A Small Killing

AUTHOR: Moore, Alan

ARTIST: Oscar Zarate (illustrator)

PUBLISHER: VG Graphics

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1991

Publication History

A Small Killing first appeared in 1991 as a graphic novella, published by VG Graphics in the United Kingdom. It was reprinted in 1993 by Dark Horse Comics in its first American edition and again in 2003 by Avatar Press, the latter version also containing an interview with writer Alan Moore and illustrator Oscar Zarate on the genesis of the work. Moore’s first nonsuperhero comic work followed the termination of his publishing company Mad Love Press, through which, prior to its demise, he had released the anthology work AARGH (Artists Against Rampant Government Homophobia, 1988) and his ambitious but short-lived project Big Numbers (1990). A Small Killing coincided with publication of Moore’s From Hell (1991-1998) and was prompted by Zarate’s suggestion that he and Moore work on a story in which a child pursues an adult; Moore paired the idea with a dream he recalled in which he was confronted by his childhood self. The structure and detail of the work proceeded from mutual input in order to capture the atmosphere and culture of the final years of the 1980’s.

Plot

The basic story of A Small Killing is of an adult being pursued by a child. It develops into a deeply psychological work, critiquing the passivity of Timothy Hole, an advertising executive in New York who has landed the account of the Flite soft drink company in Russia. The nonlinear narrative, opening with Hole’s trip back to his native Britain before beginning his position in Russia, is arranged in a four-part format. The chapters cover his life in New York, London, and Sheffield, with the latter locale figuring in two parts, both in his childhood and his early adulthood. Each chapter uses a specific method of conveyance, devolving from airplane to train to car to bicycle along Hole’s journey into the past.

In the opening chapter, set in New York and concerning the years 1985 through 1989, Timothy waits on a crowded airplane for takeoff. He recalls both a recent party at which a display case of bird eggs is shattered and a dream featuring a man and a boy in which one is struck by lightning. While in New York, Timothy notices a young boy in a school uniform who seems to be following him, and he pursues the boy unsuccessfully through the airport.

In the second chapter, Timothy arrives in London, where he lived from 1979 to 1985, and travels by train. He tours the Docklands in search of Sylvia’s art studio and recalls their extramarital liaisons. While exploring London nightlife, he pursues the same young boy and remembers leaving his employer in London for the job in New York. Timothy concludes that the boy is trying to kill him. He considers his ambivalent role in an unplanned pregnancy, which resulted in a package from Sylvia containing the aborted fetus of their child. Taking a train to Sheffield the next morning, Timothy finds that he has mistakenly purchased a child’s ticket.

In the third chapter, Timothy returns to Sheffield, where he lived with Maggie from 1964 to 1979, during which time he carried on a secret affair with Sylvia. When he confronts the boy in a local pub, the boy admits that he is trying to kill Timothy. While driving his old car around town, Timothy recalls a happier era with Maggie and his worst deed in early life: burying, then releasing, a bottle of live insects. Perusing his mother’s old photo album, he finds, to his horror, that the final picture is of the boy who has been pursuing him.

The fourth and final chapter addresses Timothy’s childhood, from 1954 to 1964. While riding his father’s bike, Timothy encounters a present-day Maggie, now married and a mother of two children. Approaching the ruins where he used to play as a child, Timothy realizes that he did not release the insects he had buried alive. He finds the buried bottle and giant insects pour forth. The boy appears and attacks Timothy with a club. After waking up in morning sunlight, Timothy returns to town, where he enters a world with a “new pulse” where “everything is pregnant.”

Characters

•Timothy Hole, pronounced “Holly,” the protagonist, is a worried, lean, bespectacled man of early middle age with short dark hair. At first, he wears black, brown, or beige clothing with loudly patterned ties; later in the story, his clothing changes to purple and red. His glasses often reflect light, creating a whiteout effect around his eyes. His lean lips and wrinkled, high forehead reinforce his emotional responses to stimuli.

•Lynda is a tall, elegant African American woman working for the Flite soda advertising agency in New York. She has multicolored hair and wears brightly colored clothing. She avoids becoming involved in a casual relationship with Timothy.

•Bob Levine is Timothy Hole’s boss in New York. He is portrayed in a dark suit with dark hair and a slightly sinister expression. He is responsible for breaking Timothy’s case of bird eggs at Timothy’s farewell party.

•Sylvia, a former girlfriend of Timothy Hole, has short auburn hair and large green eyes. She has a studio in London, where she specializes in creating jewelry with organic motifs.

•Maggie Hole, later Davies, is Timothy Hole’s childhood friend, whom he marries and later divorces. When she first appears, she is dressed in yellow and has dark hair with a widow’s peak. Later, she wears horn-rimmed black glasses. An artist specializing in handmade toys, she establishes a successful business in Sheffield.

•Barry Forbes is Timothy’s first boss in London, the founder of the Forbes-McCauley Agency. A genial, kindly man, he appears in a gray-black suit or green sweater with a loose red tie, with disheveled white-grey hair and a beard.

•The boy, a version of Timothy Hole in childhood, first appears in a navy blue school uniform with short trousers, striped school tie, brogues, and socks. He has dark hair and a wicked, menacing expression. He relentlessly lures Timothy to follow him in New York, London, and Sheffield.

Artistic Style

Zarate’s chosen medium in A Small Killing is watercolor, with pencil used to reinforce edges and lines. Livid pastel colors set the tone for the work in the opening scene of a sunset and recur in crowd scenes, wherein Timothy Hole is presented in realistic tones but his crowded surroundings appear in luminous mixtures of yellow, orange, and red. Instances of surprise are in white, while violence is presented in oranges and reds. The narrative frequently calls for night scenes, which Zarate illustrates with intense blues and greens, often with a light green or yellow tracing to emphasize facial expression.

