The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch by Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli and Todd Klein

Miss Finch is an exacting woman who comes to London and must be entertained for an evening by the friends of the author. Needing another, they invite him to the theatre with them and a sushi dinner afterwards.

By the time he gets to his friends' house, the theatre programme has been cancelled and instead they go to a circus called "The Theatre of Night's Dreaming". On the way, Miss Finch complains about the number of diseases and intestinal parasites that can be carried in uncooked fish and gives the author and his friends a long and exhaustive talk about them, making herself no friends in the process.

But when the talk turns around to what she does for a living, she tells them that she is a bio-geologist, studying why animsls are the way they are. She has just come back from studying Komodo Dragons, who, she tells them, grew to that size to prey on Pygmy elephants. She also, it turns out, doesn't like to see animals abused in any way, and is opposed to even the idea of a circus. But with no other choice for entertainment, goes along with them.

The Circus is a typically shabby affair, made up of acts to shock, and acts based on skillful, and not-so-skillful, illusions. But when Miss Finch is dragged off to "The Cabinet of Wishes Fulfil'd", they see her in the next tableaux, a half-naked pagan huntress who easily controls the two huge sabertooth tigers who accompany her. And when she makes the decision to stay as she is and go back to the dawn of prehistory with her pets, the others somehow realize that they will never see her again, and that they can tell anyone and everyone what happened to Miss Finch (which, as the story is quick to point out, is not her real name), but that they will never be believed.

This is a story that is intriguing and chilling and will linger in your mind long after you turn the last page. The idea that we are all something more in our soul than that which we show on the outside of us, and which one is the real person, is the intriguing one... and this is only what I got out of the story. The true point lends itself to the viewpoint and mindset of the person doing the reading. And what you put into the story is also what you take away.

Even now, thinking about this story makes shivers run down my spine. A tour-de-force, and well worth the reading. This graphic novel is short, but it will leave an impression you'll never forget.