It Shines and Shakes

and Laughs
Silent comics of Tim Molloy 2007-2012
 For Milk Shadow Books:
James Andre • Publisher
Brendan Halyday • Art Director
Luke Pickett • Web & Digital Management

visit www.milkshadowbooks.com
or email sales@milkshadowbooks.com

ISBN – 978-0-9872119-0-3

All material herein © Tim Molloy 2012. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying,
recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the
author and publisher. First Milk Shadow Books edition. All works are fictional. A portion of this
book was originally published in single magazine form as Saturn Returns (2009) and Under the
Bed (2007).
 Contents

Ashes..........................................................................Page 7
Under the Bed.....................................................Page 14
The Shining Silver Path.................................Page 20
On The Bus.............................................................Page 27
The Snake on the Cross................................Page 54
Monkey Sailor and the
Isle of the Dead..................................................Page 55
Returning the gift...........................................Page 68
Corpse Car.............................................................Page 77
The Secret on the Mountain.....................Page 90
Saturn Returns...................................................Page 103
 Introduction
by Dylan Horrocks

You find the bookstore in a tiny side street with no crashing and splintering and ancient dust and dis-
name. The sign over the door is labeled in some integrating paper. And when everything falls quiet
unfamiliar script and the window is too dirty to and the swirling clouds of debris and disturbance
see what’s displayed. Inside, it’s dark, lit by a single clear enough to see, you stand in an endless waste-
flickering fluorescent tube at the back of the room. land of broken wood and ruined books.
There’s no-one behind the counter; the cash regis-
One slim volume, however, catches your eye, nes-
ter looks like an antique, its large buttons marked
tled among the nearest heap, apparently unharmed.
with strange black symbols, their meaning obscure.
Quickly, stealthily, you snatch it up and tuck it be-
When you call out for assistance, your voice sounds
neath your coat before fleeing the scene, out onto
thin and frail. There is no reply. So you turn and
the street and into the reassuring anonymity of the
examine the shelves in the heavy silence, listening
familiar crowds – the shoppers and commuters,
to your own breathing and the unsteady sound of
students and tourists, courting couples, beggars,
your beating heart.
buskers and drunks.
The books are in no discernible order, piled on eve-
Only once you’re safely at home do you examine
ry available surface and spilling onto the floor. All
the stolen book. Filled with strange and beauti-
are covered with dust, and some with a pale sticky
ful drawings and few intelligible words, it’s like a
substance that comes away on your hands. The few
comic from another world. Monkeys, monsters,
visible titles are in the same alien language as the
cute cartoon creatures and skull-masked mystics;
sign outside; the rest are blank, or else decorated
neverending bus rides, empty deserts, sudden vio-
with symbols, pictograms and unsettling images.
lence and sly comedy. Before long, you are lost in a
One such symbol occurs again and again: an open
dream, gazing through those small square windows
eye, staring up at you from one cover after another,
into a reality more vivid than anything outside.
until at length you begin to feel as though a thou-
Sometimes you feel like you’ve been there before:
sand strangers were watching your every move, and
a half-forgotten face, a vague recollection of some-
you resolve to leave at once.
thing heard while asleep, a film you imagined but
But now you can’t find the door. It’s as though the never saw…. You realize this is the book you’ve
shelves have multiplied, growing in number and in been looking for without knowing it, that haunted
size; towering mounds of books rise ever higher, the endpapers of every other book you’ve read. You
threatening to slip and bury you in a landslide of will treasure it forever, keep it close, read it again
paper and cardboard, leather, mildew and rot. Sil- and again.
verfish crawl across your feet and other larger in-
There is a knock at the door.
sects scuttle and slither at the edge of your vision.
You try to cry for help, but your voice catches in
your throat. So you push the nearest bookshelf with
all your strength, and it falls against the next with a
crash, and then the next, until the air is filled with DYLAN HORROCKS. January 2012

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