Born in Berne, Ott studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich and began working in the independent comics scene in the second half of the 1980s. Luckily, the Swiss artist Thomas Ott makes wordless scratchboard comix, which helps in making his work known in the rest of the world. Ushering in a major new talent, The Number 753-6-96-8 aptly demonstrates the power of Ott's creative vision, while leaving the reader hungry for more from this unique cartoonist.There aren't many comix artists from German-speaking countries whose work has been translated into other languages. Text would only cloud the narrative.įrom artistic, design, and narrative standpoints, Ott creates a masterpiece of contemporary graphic storytelling that knows no geographical or linguistic boundaries. Without words, Ott artistically and expertly conveys feelings and clearly distinguishes every action. His art has a warmth and depth of detail that forebears Masereel and Ward sometimes lacked.
Ott employs a scratchboard process, a technique that uses sharp knives for etching into a thin layer of white china clay coated with black india ink (as opposed to the more labor-intensive woodcut method, where images are actually carved into a block of wood). Alas, all this fortune does not last, as the story veers off into surprisingly fantastical and creepy territory. Previously a poor, lonely man, he soon comes into money, romance, and happiness, perhaps for the first time. As he follows the seemingly random numbers, the guard's luck begins to change. The guard begins to see the numbers cropping up in his life (a clock, a phone number, cards, and even a dog's markings). Following an execution, a prison guard finds a piece of paper with a sequence of numbers (the title's 753-6-96-8) left behind by the dead prisoner.
The creator of numerous short graphical stories, collected in Cinema Panopticum, Greetings From Hellville, and Dead End, Ott relates here a powerful, Twilight Zone-styled tale of a series of numbers that grants desires to those who decipher the pattern.
The Swiss artist Thomas Ott employs a similar style in his first novel-length work, The Number 753-6-96-8.
In the 1920s and 1930s, artists such as Frans Masereel ( The Idea) and Lynd Ward ( Gods' Man) used woodcuts to produce popular wordless novels which would go on to influence generations of illustrators.
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