Shuck Unmasked

Rating:
Summary: an inner sense of calm and wonder, disguised as a book...
Review: Shuck Unmasked is an incredibly difficult book to explain or summarize because, more than anything, it is a mood that is provoked, or a feeling that settles upon you as you read it.

To tell you that it's about a demon with a goat face who wears an old man mask and rakes leaves and chats with the little girl across the street (Thursday Friday) and her talking cat, Jamara, and helps restless souls keep out of trouble... this tells you nothing. If anything, it puts you in the wrong frame of mind, because Shuck isn't a demon in the horror-movie sense of the word. He's not at all scary or evil. He's just this goat-faced old guy who mostly putters around the house. He's really quite nice, actually.

Shuck Unmasked collects the four issues of Rick Smith's comic-book series, Shuck, and then adds two new stories that have never been published before. Having already purchased the first four issues, I momentarily debated about whether or not I should get the book. But then I realized that it really didn't matter because I'd gladly pay 15 dollars for two new Shuck stories. These are long, slow stories that leave you feeling like you've spent the day outside on a chill autumn day, come inside to a cup of hot tea and been told the most wonderful story by an old friend who you haven't seen in years. Someone who really knows how to tell a story.

Someone with a sense of humor. And the ability to take you someplace else entirely with their words (and, in this case, their pictures).

One thing that may throw you off at first is the way the characters speak... their dialogue is written phonetically so that you "hear" it rather than read it. It's difficult, at first, to decipher what's being said. After a couple of minutes, though, your brain adapts to it and you stop being aware that your brain is translating the words for you. It's a neat effect, ultimately, because it gives the dialogue an authenticity that most written language lacks. Still, it's odd for those first couple of pages.

Example: "Wif tha odrous nachur of what you haf concocted fore tonight, I've no mind to dring the stuff, Mr. Shuck."

= With the odorous nature of what you have concocted for tonight, I've no mind to drink the stuff, Mr. Shuck.

The most helpful thing I can tell you about Shuck Unmasked is that reading it leaves you with the same feeling as watching "Wings of Desire" or "Paris, Texas" or "Man Without a Past" or "Double Life of Veronique." It's a warm, satisfied feeling like what you used to get when, as a kid, you watched the Peanuts holiday specials, where nothing ever really happens, but somehow a whole world opens up to you, more real than the one you live in. It is storytelling at its finest.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.