Reinhard Kleist – Nick Cave: Mercy On Me

I mentioned Reinhard Kleist’s graphic novel, Johnny Cash: I See A Darkness so long ago in these pages (2009), and in such a short blurb, that it’s not even worth linking. Suffice it to say, I loved it. And now, here’s Kleist (an amazing artist)’s book on another amazing artist, Nick Cave.

This work captures the restlesness, the angst, the anger, the poetry, the power, the swirl that is Nick Cave, forces it all down into pages that can barely contain him. Written as flights of fancy and using song lyrics and characters from Cave’s songs, this book is as unrelenting as its subject. The artwork is gorgeous, as we expect from Kleist. 

From the early days with the Birthday Party through to driving his car into the large hadron collider with Robert Johnson riding shotgun, this book as a goddamn must-read.