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Pick Of The Week: ‘Creepy’ #7

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I’m so f*cking sick of hearing “horror is dead”. Do people honestly believe this? I know not everyone is quite so querulous, but to those people who believe that horror is a dying breed, you are either completely ignorant, or you have some impossibly high standards set for creators, and you should probably just write something yourself. Do you even pay attention to the books/movies that are being released? Every week I am overwhelmed by the incredible amount of horror stories out there, and to choose only one for my Pick of the Week becomes more and more difficult. I’m not saying that every horror title written is worth a read that would be a lie. Some are unintelligible, trite, nonsensical, but maybe instead of whining you should expose yourself to the incredible modern horror works that are out there. Rant over. Here is my pick of the week.

creepy7cover WRITTEN BY: Joe R. Lansdale, Keith Lansdale, Bill Morrison, Dan Braun
ILLUSTRATED BY: Sanjulian
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse
PRICE: $4.99

“Hope your New Year’s resolution was to be terrified, because Creepy is back to start 2012 with a scream! Featuring the latest from bone-chilling scribes Joe and Keith Lansdale, Christopher Taylor, and Dan Braun, this installment of the abominable anthology is sure to leave you shivering in the corner until next year.”

To put it simply, if you’re not reading Creepy, you’re not reading horror comics properly. The team has the anthology recipe down, and each issue of this books keeps getting better and better. The nice thing about it being a non-continuous story is that you can jump into any of the tales without having prior background knowledge of previous issues. Unfortunately, Creepy is only released on a quarterly basis, and there is an extreme lack of great horror anthologies today.

Sometimes anthologies suffer due to the bad stories that pop up in between the good ones, as the saying goes, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. However, Creepy is able to rise above the cliché. While some stories are worse than others, they all have their own charm when taken for what they are, tributes to the past. The wide variety of subgenres included in the anthology offers something for everyone. You never get the feeling with this series that writers are using it as a platform to promote other books they have, or to launch a new series. Every writer seems to really care about horror comics, they are all true fans of the genre and they write the stories they want to read. No story feels forced, they are all genuine, and even the “bad” ones have some great concepts beneath the surface.

What is absolutely best about this book is the mix between classic horror and new horror. If I knew nothing about this book and somebody handed Creepy to me telling me it was from the mid 60s, I would believe them without question. On the other hand, after reading over the stories a few times, it’s easy to see that the creators also want to bring their own unique touch in order to captivate the modern horror crowd.

The best story in this issue follows a young couple who are down in the dumps, but their luck begins to change as they stumble upon an ancient tapestry with a demonic face stained onto it. Though the stories are only 8-14 pages long, it’s incredible how much the writers are able to develop the characters. Alongside the new stories are two re-prints of classic horror tales, “The Ultimate High” from Creepy #44 and “Deep Ruby” from Eerie #6. Both are essential reads for any horror fan. Not only does Creepy provide new terror, but it also pays it’s respects to the past, and by including these stories it encourages readers to seek out the original source material.

The black and white artwork in Creepy could not be better. It’s scary, it’s simple, it’s dark, and really allows you to focus your attention on the details without being distracted by all sorts of flashy colors. Some of the pages are just awe inducing in every sense of the term. The crisp quality and the simple black and white contrast is just not something you get in most modern books, and it’s a pleasure to see that Dark Horse has the guts to leave this book in the hands of the artists. Since this book only comes out every few months, it’s able to completely avoid the rushed art look. Every single story is perfectly drawn.

Though it would be nice to have a book like Creepy come out every month, it may result in “too much of a good thing”. The nostalgia this book evokes is incredible, especially considering I wasn’t even alive during the era it evokes. Dark Horse has something wonderful on their hands, and every single one of you should be reading this book.

Comics

[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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