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[Rotting Retro Review] “Echoes”

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Joshua Hale Fialkov’s new series “The Bunker” with Joe Infurnari is currently killing it online. Proving to change the way creator owned comics are approached and distributed while also being a damn fine science fiction story in its own right.

Fialkov’s roots lie in horror. “Echoes” is a chilling story of a man who finds out that his father suffering from Alzheimer’s disease is a murderer. This deathbed confession shakes the protagonist’s entire world. Resulting in a finely crafted story that deals with mental illness, gruesome murders, and the fear of becoming what we dread most.

Brian Cohn isn’t a simple man. He is schizophrenic, expecting his first child, and now dealing with the revelation that his father was a serial killer. He is tormented by this news in fascinating ways. Brought to life by Rahsan Ekedal’s chilling black and white art that will have you questioning your own sanity with incredibly complex page layouts.

“Echoes” is a story about the danger of our own expectations.


WRITTEN BY: Joshua Hale Fialkov
ART BY: Rahsan Ekedal
PUBLISHER: Minotaur Press/Top Cow/Image Comics
PRICE: $19.99

“Echoes” is a tightly scripted series. Each chapter twists and turns the story. Brian constantly wades though his own psyche. This journey proves to be compelling with every page. The immense similarities he shares with his father push him to believe he is becoming a monster. So when a little girl disappears in the second chapter he has no doubts the transformation has already begun.

Brian enters a winding narrative of maddening self-doubt. Fialkov takes the time to steep his writing inside Brian’s complex and fractured mind. Fleeting moments of doubt combats the fear that he did commit this crime. The horror of it all comes through doubting your own beliefs about this man. Did he do it? Is he capable of this? Was his father’s dying confession actually a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The answers to these questions come hard and fast through the five chapters of “Echoes.” Brian’s personal journey of madness never lets up for a moment. The gruesome reality he faces manifests itself in a variety of disgusting ways.

Rahsan Ekedal deserves major props for his work on this book. The opening pages show the fantastic lengths Ekedal is willing to go to in order to throw the reader into Brian’s madness. Several small panels permeate the two page spread on page two and three that are divided by Brain’s figure in the foreground. The result is wildly unnerving. If the script makes you feel lost in a sea of wild thought than the art will have you drowning.

The details within the more ghastly elements of the story will send a chill down your spine. The dolls, oh sweet Jesus those dolls. Ekedal shows the intricate detail of the murders through these horrible creations. The visions manifested by Brian’s mind serve as a haunting juxtaposition to the dull world around them.

Fialkov weaves his tightly knit narrative around the concept of children. The idea of murdering children is only the beginning. The story is much more about a very real fear that most all of us face at some point in our lives: who will our children grow up to be?

“Echoes” has some real fun with this idea by taking it to the extreme. The story will always keep you guessing and have you take a long hard look at your own life. What you’ll find will scare the living fuck out of you. Easily making it one of the finest horror comics you’ll read in a while.

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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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