When I first heard about Hill House Comics, the DC horror comics imprint spearheaded by Joe Hill, I was excited. Like kid-on-Christmas excited. I have very fond memories of Locke & Key, Hill’s first foray into comics and where I discovered he was more than just Stephen King’s son. Hill has time and again proved himself superior to his father when it comes to weaving the fantastical into his fiction. However, I discovered that he would not be writing the comics, but my disappointment was short-lived upon discovering that the writers are some of the most well-known in speculative fiction, providing their own unique tales within a graphic novel format. Such a tale is Carmen Maria Machado’s rural horror The Low, Low Woods.
The story focuses on the small town of Shudder-To-Think,
Pennsylvania, a town like many mining towns where the mines make money at the
cost of human lives. People die in the mines, people get sick in the mines, but
the town also has skinless men, monstrous hybrids, and periodic amnesia among its
female population. Best friends El and Vee try to find out the secret that has
been haunting the town all while trying to escape the fate that has befallen
all the women in Shudder-To-Think.
Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and OtherParties, has a lot of moving parts in this story. Everything from bizarre body horror to the deep friendship between Vee and El. This friendship is not only by the town’s secrets but also by another force that has pulled apart the tapestry of friendships: making plans after high school. Machado’s ear for dialogue fleshes out so many of the characters in this piece, just as DaNi's artwork seeks to twist that shape into disturbing contortions. Think Jock’s artwork in Wytches and you’ll have an idea of the realistic yet at times surreal artwork in these pages.
For those that have read Machado’s previous works and
expecting some horror mined from a woman’s experience, Machado doesn’t
disappoint here. When the mystery is revealed, it becomes apparent that the
evil in this town is not just supernatural and it will take more than putting a
wooden stake through a ribcage to end it. Machado’s work explores the notion of
traumatic memories, whether it is best to remember and potentially grow
stronger from experiencing them, or is it better to discard these memories and
move forward? Fighting and defeating the monster is often the definitive end of
stories of supernatural evil, will all that’s left is to stand in the sunshine
of a new day. If anything, the ending lets the reader know that the fight, and
the subsequent healing, is just beginning.
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