Visit dark and twisted minds
By James Chambers – With Tales Of Ordinary Madness, Malcolm Bourne and Michael Allred take us down the dark and twisted paths of the human mind and into a world of people who dwell in their own personal realties, where even the most mundane activities can be a passage through Hell. With the experiences of several characters, they explore the nature of madness and its possible causes. Linked together by their nameless Doctor, each patient struggles to overcome illness and return to health, but even those working to help them are not immune. Each story offers an unsettling glimpse into these people’s lives and the establishment that is often helpless to cure them. Tales Of Ordinary Madness is a portrait of insanity in the modern world, where the sick and deranged float freely through their own worlds and the sane can do little more than watch them.
A paranoid schizophrenic believes everyone he meets means to do him harm and seeks refuge in a delusion of his own creation. Suffering from depression, a woman uses the very drugs meant to save her in an attempt to take her own life. These are some of the people who pass their lives in madness, and each case is its own puzzle. Each mind has its own secrets to unravel and dark corners to illuminate.
Perhaps most disturbing is Bourne’s exploration of the parallels between the lives of these patients and the life of the psychiatrist entrusted to help them. What is it that keeps the Doctor sane when he can identify with so many of the experiences of his patients? Why has he not slipped over into the realm of insanity as they have? Perhaps he has. With each patient, the Doctor seems to unravel a few more of his own secrets, a few more forgotten memories of common experiences that have shaped his life differently than those of his patients. In the end, though, is he really any different from the madmen that surround him?
Bourne, a psychiatrist by profession, and Allred, the incredibly talented creator of Madman, prove that comics, like any other medium, can transcend their format to make a true connection with readers. This four-issue mini-series is more than just a well-done, entertaining comic: It is an exploration of the far reaches of the human soul, and a society that often can’t bear to face them.
