper, Vera, and Castro are sitting on what looks like a bomb that could explode any minute. But it’s not a bomb. It is somebody’s dad.

  I have already mentioned that great flexibility is expected from the reader in interpreting the elements of this world. This task is not made any easier by the fact that certain words have completely different meanings than what one would expect. The most obvious example is “band,” which one can easily mistake for the idols of teenagers in the normal world. In this vein, the Orson and the Morons poster in Scarper’s bedroom is nothing special. However, the whole city is decorated with posters of The Green Summereen or Orson and the Morons, who “rename pancreas Park ‘the gut of the night’ and make it their home.” The posters are on knife shelters and walls, and their content – updated daily – is an important news source for Vera and Scarper, though they do not show any deeper interest in music. Soon enough they find themselves heroes of some posters, being labelled Vera Pike and the Heels, and it can be inferred that a band is a word used for groups of teenagers on the run. “Poster makers advise you watch the rise and fall of these rascals from the safety of your homes.” (105) From this I can only guess what a parent or a god stand for in the world of Scarper. The book is said to be the first part of a trilogy – I can’t wait to find out.

• Forbidden Planet
  http://forbiddenplanet.blog/2014/review-motherless-oven/
  Word count: 1632

  QUOTED: "It’s multi-layered, it’s clever, it’s brilliant, it’s got the pace of the best action thriller and the stylistic weirdness of the best of David Lynch and the Coen Brothers wrapped up in one."
  "It’s a tale told with breathless fervour and style from an artist exuding confidence in every page, every panel. It’s one of the most original and vibrantly alive things I’ve read for a long time."

