How
long can you spend reading a book without words? Quite a bit, it
turns out, and when the book is as good as THE NUMBER
73304-23-4153-6-96-8, you can see why. You can lose yourself for
long spells in each lush image on every page.

Writer and illustrator Thomas Ott sets the tone early. His
detailed, line-filled black-and-white drawings recall film noir,
and his “Twilight Zone”-like tale of obsession and
greed creeps steadily along to a conclusion you know must come but
desperately hope to avoid.

With no words or dialogue, Ott’s unnamed protagonist, an
electric chair operator for the local prison, arrives at work to do
his job. From the executed prisoner’s last possession, his
Bible, falls a strip of paper with the numbers 73304-23-4153-6-96-8
printed on it. Their meaning is lost, but the executioner keeps the
paper anyway, and soon he notices their importance. Everything in
his life is running on a pattern, the numbers repeating in strange
and unexpected ways: a dog tag, a phone number, an address, a
sequence of winning numbers on a roulette wheel.

Unable to resist the temptation of using this numerical
foreknowledge for his own gain, he falls prey to his own vices.
This is where THE NUMBER 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 truly begins to
shine, as a smart morality tale with a devious twist. It works as a
sharp allegory to the notion that people see what they want to see,
form patterns where they wish them to appear, and surrender logic
to passion. Those patterns repeat, seemingly on an endless loop,
and while it appears to be a wonderful progression at first, the
horror of the entire situation slowly dawns on reader and
protagonist alike.

Ott has a wonderful way of capturing the mysterious beauty of the
unknown through the eyes of his everyman. In the timeless era in
which the story is set, nothing feels real, yet everything is as
familiar as the back of one’s hand. There’s an
overwhelming sense of danger lurking just somewhere in the edges,
hidden in the shadows of these drawings, pervading every scene with
that terrible prescient feeling things are far different from what
they seem and that everything will be changing soon. Even the
passage of time is shrouded in mystery, or at least obscured.

Sustaining this ominous feeling throughout the entire story is a
difficult task, but Ott manages it with ease. Credit his natural
ability to tell a story in pictures with keeping this ambitious
project from ever sinking to the level of trite. With or without
words, THE NUMBER 73304-23-4153-6-96-8 is a story to be savored ---
and one that resonates.