Comics
[Advance Review] “Harrow County” #2 Shows Beauty In Terror
Harrow County #2 continues to weave a chilling tale of Southern Gothic horror. Cullen Bunn manages to capture the youthful feeling of losing your innocence and empowers it. Emmy, is lost in a world she doesn’t understand, and instead of falling to pieces she’s determined to find out more. Even though this second issue is a touch more expositional than the last, Tyler Crook’s art is still jaw-dropping and the story is just as gripping.
WRITTEN BY: Cullen Bunn
ART BY: Tyler Crook
PUBLISHER: Dark Horse Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: June 10th, 2015
Any horror enthusiast will tell you the same thing; good horror comes on strong out of the gate. But, great horror channels this initial taste with a slower more methodic descent into madness. The first issue of Harrow County certainly hits like a bazooka, throwing you into a world you can’t possibly explain in 22 pages. Luckily as Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook begin to build their world they don’t sacrifice horror. This tricky balance weighs heavily on Emmy’s shoulders.
Emmy’s reaction to the world around her is decidedly different than most girls who find a skin suit in the forest. Instead of running for her life she embraces the madness. Bunn gives a taste of this with her dreams in the first issue. Here, however she’s putting herself into action and doesn’t seem at all phased by the horror of Harrow County. Her adventurous demeanor is the biggest reason that this issue succeeds.
Bunn’s script is heavy on world building and under a different writer would perhaps buckle from the pressure. But Emmy’s characterization provides a fascinating lens on the script. She’s still scared of her father, scared of her nightmares, and the town around her. But she finds an odd friend in the skin suit – so to speak. She’s strong and she’s not going to succumb to the horrors around her.
Tyler Crook’s process on Harrow County is so painstaking that it’s almost impossible to fathom. But, every single page of this book is a masterwork. His lines are clean and concise. His watercolors provide a muddy tone of horror and his color choices really make everything leap from the page. So much of this book’s appeal comes from Crook’s art. He creates a world unlike anything put on the page before, and somehow makes it look easy.
Bunn and Crook have built a terribly threatening world that looks inviting and beautiful. The art is haunting and seductive. The visuals lure you in, and betray you in the final moment. It’s appealing because it’s so fun to read.
Emmy’s quest to learn more about her small community is painted with an alarming amount of unspeakable horrors but remains fun to experience because of the emotional investment left on the page. Harrow County is the finest example of modern horror comics. It’s decidedly beautiful horror, a genre we get less and less of with each passing day. Don’t miss it.
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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