Лучшие книги Томаса Отта

Томас Отт — швейцарский иллюстратор и автор комиксов. Он работает в технике скретчборд — процарапывания изображения на специальном картоне, покрытом чёрной тушью. В 1996 году Отт получил премию «Макс и Мориц» на Международном салоне комиксов в Эрлангене в номинации «Лучший немецкоязычный автор». «Номер 73304-23-4153-6-96-8» — криминальная драма о числах, которые контролируют жизнь. После проведения смертной казни, палач находит на полу в тюрьме записку с номером. Неожиданно этот номер начинает приносить удачу — главный герой встречает красивую женщину, выигрывает в казино. Но это быстро заканчивается. Томас Отт без единого слова…

T. Ott plunges into the darkness with five graphic horror novelettes: “The Prophet,” “The Wonder Pill,” “La Lucha,” “The Hotel,” and the title story, each executed in his hallucinatory and hyper-detailed scratchboard style.

The first story in the book introduces the other four: A little girl visits an amusement park. She looks fascinated, but finds everything too expensive. Finally, behind the rollercoaster she eyeballs a small booth with “CINEMA PANOPTICUM” written on it. Inside there are boxes with screens. Every box contains a movie; the title of each appears on each screen. Each costs only a dime, so the price is right for the little girl. She puts her money in the first box: “The Prophet” begins. In the film, a vagrant foresees the end of the world and tries to warn people, but nobody believes him. They will soon enough.

In the second film, “The Wonder Pill,” a short-sighted man initially goes blind from some pills his doctor gave him, but soon the blindness wears off and he finds they accord quite a view. “La Lucha,” the third story, introduces a Mexican wrestler who fights against death himself. In a typical Ott twist, he wins and loses at the same time.

The final story, “The Hotel,” depicts a traveler who goes to sleep in what seems to be an otherwise empty hotel. His awakening is the stuff of nightmares... Ott’s O. Henry-esque plot twists will delight fans of classic horror like The Twilight Zone and Tales From the Crypt, or modern efforts like M. Night Shyamalan’s films (well, the good ones); his artwork will haunt you long after you've put the book down. 104 pages of black-and-white comics

A gorgeous, ghostly, and silent graphic novella from the modern scratchboard master.

The Forest is a graphic novella told via twenty-five singular illustrations, without words, of which only Swiss artist Thomas Ott is capable. A young boy sneaks away from a family funeral and sinks into the forest depths, where he confronts man's greatest fear and must choose his path. Drawing with a technique called scratchboard, where a white surface is covered with a black layer and scratched away, Ott creates images out of negative space to harrowing effect. In Ott's hands, the medium becomes the perfect vessel for his eerie, horror-imbued morality tales. This gorgeous volume will be printed on heavy art paper with Pantone Black ink to best showcase every exquisite detail of Ott's virtuosic talent. Black-and-white illustrations throughout