Comic Book Tattoo: Tales Inspired by Tori Amos

From the Publisher

Over 80 of the best creators from every style and genre have contributed over 50 stories to this anthology featuring tales inspired by the songs of multi-platinum recording artist, Tori Amos!
Featuring an introduction by Neil Gaiman, with stories by creators such as Carla Speed McNeil, Mark Buckingham, C.B. Cebulski, Nikki Cook, Hope Larson, John Ney Reiber, Ryan Kelly, and many, many others, Comic Book Tattoo encapsulates the breadth, depth, and beauty of modern comics in this coffee table format book.

VOYA

Singer/songwriter Tori Amos has been recording and performing her own brand of accessible, poetic alt-pop rock for sixteen years. During that time, she has had close friends in the comics industry. Co-editor and instigator of this collection Hoseley and shaper-of-stories, Sandman creator and author of the introduction Neil Gaiman were chief among them. Hoseley floated the idea of a collection of Amos's songs set to sequential art, and Amos agreed as long as the creators did not produce "comic cover versions" of her songs by interpreting the lyrics too literally. More than eighty artists contributed, some doing double and triple duty, to the many interpretations of Amos's trippy lyrics, from "Little Earthquakes" (1992) to "American Doll Posse" (2007). Each song's lyrics along with art credits accompany the interpretation. Some are wordless pieces of visual art whereas others are full-blown stories, and they range from three to thirteen pages. Every style of art and tone of story makes an appearance. Amos stipulated that the creators would not be censored, and that proviso is apparent in this very adult collection. There are blood, masturbation, blasphemy, violence, and adult situations right alongside Disneyesque toonettes. The volume is fantastic and fantastically diverse, but its audience in the young adult area will be quite small. Fans of the artists or specific songs will find it frustrating that there is no table of contents or index. There is also the necessity of lifting with the knees as the huge tome could cause back and shelf strain even in paperback. Reviewer: Timothy Capehart

Martha Cornog - Library Journal

The quicksilver elusiveness of Tori Amos's work takes more tangible form in this massive, sumptuous collection of 51 stories from over 80 creators. While her semantic-collage lyrics play at the edge of rationality with themes of love and loss, these creators have played, in turn, with the lyrics, spinning off fantasies of their own, sometimes adhering to the emotional atmosphere and plotlines of the song, sometimes not. In "I Can't See New York," the shade of a girl who loved too much comes down to reach for the man she has lost, a similar feel as the song. But not so with "God," which stars a fatuous office drone instead of a whimsical flirt offering to help the Almighty clean up his act. Some plots work less well than others, seeming to stop rather than end. Others simply mystify, while the best offer an epiphany or resolution-not necessarily happy. The wonderfully diverse art ranges from decent to spectacular. "Heard melodies are sweet," wrote Keats, "but those unheard are sweeter": these creators evoke their own music, perhaps not sweeter here but certainly compelling. Amos fans will fight to check this out and hotly debate their favorites, and comics-only fans will be intrigued. With occasional sexual situations and strong language; recommended for academic libraries and adult collections in public libraries.

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