Sebastian O by Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell (Vertigo; 1993)

The back cover synopsis for the trade paperback collection of Sebastian O gives the reader a pretty good idea what they’re in for:

“Gentle reader, we implore your indulgence! Do you dare deny yourselves the opportunity to amaze your jaded sensibilities in a manner to which—we dare fancy—they have never before been thrilled? Stay but a moment, and discover between these covers a tale of dandyism, vice, and revenge unique in the annals of graphical entertainments: SEBASTIAN O, a Romance unequaled in wit and espirit, with enough decadent asides to generate the most agreeable of frissons in every civilized peruser!

Buy quickly, now! And repair to your scented boudoirs, newly armed with this volume of madness and mauve, there to enjoy its sweet diversions in surroundings befitting your unquestionably high status and shameful criminal appetites. Be assured that the actions set forth herein by Messrs. GRANT MORRISON and STEVE YEOWELL are without equal in both originality and craftsmanship, and that the perverse narrative machinations from which they spring are incontrovertibly the flowering of a morbid and Plutonian genius.

God save the Queen… for someone must!”

Sebastian O is perhaps Grant Morrison’s first in a long line of work celebrating the hedonism he became legendary for through much of the ’90s. It’s an obvious precursor to The Invisibles (which also features the art of Steve Yeowell), especially that series second storyline “Arcadia.”

The book takes place in a technologically (but not culturally) advanced Victorian England. Sebastian O has long been imprisoned for a great many charges of indecency as the founder of the secret sex society known as the Club de Paradis Artifieiel, a haven for those who relish in false pleasures, those created out of boredom or wealth. When Sebastian breaks out of prison, he hunts down the other members of the club to figure out why he alone had been severely punished when the club was discovered and dissolved by the authorities.

Sebastian’s old colleagues include a helpful lesbian named George, the kindly, but still deplorable pedophile Abbe, and his suspected nemesis, Lord Theo Lavender. Sebastian himself is a pretty loathsome character, but like all Morrison protagonists from this period, he’s pretty charming and likable, despite his perversions and selfishness.

For a largely minor work, Sebastian O surprisingly predicts all of Morrison’s fascinations with the nature of reality, Victorian dandies, odd sexual proclivities, and righteous amorality found in much of his work in the ’90s and early ’00s. A slight, but satisfying work for Morrison die-hards like myself.