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Review: ‘Hack/Slash’ #24

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Hack/Slash #24 has the right amount of action to keep readers excited. As the slasher slayers make their last stand, no one will be left unscathed from battle. With just one issue left, horror fans should give the “Hack/Slash” series a look.

WRITTEN BY: Tim Seeley
ART BY: Elena Casagrande
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: February 27th, 2013

A poisonous black liquid has been injected into a recent shipment of refreshments. With the clock ticking, Vlad and Cassie have to stop the soda trucks before they reach their destination. With just one sip, innocent lives will suddenly turn into psychotic killers. With Vlad captured and Cassie being hunted by the local cops, the slasher slayers are far from each other to call out for help. The slasher slayer are the ones who can stop the Black Lamp from making this nightmare come true. As Vlad watches the destruction from his skybox, he realizes the final hour is upon them.

Knowing the ending is near, writer Tim Seeley grounds the issue in suspense and packs in tons of action. With Cassie and Vlad in danger, Seeley lets readers join in on the guessing game. Will one of the slasher slayers not make it to the final issue? If it’s dodging a bullet or being stabbed from behind, Seeley throws his protagonists in deadly situations. What’s interesting here is that Seeley doesn’t hint at a happy ending for the slasher slayers.

Though there is a lot of foreshadowing, Seeley sneaks in a very clever idea into the story. In the prison-like maze, Margaret uses a stylish guitar as a weapon. Like a rock star, Margaret strums the chords and watches as lasers turn her captors into dust. Seeley has fun with this hilarious idea, letting Margaret use the guitar more than once.

With just the opening pages, artist Elena Casagrande will have readers hooked with her illustrations. As Vlad is bruised and bloody, his kidnapper is holding a baby hostage. In just one swift move, Vlad tackles his kidnapper, while the baby is flying in the air. Casagrande keeps the close-ups on Vlad’s tied wrists as he catches the falling baby with his legs. Readers will be rooting for Vlad after seeing this well-constructed action sequence.

Casagrande builds the gore and mayhem as she depicts the poisoned soda addicts running around the rock concert. In wide shots, Acid Angel is calmly walking across the grass, while the poisoned drinkers are screaming, “Stab!” Keeping the fast pace flowing, Casagrande illustrates Cassie sliding over the hood of a car while being shot at. Casagrande keeps Cassie and Vlad occupied in their own situations, making sure readers know they are at their most vulnerable.

Your jaw will drop once you read the last page of “Hack/Slash” #24. Longtime fans will definitely be talking about this. Because I have my own ideas about what’s going to happen in the last issue, I am very anxious to read what actually happens.

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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