  REVIEW: THE MOTHERLESS OVEN
  Published On December 19, 2014 | By Richard Bruton | Comics, Reviews
  The Motherless Oven
  by Rob Davis
  SelfMadeHero
  THE MOTHERLESS OVEN_Cover
  “Better sorry than safe.”
  “The weather clock said knife o’clock. So I chained dad up in the shed.”
  This really is one of those books that defines itself within the opening few pages. The visual and verbal dexterity Davis displays just in the opening sequence was enough to put me on the edge of my seat, loving what I’d read, excited to read the rest. Seriously, one of those books you cannot put down, a strange narrative delivered with such style by Davis.
  In fact, I think it’s one I could easily review just with art. I wouldn’t need to say much more, just look at this for a starter and be amazed…
  (I’ll meet you below for more, hopefully absolutely unnecessary, wordage)
  Motherless Oven 2
  Motherless Oven 3
  Motherless Oven 4
  Motherless Oven 5
  Motherless Oven 6
  Motherless Oven 7
  Motherless Oven 8
  That, you have to say, is both absolutely gorgeous and supremely involving.
  Pulse racing a little? Excited and want to know more? Yep, exactly what I felt as well. The Motherless Oven, straight onto my best of year list from the very first read. Go and buy it.
  You’ll hopefully be aware of Davis’ work from his two-volume adaptation of Don Quixote. You might also be a fan of his from many years ago when he was part of the rejuvenation of Roy Of The Rovers (I know I was – see here). You should certainly have bought and read the brilliant Nelson, co-created and edited by Davis and Woodrow Phoenix. But this is his first original graphic novel and by heck, it’s great.
  The invention in his pages, his ideas… it’s a revelation from the stricter confines of adapting other works. With The Motherless Oven Davis can really let loose, ideas and invention pouring out, brilliantly deranged, a piece of chaotic, inspired, clever fiction, absolutely cool, wonderfully weird.
  And by God, do I love looking at Davis’ artwork, the brilliantly black lines, skinnier than skinny jeans legs with every face a delight of expression, never more so than with two of his main characters, whether it’s Scarper Lee’s mop of jet black, unruly hair atop a visage of Gallagher-esque extremes, all huge lips and enormously black eyebrows, or the beguiling and wonderful Vera Pike, with a nose that’s the very definition of perky and eyes that shine with mischief and smarts. The grey-washes that swathe the pages, combined with that dense black brush work, really give each page a depth and density, in no way a bad thing, the gravitational pull of Davis’ pages so strong, so damn rewarding.
  Motherless Oven 10
  In those first few pages, you instantly fall in love a little with the two leads, certainly empathise with them, weird things though they might be.
  Scarper Lee, the doomed high school lad, Year 11 with absolutely no prospect of finishing school as he’s but a couple of weeks away from his death day, the preordained day of his death.
  Vera Pike, the girl who turns up on his doorstep in the middle of a knife storm and proceeds to turn his world upside down. Scarper protests he hates her. You know he doesn’t really. But being a teen can be like that can’t it?
  Which is all part of what makes The Motherless Oven an instant classic, Davis nails the voice of these teens, absolutely, utterly. It’s as though he’s been eavesdropping on school conversations for years, the natural rhythms and self-contained worlds of teen-dom are all here, wrapped up in an other-worldly strangeness sure, but face it, have you heard a teen conversation in full flow lately? it’s every bit as weird as that, probably more. And in this weird tale there’s also a simple, rather sweet one, a tale of Scarper Lee coming of age as he comes to terms with his impending death, Davis crafting a very real, very sweet tale of teen life (and death), of facing up to growing up, coping with parents, with the world, with everything dark and scary and horrible out there.
  Motherless-Oven-12
  Wrapped around that you get the weirdness, gloriously strange stuff all through… Scarper’s mother’s a hair dryer, his dad a strange Henry Moore-esque brass thing with a sail, chained up in the garden shed. Household ‘gods’ with their little tasks, massages, cake recipes, loo paper… “they dispense it with a song or a rhyme“.. This is a place where children all make their own parents, they don’t remember it, but somehow they do. School lions patrol the playground whilst the kids inside study circular history and mythmatics, then head home to watch the ‘daily wheel’.
  And everyone knows their death day.
  Except Vera Pike. Vera Pike doesn’t have a death day. Scarper’s friend snuck into the school office to cadge a look.
  Motherless Oven 14
  Scarper’s friends don’t like Vera Pike, think she’s ‘totally banjo‘, a complete weirdo, who not surprisingly ends up in the Deaf Unit at school after she rips the legs off Donna’s mum (Donna’s mum’s a mural on the school canteen wall). In the Deaf Unit she meets up with Castro Smith, one of the weird kids with Medicated Interference Syndrome and a control dial for his moods. Castro’s mum is a bird cage. Castro spends his time taking household gods apart to listen to their frequencies. Scarper thinks Castro’s a nutjob.
  But when Scarper’s dad gets out from the shed, chains cut, off on his own, it’s Vera Pike and Castro Smith who convince Scarper to run away with them, to track down his dad. Maybe Scarper’s dad wants to find out where he was built? Maybe they need to go “in search of the motherless oven where all the mums and dads are baked by the children of the world…”
  Motherless Oven_8
  A quest, a mission. By the end of the book, they’ve walked to the end of the near never-ending high street. They’ve destroyed someone’s dad, the police are still after them. Oh yes, the police. The authority figures. In here, authority comes with the old people, some made, some just there, unexplained, the teachers dispensing discipline and exams, the police ancient crones and wrinkled geriatric men riding around in clockwork jalopies, unrelenting, inexorably chasing crooks and runaways down, moving slower than walking pace, but never giving up. Never giving up. Scarper and Vera would do well to remember this. (They don’t, they’re teens. What did you expect?)
  Motherless Oven 13
  The Motherless Oven has got that impeccable cool air about it, the sense of something knowing and clever, that ‘Catcher In The Rye’ thing. I’ve already read at least two pieces calling The Motherless Oven hard to follow. That I can’t see. It’s multi-layered, it’s clever, it’s brilliant, it’s got the pace of the best action thriller and the stylistic weirdness of the best of David Lynch and the Coen Brothers wrapped up in one.
  But hard to follow? It’s simply the story of a boy and a girl. And his death. Maybe. Sort of. The extra flourishes, the strangeness, that’s simply the icing on a particularly rich and wonderful cake. If you’re after something with a worldview of strict black and white, then you’re possibly in the wrong place, but why not relax a little, let loose and enjoy the madness, construct your own particular meanings from the symbolism Davis uses? The world would be a really dull place if all the stories went from A to B to C and on.
  Scarper needed setting free. Vera Pike might have turned up at just the right time. Or completely the wrong one. Depends how you read it. The Motherless Oven is a quest that isn’t, a straightforwardly twisty tale that proves nothing but. There’s a finale that leaves you to make your own mind up, the why, the how, the what. Take whatever meaning from it you want. It can be a simple boy meets girl tale against a weird as anything backdrop, it could be a little autobiographical look into the author’s early years (Davis is a fascinating subject), it could be a critical dissection about authoritarian control over youth, it could be …… well, it could be about whatever you want it to be. But whatever you get from it, if you do get it, you’ll be instantly swept up in a fabulous book.
  It’s a tale told with breathless fervour and style from an artist exuding confidence in every page, every panel. It’s one of the most original and vibrantly alive things I’ve read for a long time. Finish it. Turn it over. Start it all over again. Repeat. It’s worth it.

