Skibber Bee Bye back

One of those books that get tagged as the first great graphic novel of the new millennium, something that will still hold up in a decade's time. His idiosyncratic renderings kow-tow to no style except his own.

It's a chunky little book, about six inches square and about an inch thick, mostly black & white but with a couple of excursions into simple, pencilled colour for a few sections. Siblings housed high up in an extravagant treehouse are visited by a cake-baking pachyderm, intent on winning the affections of the highly inventive sister. She dreams up inventions for the apparently harmless, cycloptic fairies who populate the woods. Regé sticks with his formal design, allowing no space between the panel borders, and his monofilament clear-line style can take a while to penetrate as your eyes get used to the rhythm of his simple circle and square imagery. Regé, a happy resident of the space between Panter and Beyer without too much of the (here, unnecessary) edgy claustrophobia those two titans draw, has produced an unnerving tale that threatens to go anywhere but where you will it to.

"One of a handful of cartoonists in the history of the medium to not only reinvent comics to suit his own idiosyncratic impulses and inspirations as an artist, but to also imbue it with his own peculiar, ever-changing emotional energy" - Chris Ware

"Lucid, meticulous, 'authentic', beautifully designed and slightly nuts" - Daniel Clowes

"This has left grown men feeling like steak under that tenderising mallet: raw." - Tom Rosin