Paul Gravett reviews The Cancel Haus

‘THE CANCEL HAUS’: LAUNCH OF DARING GRAPHIC NOVEL SERIES BY HROGE

I admire fierce independence. I recently heard from a UK cartoonist pen-named Hroge, who told me: “I met you in London when I was something like 16/17 years old and we were discussing me working on ‘Pssst’ magazine (I think that’s what it was called)… I’m 57 now. I sadly discovered a long time ago I am unable to work with other creative people.” And now he’s just launched his solo, self-published graphic novel series The Cancel Haus whose first 100 customers will get a collectors’ edition signed, numbered and stamped with a wax seal. “I worked on the Cancel Haus for 14 years. Some of those years nothing has happened as I was once waiting for a summertime photo shoot involving five people whom I just couldn’t corrall together in one place at the same time! I worked it out that each page was about 5 days solid work to produce… there’s 360 pages of art, not counting the 100 + pages of extra work included in the printed comic.” The first limited-edition issue offers 24 pages of story plus supplementary extras.

Hroge is doing something refreshing, daring and ambitious here, very much on his own terms, and says he considers this “…a spiritual piece of art… albeit with a sense of mischief.” Multiple narratives, casts and locations shift from page to page, and there’s a hint of Moebius here. Hroge’s captions are playful with language and allusions, running away with his wry, witty sentences, flowing with ellipses from caption to caption (not sure I’ve seen this done before quite like this), playing with the gaps between what is written and what is drawn. One storyline is set in the desert with Roman Totales, another follows apparent holiday-makers ‘in the Andalusian town of Nerja, Year 2026’, accompanied by an account of Bartholomew Steere, leader of the abortive agrarian revolt in 1596 in England. A third follows a group of friends who stumble across an puzzling pub way out in the wilds of Scotland, and then there’s a CEO in Knightsbridge who receives some unwelcome visitors. I for one am pleasantly baffled, completely intrigued and eager to see where Hroge unfolds and interweaves his casts next.

You can buy it here: https://thecancelhaus.co.uk/295-2/ or he offers the chance to ‘read the whole first issue for free, send us an email on our contacts page’ here: https://thecancelhaus.co.uk/contact/