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Review: ‘Hoax Huners’ #1

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Following the wild success of Michael Moreci’s Hoax Hunters #0 issue, Image Comics gave the title the green light as an ongoing series. “Hoax Hunters” follows the members of a paranormal investigation reality TV show on their exploits and encounters with cryptids, monsters, myths, and hoaxes. However, Moreci and Seeley show that the most important events always happen off camera. This is an awesomely satirical book that not only examines our obsession with hoaxes, but also society’s recent obsession with reality television. Issue #1 shows that the creative team has a whole lot of original content brewing in their minds.

WRITTEN BY: Michael Moreci & Steve Seeley
ART BY: Axel Medellin
PUBLISHER: Image
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: July 5

The concept for the series is quite smart, and it takes some brain power to understand what’s going on. The series follows a team of paranormal researchers, who happen to have their own TV series in the vein of Ghost Hunters, or any other shows where they use magnetic fields to find ghosts. However, unlike those shows, for the Hoax Hunters the real magic happens once the cameras switches off. The show is an elaborate ruse to keep cryptids hidden from the general public, while in reality, the team has seen it all.

The Hoax Hunters gang may have a reality show, but they are the real deal. Complete with the fearless leader, the psychic girl, their spaceman friend (see issue #0), and some creepy dude who stays behind the scenes. The Hoax Hunters aim to help out the creatures they find, to examine their situation, rather than hunt them down and prove their existence.

Everyone knows how lame reality TV is, how phony it is, and how poorly executed it is. This is exactly what the writing duo takes up, and spins it around into something intelligent. This is not to say “Hoax Hunters” runs deep with philosophical insight. It’s a fun book that happens to examine the current entertainment industry…and monsters.

This issue focuses on the team leader, Jack. As the team explores an anonymous tip in the Louisiana Bayou, Jack immediately senses something the others don’t. Jack has seen this all before, he knows what’s going on, and he’s afraid to the core. The story builds extremely well, and it offers an in depth look at the team leader. It’s incredible how much development they are able to pack into one issue. Moreci has a talent for presenting characters in an empathic light. Seeing Jack in a bar shooting whiskey like nobody’s business makes it easy to understand where he’s at. I’d love to get to know the rest of the team equally well. Right now they all seem to be a bit of mystery, but I can only imagine the writers have plans to explore them in later arcs.

As the issue comes to an end, Jack’s lamenting comes to the forefront as the Honey Island Swamp Monster makes his appearance. The fact that they aren’t just using cyrptids like the Yeti, or Sasquatch, but offering a specific version shows that that neither the creative time, nor the Hoax Hunters take their hoaxes lightly.

What this issue lacks is the melding between reality TV and comic mediums, as we saw in issue #0. There were not enough panels using the camera footage, and not enough delving into the fact that they are still on a reality show. Hopefully, this will come back in subsequent issues. I’m also hoping that there will be more opportunity for artist Axel Medellin to show his monster-drawing chops. He’s clearly got the goods, and just needs to be let loose.

It’s easy to conjure up all kinds of beasts and freaks for the Hoax Hunters to encounter, and being able to imagine the characters in further plotlines is a surefire sign of a great book. It’s hard to tell where the series will go from here, but Image made the right choice in promoting this to a full ongoing series.

4/5 Skulls

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[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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