Zarate is partly responsible for the nonlinear and image-based structure of the work, often returning to symbolic objects for thematic resonance. Photorealism is occasionally implemented in Timothy’s exploration of cityscapes but does not maintain a dominant role in the work. To guide the reader through psychological space, memory is conveyed through black-and-white pencil drawings and dream sequences are rendered in a slightly muted tone.

The color schemes coordinate with Zarate’s depiction of humanity, which is largely carnivalesque verging on the grotesque, particularly in body posture and facial expressions. Figures en masse tend to have features of a nearly animalistic nature, although characters who interact with Timothy often assume expressions of great warmth. Neither warmth nor the grotesque characterizes the depiction of Timothy Hole, whose own angularity and predominantly muted colors stand in contrast to his wider setting. Zarate’s use of color and line suggests a certain ferocity and passion typical of humanity, which renders Timothy Hole’s own passivity even more distinct. On the whole, the collaborative artistic freedom Zarate exercises in A Small Killing contributes greatly, through fine detail and sweeping use of tone, to the expression of Timothy Hole’s psychological state and his own impressions of the world in which he moves.

Themes

Both Moore and Zarate acknowledge several dominant themes in A Small Killing, including the nebulous nature of memory, the consequences of avoiding responsibility for one’s actions, and the movement of a generation from a “hippie” to a “yuppie” identity.

The inherent instability of memory is introduced repeatedly in the text. As Hole journeys through his past, he repeatedly questions his memories and finds his motivations unclear, until a final collapse of memory ends in the realization that he did not, as he had previously believed, release insects from a jar as a child. Falsified and corrected memory is associated with Timothy’s first realization of responsibility for his past actions.

The concept of taking responsibility for one’s actions may be the strongest theme present in the work, as it determines the trajectory and purpose of Timothy’s personal journey. Timothy revisits several key events in his life as a way for Moore and Zarate to explore this theme. The first, engaging in an affair with Sylvia and lying to Maggie, his wife, is described as Sylvia’s “fault.” The second, betraying Barry Forbes in order to take a more upwardly mobile job in New York, is presented as a sensible thing to do. The third, failing to make a decision about whether or not to have a child with Sylvia, which leads to their subsequent breakup, is ascribed to Sylvia’s fickle nature. Finally, the memory of Timothy’s childhood transgression, burying a bottle of insects alive, forces him to admit his responsibility for destructive behavior and enables him to achieve a fresh start in life.

The hippie-to-yuppie transformation is highlighted in the narrative through the use of settings and contrasting memories. Sheffield, notably a “red town,” contrasts with Timothy Hole’s choice to commute to London and later move to New York to pursue global advertising. As a young artist, Timothy harangued the “crucifying” aspect of capitalism, whereas his job in London represents an exploratory departure, flirting with advertising and overestimating his potential as a conceptual genius. In moving to New York, Timothy physically removes himself from his “red” roots and distances himself from earlier ideology. Returning to London, and then to Sheffield, elucidates his estrangement from his former self, as well as his lack of guiding ideology as a “yuppie” in middle age.

Impact

Following the publication of Watchmen (1986-1987) and his work on TheSwamp Thing (1984-1987), Moore pursued his first nonsuperhero graphic work in A Small Killing. The adaptation of several of Moore’s prose works to the graphic medium followed, including Hypothetical Lizard (2007), The Birth Caul (1999), and Snakes and Ladders (2001), alongside complete works dealing with subject material alternative to superheroes, such as From Hell. This movement away from superhero subject matter seemed out of character for Moore at the time and puzzled his fan base, resulting in A Small Killing’s emergence as a lesser-known work in 1991. However, it received more critical attention following Moore’s success with the From Hell series. The release of an American edition in 1993 gained public attention, and its re-release in 2003, with a reflective interview on its composition, has reached an even wider audience.

Though the work was an anomaly for Moore at the time of its release, other authors were already experimenting with semiautobiographical accounts of life experiences in the graphic medium, including Harvey Pekar and Robert Crumb in American Splendor, which first appeared in 1976. Timely forays into the psychological aspects of narrator-guided comics include writer Neil Gaiman and artist Dave McKean’s Violent Cases (1987), Signal to Noise (1989-1992), and The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr. Punch (1994). Arguably, Gaiman and Moore paved the way for psychologically narrated graphic works at the turn of the millennium by illustrating methods for communicating memory, implementing stream-of-consciousness narrative, and depicting psychological realities discrete from quantifiable daily life. A Small Killing, while illustrating the harsh realities of failed relationships and the collapse of individual ideology, also reflects on the context of late 1980’s commercialism and Britain’s troubled identity during the Margaret Thatcher era. Because of its challenging format and subject matter, A Small Killing establishes an influential model for both psychological narrative techniques and the informing role of cultural context in nonsuperhero comics.

Further Reading

Gaiman, Neil, and Dave McKean. Violent Cases (1987).

Moore, Alan, and Eddie Campbell. A Disease of Language (2006).

Moore, Alan, et al. Alan Moore’s Hypothetical Lizard (2007).

Bibliography

Di Liddo, Annalisa. Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.

Khoury, George, ed. The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore. Raleigh, N.C.: TwoMorrows, 2008.

Millidge, Gary Spencer, and Smoky Man, eds. Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman. Marietta, Ga.: Top Shelf Productions, 2003.