Singer, musician, actor and novelist Nick Cave (have we left anything out?) is now being transformed into a comic book character. The singer’s life and work have been turned into a graphic biography in the form of Nick Cave: Mercy On Me by Reinhard Kleist.
The graphic novel has been translated from German by Michael Waaler and will feature a cast of characters not just from his life but also from his songs. The book will also focus on Cave’s Australian childhood, his early years fronting the confrontational post-punk monster that was The Birthday Party, his breakthrough with Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds as well has his battles with heroin addiction.
Endorsing the graphic biography, Nick Cave said: “Reinhard Kleist, master graphic novelist and myth-maker has – yet again – blown apart the conventions of the graphic novel by concocting a terrifying conflation of Cave songs, biographical half-truths and complete fabulations and creating a complex, chilling and completely bizarre journey into Cave World.
“Closer to the truth than any biography, that's for sure! But for the record, I never killed Elisa Day.”
The 328-page graphic novel is published tomorrow (September 7).
This isn’t Reinhard Kleist’s first foray into this field. The award-winning artist is also the author of critically acclaimed graphic biographies of Johnny Cash (Johnny Cash: I See In Darkness), Holocaust survivor and champion boxer Harry Haft (The Boxer), Fidel Castro (Castro) and Somali athlete Samia Yusuf Omar (An Olympic Dream).
Meanwhile, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds are gearing themselves up for a UK tour that will see them play some of the biggest venues of their career. They play:
September
24 –Bournemouth, Bournemouth International Centre
25 – Manchester, Arena
27 –Glasgow, The SSE Hydro
28 –Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena
30 – London, The O2 Arena