• Graphic Novel Reporter
  https://www.graphicnovelreporter.com/reviews/the-motherless-oven
  Word count: 756

  Review
  The Motherless Oven
  by Rob Davis
  Buy this book at IndieBound
  Buy this book at Amazon
  Buy this book at Barnes and Noble
  I know you want me to tell you in plain and simple terms whether or not Rob Davis’s exceptionally English graphic novel, THE MOTHERLESS OVEN, was good or not. To this I say: “The Strawberries have yet to be enslaved, but it can of course be turned around with the simple application of blasting powder.”

  I know, I know. You’re thinking, “Did he just have a stroke? What the hell is he talking about? What does exploding fruit have to do with a book review?”

  “To say it was a fun, thrilling read would be, like the book itself, a paradoxically truthful and false statement.”
  Nothing. It has nothing to do with it. It’s a completely absurd non-sequitur. And if you appreciated it, you will love THE MOTHERLESS OVEN, as I did.

  The book’s tagline is: “The weather clock said knife o’clock. So I chained dad up in the shed.” This should be enough to tell you that what you are about to read is a far cry from WUTHERING HEIGHTS, and instead resembles something you’d get after a night of drug-induced debauchery shared by Terry Gilliam and Kafka that somehow, despite the laws of biology and good taste, produced a bouncing baby graphic novel.

  THE MOTHERLESS OVEN presents itself as something of a coming of age story following three misfit teenagers, one of whom only has a fortnight to live, on a “MacGuffin journey” --- which is to say they are traveling to find something that doesn’t really matter, and what we should focus on is the journey itself and how the characters grow and connect with each other. In this case, the MacGuffin is the father of Scarper Lee, one of the teens. Scarper’s father is a large brass construct with a sail, who escaped from the garden shed and ran away to the Motherless Oven, where all parents are made.

  Have I lost you yet? If so, don’t be ashamed. In this world, household appliances have souls and personalities and are referred to by everyone as Gods, when it rains it rains knives, and children just… are. There aren’t too many adults, save a handful of authority figures and a shopkeeper. But it doesn’t seem as if any of the children or adults were born to parents. In fact, legend says that at some point in time no children and adults can remember, everyone built their own parents at the Motherless Oven. Though the people inhabiting this world, as well as the layout and customs, closely resemble our own, the world itself is full of strange and disturbing nuances making it simultaneously familiar and alienating.

  This review comes with a few disclaimers, in order to protect the reader and this reviewer from harm and litigation. Number One: Do NOT try to figure out what The Motherless Oven means. Go into this like you’re watching a Coen Brothers movie. Just enjoy it for what it is. Number Two: There is no hope. Do not assume there is, nor expect to leave this particular ride with a sense of fulfillment, satisfaction or an idea that there is any traces of love or benevolence left in the universe. And of course, finally, disclaimer Number Three: Brush up on your British turns of phrase.

  To say it was a fun, thrilling read would be, like the book itself, a paradoxically truthful and false statement. THE MOTHERLESS OVEN is dark humor turned up to max and then forced so hard past max that the knob falls off and leaves you eternally stuck in a black prison of your own disturbing yet amusing thoughts. It certainly isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, though, so if your idea of good fiction is the latest YA craze and Monty Python is about the weirdest humor you like, stay away. But if you’re like me, it’s pretty much essential you read THE MOTHERLESS OVEN --- or else you might accidentally find yourself back in the mundane world of the sane.

