For readers unfamiliar with Andreas' work, the Raffington Event will be the perfect proposition for entering the strange and disturbing worlds of the German comic book master. For those who know and appreciate it, it's kind of a nostalgic return to the time when Rork fired the imaginations of comic book fans.
The title of Raffington Event is also the name of the main character of the comic book Andreas. The comic book is nothing more than a spin-off of Rorek, in which this private detective was a supporting character and appeared for the first time in the second volume of the series, entitled Transitions. The Passages and the Fragments before that are the essence of Andreas' creativity. Short, disturbing stories, which are just beginning to merge into a longer story, were extremely innovative for their time. They proved that a comic book can be a kind of an aesthetic and intellectual puzzle that makes it more difficult than easier for the reader to navigate the plot's meanders. Andres is an artist who writes on his own terms, certainly not for the public, and always requires the reader to fully engage the gray cells, which is sometimes not enough when trying to fully interpret the stories invented by Andreas.
It is no different in the Raffington Event, although these stories do not have the intellectual weight of Rork. They are lighter, more free in form, but drawn in the style characteristic of Andreas. Perhaps there is no such madness in framing as in Rork, but the atmosphere of mystery and understatement is fully preserved.
In this not very extensive comic, which is only fifty pages long, we get as many as ten short stories, which include individual investigations by Raffington Eventa. In their moments, the dreamlike and sometimes disturbing atmosphere is perfectly introduced by the only black-and-white story without dialogues in the volume, entitled Jim, which fully shows us the narrative mastery of Andreas. Subsequent novellas are already in color and with dialogue, but the former, due to its different form, remains the most remembered.
The remaining nine investigations (although sometimes they are not investigations in their literal sense) captivate with their secrets and solutions, although for those who know Andreas' work they may seem too trivial in some respects, and the punch line in some cases, let's say it straightforward myself. However, how we read each of them depends on the individual perspective. The form resembles short etudes or exercises on which Andreas could practice narrative and formal tricks.
This may not be the creator's peak capabilities, but the Raffington Event leaves a very pleasant impression of communing with something extraordinary, different, not subject to a specific genre classification. It's a kind of crime story that combines the elegance of Agatha Christie's style and the classics of incredible stories with the genre of weird fiction. It's a combination that offers amazing story opportunities that Andreas is eager to use. What's more, no matter if the adventure with the work of a comic book master begins, or if you know him inside out, the Raffington Event in a suggestive way encourages you to first or again reach for other titles of the cult author....
