So, there's this vaguely humanoid sea creature which lives in a sunken submarine in a Californian bay where it snacks on the remains of dead submariners which it shares with its friends the crabs. Now and again it is compelled by drifting pheromones to head to shore to kill and eat sexually aroused teenagers.
This is Grue, our hero. Now both confusing and stimulating him are the bottles containing pages of Shakespeare which keep appearing in the waters of the bay. Entranced by Shakespeare's language, Grue has begun to speak in iambic pentameter, an affectation that is derided by his friends the crabs who are more interested the scraps of human remains he leaves for them.
A chain of events occur which (I won't detail here) lead him to discovering where the bottles containing fragments on Shakespeare come from, how his actions impact on a human family, and him falling in love with a middle-aged female agoraphobic.
And now, here's the cover.
This really is almost impossible to describe. A plethora of adjectives spring to mind: graceful, witty, tragic, deft, bold -which are all appropriate but don't convey the full flavour. The artwork is delightful with its human figures reminiscent of Dave Stevens and Terry Moore. The art is also in black and white, not only devoid of colour but also of grey; there is no shading at all which is unusual but it works. This is really quite a unique and delightful graphic novel.
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