Mercy on Me

This expressionistic portrait by author/illustrator Kleist (Johnny Cash: I See a Darkness) of musician, composer, poet, actor, screenwriter, and author Nick Cave (b. 1957) is fully endorsed by its subject. While covering Cave's childhood in Australia, his struggles to make a name for himself as the front man for The Birthday Party, and eventual success leading The Bad Seeds, Kleist does without a straightforward biography, instead delivering more of a meditation on Cave's endless, obsessive drive to create art that captures the emotional intensity raging within him. Combining lyrics and characters drawn from Cave's body of work, Kleist blends actual events with invented anecdotes and occasional sequences highlighting the point of view of Cave's onetime lover and collaborator Anita Lane to create a story that has all the hallucinogenic fury and emotional resonance of the performer's most memorable work.