Mix a little pseudo mafia with a missing cartoonist and the next thing you know, you are flipping pages to see what happens next.  Nate, one of the main characters, is a minor league cartoonist given the opportunity to travel to the international cartoonist convention and interview one of his idols – but the idol does not show and no one seems to know where he is.  Nate just wants the story as he sketches his way along, leaving the reader with easy to visualize descriptions of the cartoons he is drawing.  Cartoons are all about the humorous side of life, or looking at life with a slightly different angle, and this story definitely fits the bill.

There is also a bumbling husband who is a wanna be – well pretty much anything, but he has not found his niche yet. Milt, the missing cartoonist, is a whole story in himself (but is he really missing, kidnapped, escaped???)  Crina, the girlfriend who partners up with Nate to find Milt, is another enigma to keep the reader wondering what is reality and what is the ‘real story’?

A definite escape read, in more ways than one, that kept this reader entertained. 

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SUMMARY

This is a graphic novel with no pictures—you are the artist.

“The Dead Cartoonist” is fabulously successful but emotionally disturbed comic strip creator Milton Morey. Or maybe it’s Nate Thurringer, whose quirky strip barely rates a blip in the comics world.

By a stroke of chance, Nate is present when Morey’s family finds out he has been kidnapped. Nate, accompanied by Morey’s Romanian lover, sets off on a pursuit from the French Riviera, across Spain and finally to Hollywood. The story winds through madness, a fake kidnapping, love on the run, a real kidnapping, family drama, and heartfelt longing. Oh, and enough comics memes and references to fill a Comicon roundtable.