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Review: Richard Corben’s ‘The Conqueror Worm’

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The weird and supernatural is pulled off with gritty style in Richard Corben’s adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Conqueror Worm. On a visual level, this adaptation of Poe’s work is a highly imaginative interpretation about the inevitability of death. With just one look Corben’s artwork, these haunting images of worms and death will definitely get under your skin.

WRITTEN BY: Richard Corben
ART BY: Richard Corben
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: November 21st, 2012

Under the sweltering heat of the sun, Colonel Mann rides across the never-ending desert on his horse. Compelled with the need for revenge, Mann continues on his journey, never stopping to eat and rest. Mann feels the thrill of satisfaction when he cold-heartedly murders his cheating wife and his rebellious cousin. With no one around to witness the crime, Mann thinks he’s getting away unpunished and blameless. But, fate has something special stored for Mann.

This is a unique adaptation of Poe’s famous poem, “The Conqueror Worm.” If you have read the poem, you understand that this piece is difficult to adapt. If you haven’t read it, do it now. There is very little story, just atmosphere and mood. What I really lik is how Corben works with Poe’s themes to offer a morality tale, which is similar to his previous work in the “Eerie” and “Creepy” anthologies. Corben plays around with some of Poe’s lines, bringing to life the theater, the play, and the puppets.

What I particularly enjoyed is how Corben brings in a Shakespearean twist to the climax. Just like in Hamlet’s “The Mousetrap,” the hand puppets reveal to the audience what really happened to Mann’s missing wife and cousin. Through gestures and props, the hand puppets re-enact the murder in front of the killer. To create suspense, Corben does a great job switching back and forth between the puppet show and the audience’s reactions.

What makes Corben’s hand puppets particularly creepy is the simplicity behind their design. These sock puppets don’t have detailed physical features, just three buttons for one facial expression. The designs are crude and minimal, making the puppeteer all the more mysterious. During the play, the puppetry is animated with grand hand waves and over-the-top black humor.

Saving the best for last, Corben kicks up the shock value during the final act of the puppet show. Corben visualizes the Conqueror Worm as parasitic invaders spewing out of a woman’s stomach like intestines. Take notice of the patch on Mann’s face because you might not notice this small detail the first time.

With a strong sense of tragic irony and an exaggerated flair for the dramatic, Richard Corben delivers a truly terrifying interpretation of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Conqueror Worm.” By staying true to the source material, Corben brings a sense off surrealism to Poe’s work. Admirers of Poe cannot deny how Corben’s artistic style provides a memorable picture of the literary genius like no other.

4/5 skulls

Reviewed by Jorge Solis

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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