Comics
Review: ’68: Jungle Jim’ #2
With tons of zombie thrills and machete action, ’68: Jungle Jim #2 dives into the bloody goods and never looks back. The undead are about to meet their match in the sweltering heat of the jungle. In a confrontation you would never expect, a tiger takes on an army of zombies in the”’68” series.
WRITTEN BY: Mark Kidwell
ART BY: Jeff Zornow
PUBLISHER: Image Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: May 1th, 2013
As the Vietnam War continue, the innocent are stuck in Hell trying to keep everyone else safe. A school teacher is trying to protect her students from the atrocities of war. But, how much time does she have left before the undead start attacking the children? In the heart of darkness, a lone figure named Jungle Jim walks across the jungle, waiting for the enemy to strike. Wearing a gas mask, Jungle Jim wanders in search of the remaining uninfected. Will he watch an innocent family get caught in the crossfire? Or, will he actually do something to save them? Did I also mention there is a tiger in this issue?
Writer Mark Kidwell does such a great job with dialogue and I find it interesting with how little he uses it during a suspenseful scene. After a little girl witnesses her family being slaughtered, Jungle Jim is trying his best to calm her down. The major problem between them is that Jungle Jim doesn’t speak a word of her language. Because they can’t communicate with each other, Jungle Jim has to resort to other means. Notice how the two are silently looking at each other when Jungle Jim offers her a bar of chocolate.
When the tiger makes his appearance, I was worried at first. This outrageous scene could have gone straight towards cheesiness. But, what I like is that Kidwell keeps the scene under his theme of miscommunication. Because there is no dialogue, the tiger and Jungle Jim don’t know what to do with each other until the zombies show up. Are they enemies or are they supposed to work together?
Jeff Zornow’s grungy artwork visually captures the unforgiving violence of war. When the schoolteacher is being attacked by a zombie, a student of hers picks up a rifle and starts shooting wildly. Because he is just a kid, his aim isn’t even perfect. Zornow illustrates the zombie’s ear being blasted off its head. In a close-up, we then see the rotten ear hanging from a tree branch.
The major highlight of this issue is when the tiger is hunting after the zombies. With Jay Fotos’ bright red colors, Zornow doesn’t hold back on the bloody rampage. The tiger slashes a slew of zombies with its own claws. Then, the tiger is trying to eat the zombies during the battle. In a panel you will never forget, the tiger has a zombie’s head stuck in its mouth.
A must-read for horror fans, “’68: Jungle Jim” #2 is such an incredible visual experience. It’s blood and guts galore in this installment, which is why the “’68” series never disappoints.
4/5 Skulls
Reviewed by – Jorge Solis
Comics
[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream
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.
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