A different type of read

Talk about a strange trip ...

DC sent me a copy of “Can’t Get No,” a graphic novel written and illustrated by Rick Veitch and published by Vertigo, DC’s mature-reader imprint. The cover blurb by writer Neil Gaiman says it best: “supremely, magnificently strange, and like nothing else I’ve read.”

“Can’t Ge No” tells the story of Chad Roe, a businessman whose permanent-marker business goes down the drain. And that’s just the start of his troubles: A drunken binge ends with him tattooed over every inch of his body in permanent marker. The increasingly odd story then takes a startling turn into the events of 9-11 and its aftermath.

The story is a silent one with no word balloons, no explanatory captions. There is text, though: a lyrical, seemingly stream-of-consciousness narrative that seems to tie into the story at times and other times is just downright weird. You can avoid the words and just “read” the silent story, but I kept finding myself pulled to the text as well, making for an unsettling yet somehow hypnotic read.