  Reviewed by Ed Cress on October 7, 2014

  Buy this book at IndieBound Buy this book at Amazon Buy this book at Barnes and Noble

• Digital Spy
  http://www.digitalspy.com/comics/review/a605464/rob-daviss-the-motherless-oven-review-a-strange-familiar-adventure/
  Word count: 775

  QUOTED: "The Motherless Oven is a startling and original work of fiction, and a more than worthy addition to SelfMadeHero's first rate lineup."

  Rob Davis's The Motherless Oven review - a strange & familiar adventure
  We check out the twisted coming-of-age tale from Don Quixote's Rob Davis.

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  Coming-of-age stories are a popular literary trope. Jane Austen's Emma. Catcher in the Rye. To Kill a Mockingbird. The list goes on. It even has its own term: a bildungsroman.

  So when we say that the new SelfMadeHero graphic novel from Rob Davis (Don Quixote) - The Motherless Oven - is a coming-of-age story like no other, it really is a story dripping in originality.

  The Motherless Oven by Rob Davis
  © ROB DAVIS
  Adolescent schoolboy Scarper Lee is a troubled young man in a topsy-turvy world. His deathday is fast approaching and everyone knows it, his dad is restless under his chains in the shed, the weird girl at school won't leave him alone, and it's raining knives. Again. When his dad escapes his confinement, Scarp and two uncertain allies set out to find him. If they can get past the schoolyard lions first, that is.

  To say that The Motherless Oven is a strange story is to be hopelessly banal. What is far more interesting than its strangeness is the powerful familiarity of it. Through a hazy dream logic - or maybe, more accurately, teen logic - Scarp's world makes a whole lot of sense.

  Don't our parents seem made by and for us, sometimes, as if they have no independent lives of their own? Aren't school rules predictably illogical and unnecessarily punitive? Aren't rainy days a pain? The world seems much bigger than it really is, and all your idols are probably just idiots, really.

  Rob Davis's The Motherless Oven
  © SELFMADEHERO DAVIS
  Underneath the flights of imagination is the comforting kernel of a traditional, school kid adventure story in the classic British vein. The three heroes are dressed almost constantly in their school uniforms, Grange Hill-style, and Scarp's Mod-ish helmet of hair is so familiar a motif you may barely notice it. The suburban world in which they move is one of semi-detached houses, wooden fences and low-rise high streets. Scarp's words and actions come apart in a deliciously, typically teenage way, with Davis manipulating words and pictures to the fullest degree.

  Davis walks a tightrope between the familiar and the strange, never straying too far in either direction. It is from this frisson that the magic of The Motherless Oven derives.

  Rob Davis's The Motherless Oven
  © SELFMADEHERO DAVIS
  The story is grim and disturbing, summoning up the claustrophobia of adolescence (and possibly life in general). The truth of events is sometimes opaque, leading up to a coming-of-age where painful realities are revealed and burning questions are left unanswered. This is not a Famous Five adventure, no matter any ostensible similarities.

  The Motherless Oven is a startling and original work of fiction, and a more than worthy addition to SelfMadeHero's first rate lineup.

  The Motherless Oven is in shops now.

• Comic Bastards
  https://comicbastards.com/comics/review-the-motherless-oven
  Word count: 999

  REVIEW: THE MOTHERLESS OVEN
  November 21, 2014
  On a recent looting at Montreal’s iconic indie comic institution, Drawn & Quarterly, I came across a book with the following back-cover blurb: “The weather clock said knife o’clock, so I chained Dad up in the shed.” Call me impulsive, but that’s the kind of call-out that grabs my attention. It immediately reminded me of the arresting (and indeed jarring) opening of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four in its double take-inducing content, and I found myself unalterably gripped. The graphic novel in question was Rob Davis’ The Motherless Oven, and it just may be the most uniquely entertaining, engagingly confusing books in the medium this year. As the pull quote above illustrates, the world of The Motherless Oven is one in which knives literally rain from the sky; where, in their infancy, children build their “parents” - highly emotional machines ranging from hairdryers to action figures; and where everyone knows when they are going to die, thanks to “death-days” assigned by a local police force led by an octogenarian with the supernatural relentlessness of Jason Vorhees.

