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Review: ‘Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight’ # 6

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The doors close on the third arc of ‘Grindhouse: Doors Open At Midnight.’ This month sees yet another blood soaked descent into madness. The issue is jam packed with typical De Campi charm and topped with a flair for the theatrical. “Bride of Blood” doesn’t shy away from the grisly details. Artist Federica Manfredi shows the brutal reality of medieval death in all it’s disgusting glory.


WRITTEN BY: Alex De Campi
ART BY: Frederica Manfredi
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: March 5th, 2014

Anyone who has talked to me recently knows I love this comic. I mean it’s every grindhouse fan’s dream come true. De Campi knows the history of this particular film subculture and smartly shifts between genres while keeping a trashy vibe throughout. “Bride of Blood” continues the tradition flawlessly. De Campi heavily entrenches herself in the medieval world as if its second nature. The savagery of the time lends itself well to the violence this comic flaunts. This is the story of revenge. The barbaric bastards who aimed to destroy a wedding actually created a monster and this month our bride gets what she seeks most.

Visually Manfredi is a gift to the medieval world. She understands the scenery and the characters of the time. Yet, the true magic comes with the gore. Things are brutal here. The script or the panels don’t shy away from incredible and horrific detail. The scene with the pack of dogs is sure to make your skin crawl.

With all that being said the story does feel particularly flimsy. Revenge stories are often simple tales with clear goals. However, we never really spent enough time with any of the characters to understand what they want outside of revenge. It’s strange, because previous chapters of this book were able to balance character and plot almost seamlessly.

However, if you’re just looking for a gory good time then look no further. This month’s story doesn’t deliver much in the way of thought provoking narrative, but it does push the creepy up to eleven. The bride is staggeringly awesome in her suit of armor. She is cool, calm, and collected. She is a killing machine. So it’s a beautiful thing to watch her exact her revenge. Failure is never an option and you don’t feel it for a second. The end of the story is haunting, and just the right amount of horrendous that you’ve come to expect from this title.

De Campi has a certain relentless talent for shameless violence and gratuitous nudity that commands the page. Her understanding of grindhouse conventions allow her to play with expectations in ways you could never imagine, and she actually elevates her stories to a level the stories that inspired them could never reach. “Bride of Blood” may not be the best chapter, but it proves she hasn’t run out of ways to shock and disgust.

Rating: 3/5 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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