C

CAGES. Cages, originally serialized between 1990 and 1996, and collected into a single

volume in 1998, is an unusually dense and complex work of postmodern cartooning.
Written and drawn by Dave McKean, Cages revolves around the lives of three artists—
Leo Sabarske (painter), Angel (musician), and Jonathan Rush (novelist)—who happen
to live in the same apartment building. Th e unnamed setting closely resembles areas of
London, and the main theme has to do with the rewards and perils of creativity in the
crowded metropolis. Cages was out of print for several years, but has recently been reis-
sued in paperback by Dark Horse Comics. Praised by critics as one of the best comics
of the 1990s, Cages provides an ambitious and haunting example of comics as a long
form storytelling medium.
McKean is probably best known for his numerous collaborations with Neil Gaiman.
He painted the covers for all 75 issues of the Vertigo series Sandman (1989–96), and
designed and illustrated Gaiman’s Signal to Noise (1992), Mr. Punch (1994), and Violent
Cases (1994), as well as Black Orchid (1991). Gaiman and McKean have also worked
together to create several well-regarded children’s books, including Coraline (2003),
Wolves in the Walls (2005), Th e Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfi sh (1998), and
MirrorMask (2005). Th eir most recent collaboration, Th e Graveyard Book (2008),
reached the bestseller lists. A stop-motion animated 3-D version of Coraline was re-
leased in 2009, and McKean himself designed and directed the live action fi lm version
of MirrorMask that was produced by the Jim Henson Company and released in 2005.
Although reviews were mixed, Entertainment Weekly gave MirrorMask an A-, reporting
that the fi lm was a “dazzling reverie of a kids-and-adults movie, an unusual collabora-
tion between lord-of-the-cult multimedia artist Dave McKean and king-of-the-comics
Neil Gaiman.”