  It’s a world where every appliance - from an egg-timer to a bedside lamp to a light switch - is a semi-sentient, parable-singing “god,” and the masses are comforted by watching seemingly hypnotic, daily kaleidoscopic wheels instead of television. Set so extravagantly against a decidedly British backdrop, The Motherless Oven’s universe is one that also feels grounded and approachable. Sure, strange things are afoot, but Rob Davis tempers them in the mundanity of daily life, thus draining any pretense or unwanted esotericism, and allowing the reader to settle into the world quickly and comfortably.

  The Motherless Oven follows the last two weeks in the life of Scarper Lee, whose quickly-approaching death-day is suddenly the least of his problems, after meeting a shit-stirring new girl, Vera Pike, and her personal project, Castro, whose “medicated inference syndrome” turns him into a Mos Def-like prophet when he hears certain decibels, and gives him the “mental clarity” to mend broken gods.

  The Motherless OvenAfter Scarper’s “dad” (a large brass behemoth with a billowing sail, we are told) suddenly does a runner, the unlikely trio break out of school (past the guard lions, naturally) to look for him, but verge into an existential quest for the titular “Motherless Oven,” a mythical kiln of-sorts, from which all things on this world are said to be born, and where they hope to define (or indeed escape) the terminal nature of their existence.

  In the end, The Motherless Oven leaves you with a lot of questions, but ones that force you to go back and experience it all over again, many times, and appreciate both the pieces and the whole that make it such an incredible reading experience. It’s one of those books that sticks with you, the kind you find yourself thinking about actively or in passing throughout different parts of your day. I’ve read it and subsequently flipped back through it several times now, and am still happily solidifying my thoughts on it, which is one of the highest compliments I can give to a work of fiction.

  Thematically, this story reminds me of a mix between the strange goings-on in a book like Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, and the quasi-magical madcap childhood misadventure of Harry Potter. From page one, Davis thrusts you headlong into the deep end of this story, employing an outside-in narrative to its build. And believe me, it’s a discombobulating experience, but never an annoying one. As the three ex-students guide us through their world, the journey takes on the logic of a dream, where things only make sense the stranger they get. And they do get strange.

  Again, this is set in a universe where weather laughs at you, where the seasons are controlled by massive floating bombs and where street gangs race and wreck on snarling, bulbous monstrosities they call “Dad.” It’s crazy surreal, and so much fun to explore, with insane little elements peeking out around every corner. You will get lost, you will be disturbed, and if you’re anything like me, you will love every second.

  Davis is an exceptional writer with an incredibly unique voice, perhaps no more poetically expressed than in Scarp’s musings into the voice-recording Home Gazette device, which itself stands as a moral conundrum, being both seemingly alive and just an echo-capturing appliance. Simultaneously, his dialogue feels like it’s been polished in the street; organic and natural, it often provides a perfect foil for the inane action.

  Artistically, Davis employs a visual direction which combines a structured, if not entirely stern style that plays with its narrative dichotomy in a way that every comic should. Drawn in black, white and fleshed further in chalky shades of grey, this book may be an odd bird, but in its clean and angular lines and heavy, atmospherically-dusted presentation, it’s also a fucking gorgeous one.

  Davis’ art also benefits from being both dramatic in its expressiveness and hugely dynamic; and from his tight figure work to the phantasmagoric “televisual wheels” he uses as early page-breaks, he is able to convey the weird, almost cartoonish wonder of this place, but grounds it in boundaries. Visually, there is no better presentation when set against a narrative that is, by its nature, in the act of unravelling.

  I honestly couldn’t recommend The Motherless Oven more to anyone interested in an off-beat, beautifully-constructed surrealist slice of fiction. It may require a bit of patience in terms of afterthought analysis, but believe you me, it’s an experience that you will remember as a wholly worthwhile pursuit.

  Score: 5/5

  Writer/Artist: Rob Davis Publisher: Self Made Hero Price: $19.95 Release Date: 10/21/14 Format: OGN, Print Website
  In Comic Reviews

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