Childhood’s End

    (Image, 1997)
™ and ©1997 Malcolm Bourne and Jim Calafiore

Writer and child psychologist Malcolm Bourne is well above average in his ability to set a mood with words. In Childhood’s End, however, that mood is unwaveringly bleak. It begins with a narrator talking about the start of human life in the womb, simultaneously wondering at the sheer perfection of creation, and lamenting what happens as soon as the baby enters the world: “[The unborn baby] looks perfect. No wrinkles. No blood. And it sure ain’t crying. It’s like hitting the air ruins them.”

Bourne, working with the talented artist Jim Calafiore, traces the foreshortened innocent years of seven people. These range from the sensitive kid who’s a perpetual victim of schoolyard bullies to the unmarried girl who’s about to bring a baby into the world and is not at all sure she’s up to the task.
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#1

October, 1997
Cover Price: $2.95
6 copies available from $0.99 		Jim Calafiore, Malcolm BourneJim Calafiore