listen how calmly I can tell you the whole story

I've lately been obsessed with the work of the musician Saltillo. Brooding and motif-eerie, his albums Monocyte (2012), Ganglion (2006), and Monocyte: Lapis Coil are thick with text—though not primarily used lyrically, but sonically, which is the real kicker. 

Saltillo really has an ear for the connotative meaning in a word, or, if you prefer, what the sound evokes in the mind of a listener. When I was first sent the link to A Hair on the Head of John the Baptist, I heard a  Danish prince different from he who had plagued my speech and work for the last three years. 

Now that's what I call mimetic magic.

It's obvious Shakespeare—and not just Hamlet—possesses Saltillo. There are several blogs which have attempted to identify/enumerate all of his text sources, but I encourage you to stay away from them until you've listened to each album half a dozen times or so (it's easy to do). Some other favorites of mine include his Blood and Milk, which anyone familiar with 19th-century American lit will enjoy, I Hate You, which is mob-mentality at its most literary,  To Kill a King, a Medea-riff, Forced Vision, which I believe to be almost entirely of his own authorship, Gatekeepers, and A Necessary End.

I should point out that not only does Saltillo understand text as music, but music as music: he plays cello, viola, violin, bass, guitar, drums—

oh, and he illustrates comics. Not bad for a temporary conglomeration of atoms.

Enter menton3, "Saltillo's" visual alter-ego. The above is a favorite Wolverine of mine, but he has also worked on the Silent Hill franchise as well as other usual suspects:

Here we have Arkham the Unnamable from his work on the illustrated volume of eight of H.P. Lovecraft's essays entitled Horror Out of Arkham. But let's be honest: I would be remiss to leave unrecalled the contemporary Arkham connotation, and remiss too in ignoring the filial likeness to the Morrison/McKean Arkham lying on my floor. 

The obsessively exact analyst inside me shrinks at the next assumption: menton3 has partaken of the same inspirational pool as McKean, and in their reciprocally haunted, inexactable line the likeness is proved. The academic writer in me is afraid to say this, but here I will indulge. 

And truth be told, show me a path leading me to Bruce Wayne two steps from The Bard and I will take it. I will take it every time...