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Graphic Content’s April Spotlight Is On Hardway Studios!

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Bloody-Disgusting.com And Graphic Content Are very excited and proud to announce its all new Publisher Spotlight series! Each month we will be spotlighting a a different company, and partnered together we will be bringing readers exclusive content such as interviews with the creators, artists, and company founders, reviews, contests, previews, and all sorts of bloody good surprises!

So to start off this exciting new endeavor we have teamed up with one of the best Indy publishers in horror right now, Hardway Studios! Hardway has brought readers such titles as “SUICIDE NOTE”, “MORBID MYTHOS”, and the upcoming zombie apocalypse one-shot “THE SHELTER”! Inside you can find all the details on this month’s spotlight to get yourselves amped up! Read on for the skinny on this new series, a huge look inside of “SUICIDE NOTE” and “THE SHELTER”, and more!

In our attempts to solve world hunger, prevent forest fires, and bring you all the bloodiest news that the horror genre has to offer, we here at Graphic Content have been brainstorming on ways to bring readers (that’s you) even more awesome content. It is a tough thing to do, and often times it takes about half a pack of cigarettes and 3 cups of coffee, but we are happy to announce the “Graphic Content Spotlight” series.

Each and every month we will be working in partnership with a new publishing company to bring readers all new exclusive content. This will include contests, interviews, previews, reviews, and MORE from each respective publisher. These spotlights will start (obviously) the first of every month and each week we will be revealing another awesome exclusive for our readers. It’s pretty much like Christmas without the trees, the lights, the ornaments, and most importantly the fruit-cake.

This month Bloody-Disgusting’s Graphic Content will be spotlighting up and coming publishing company, Hardway Studios! The publisher is best known for its “SUICIDE NOTE” graphic novel which has garnered much praise among readers and critics alike.

“Hard Way Studios is about creating new and exciting comic books. The studio was founded by Chris Carpenter and Dwayne Biddix. They wanted to bring their own, and other great stories to the people. We are always looking for established companies to partner with us to print our books for a wider audience! Our goal to to have Hard Way everywhere we can get it! For us to succeed we need the help and input from the public, so always feel free to drop us a line with praise or to tell us what we are doing wrong. We want to be what you, the reader, wants to have. So let us know what you want to see from us! So go forth and spread the word! We are proud to present a sample of what co-founder, Dwayne Biddix, said about why the studio is named HARD WAY…. “Well, Chris and I have had that kinda life… We have had to fight for everything we have, and we always seen to have to do things the hard way. Even when we broke into the business, we did it the hard way. So it became a way of life for us, and when we started to think about launching a studio, we felt that name would fit us perfectly! We also felt that it would be a sentiment most everyone could identify with to some level, so we named it HARD WAY STUDIOS! And we are very proud of the studio and what it represents.”

So to start off our spotlight here is a preview of “SUICIDE NOTE” which is currently available and then a sneak preview of their upcoming zombie apocalypse title “THE SHELTER” that is available for pre-order.

WRITTEN BY: JAMISON KASIAN
ILLUSTRATED BY: DWAYNE BIDDIX
INKS BY: ROB LANSLEY
LETTERS BY: DWAYNE BIDDIX
COVER INKS BY: DWAYNE BIDDIX

“Silence. True Silence. The actual absence of sound. It’s one of the strangest things you can ever experience. It’s….un-nerving. No car engines. No humming electricity. No planes flying overhead. No people walking their dogs. No birds chirping. No squirrels…squirrel-ing. A world cast into infinite silence.”

Join us on this Zombie adventure as we get to know Violet, a young lady destine to find a safe haven from the infestation that left her alone, scared and with no where else to turn, dependent upon herself to survive. Can she make it in time or is the end of the world to tight of a deadline?!”


WRITER: JAMISON KASIAN
PENCILS: DWAYNE BIDDIX
INKS: ROB LANSLEY
LETTERS: BRANT FOWLER
COLORS: ANTHONY LEE

“Cassie receives a strange anonymous suicide note and after reading it she begins a downward slide from a sane and controlled world into a world of twisted nightmarish images, a mysterious man who guides her along the dark path, and a pulling in her mind, to take her life and escape the nightmare. But, if she doesn’t give into to the leading of the note to kill herself she must wonder a shadow world, forever unable to die.”





Stay tuned here to Bloody-Disgusting’s Graphic Content all month long as we bring you interviews with Jamison, Dwayne, Chris, and the entire crew over at Hardway Studios about these titles, and their future stories. Who knows, we might even start giving stuff away.

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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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