Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean are the dynamic duo of comic books.
The author and illustrator have collaborated on high-profile projects from a brutally frank AIDS prevention piece, "Death Talks About Life," to Alice Cooper's "The Last Temptation."
So is it any surprise that their latest effort, titled "Mr. Punch" (childhood reminiscences entwined with a Punch and Judy show) is a runaway hit? Or as Mr. Gaiman describes it, "the fastest selling expensive book in human history"?
The first American printing of the $24.95 hardback comic book sold out within four days. Its publisher, D.C. Comics, plans a second printing, but until then comic aficionados will have to trust to luck when tracking down the slick, 100-page work.
This is a problem for Mr. Gaiman and Mr. McKean, who are on a book-signing tour. (Although no Baltimore dates are planned, they will appear in Philadelphia on Monday.)
"This may well turn into the single most embarrassing signing tour in human history," says the book's author, Mr. Gaiman. "It does seem very strange doing a signing tour for a book that actually sold out a month before we went on tour."
Not that they don't have other things to sign. Besides "Death," there's also their award-winning and best-selling "Sandman" series as well as Mr. McKean's frequent illustrations in The New Yorker magazine and Mr. Gaiman's novel, "Good Omens."
While their sold-out dilemma has its funny side, "Mr. Punch" doesn't.
Punch and Judy shows are a common part of English childhood and the story hasn't changed in hundreds of years. Mr. Gaiman stumbled across a 1915 book called "How to Do Punch and Judy" and was shocked. Like most people who saw it as children, he forgot its brutality. Between the jokes and slapstick, Mr. Punch is a serial killer who kills his baby, his wife, a policeman, a clown, a crocodile, the hangman and the Devil himself.
"And it finished, 'And then Mr. Punch goes off to continue spreading joy and happiness to children everywhere.' This was written without any sense of irony," says Mr. Gaiman. "I thought, 'This is really strange. I really want to do something with this. I can use the metaphor.' "
The resulting tale weaves together a child's recollections of his grandfather's deserted seaside arcade and the resulting friendship with an old Punch and Judy man. There's also a strong underlying thread of family secrets.
Its premise echoes that of the duo's first book, "Violent Cases," which dealt with an adult trying to make sense of childhood memories. And "Mr. Punch" seemed to be a perfect device for doing that again, particularly since Mr. Gaiman is intrigued by children's powerlessness next to adults.
Children, he says, "are in a world in which much of what's going on is not only unknown but unknowable. People are not explaining things and you lack the information to make sense of things even if they did explain them."
The evocative premise is meant to make readers think twice about their childhoods.
"It seems to spark memories and I think it's because you tend to remember your childhood in these tiny little fragments of time and very often you're not even remembering real things anymore," says Mr. McKean.
"The past is the kingdom of secrets and all you will take back from the past, if you go looking, is secrets that don't quite unravel, mysteries we'll never quite resolve," adds Mr. Gaiman.
The mood of the text is reinforced by Mr. McKean's striking images. The book mixes his drawings with photographs of puppets he constructed.
"Generally people tend to think that photographs tell the truth, that they're honest, and they're clearly not, Mr. McKean says. "There are huge amounts of editing going on all the time with photographs. Because they have this veneer of reality, they are probably all the more insidious."
"All the dreams and the nightmares and the sort of odd puppet shows I ended up photographing so they have an illusion of reality," he adds. "It's really just to play with people's expectations."
Some of the book's richness may come from its autobiographical roots. "The narrator isn't quite me, but many of the memories are mine," says Mr. Gaiman. "It was not an easy book to write. Many of the hardest memories are mine. The memories of each of my grandparents right at the end, they were all mine and they were hard."
Mr. Gaiman and Mr. McKean are planning a painted miniseries featuring Dream after the Sandman series ends its regular run with issue 75. But their frequent collaborations are due to the relationship they have rather than potential sales.
"We do have a trust," says Mr. McKean. "We're very different people and we have very different tastes, but there's an overlap and there's a trust that I think is relatively rare. And since we seem to have got it, we want to keep working at it as much as can until we drift apart."
BOOK SIGNING
What: Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean will sign books from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday at Legends in Philadelphia
Call: (215) 657-6141