Have You Read This? Wasps in the Ice Cream by Tim McGregor

 

Many people who study horror as a literary genre will often ask what makes a particular work of fiction a horror book? As told by Wikipedia, literary historian J. A. Cudon says that horror is a genre that “shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing.” In other words, horror is more than scares that gets the heart racing. Sometimes, horror is quiet, as slow-acting as a poison, not shocking the heart, but leaving it sick. Such is the case with Tim McGregor’s novella Wasps in the Ice Cream.

It’s Summer 1987, and young Mark Prewitt plans on spending the summer goofing off with his friends. Unfortunately, he and his friends harass the Farrow girls, whose family are the town’s pariahs. Feeling guilty, Mark strikes up a friendship with Farrow sister Georgia, one that threatens to become something more. Mark soon leads a double life, hiding his relationship with Georgia from the town while getting pulled deeper into the Farrow’s world of witchcraft and speaking with the dead. The summer will end with Mark forced to choose between his friends and the fascinating Farrows, as well as how dark the human heart can get.

An elevator pitch for this book would be “Shirley Jackson writes a pitch for The Wonder Years but set in the decade of Stranger Things,” but such a pitch might be reductive for what McGregor has really done with this coming-of-age story. Even the book’s title, referencing Mark’s job, can be symbolic of something dangerous hidden in something sweet, and such symbolism could describe Mark’s relationship with Georgia, Mark’s relationship with his friends, or just Mark’s idealism crashing headlong into reality. Even the book’s supernatural elements take a backseat to McGregor’s stellar character development, particularly with Mark and Georgia, the two characters McGregor pushes the farthest from tropes that have been explored in other books. Georgia is more than just a witch trope, and Mark is a likable enough protagonist but has a graveyard full of secrets.

The story focuses on Mark, but both he and Georgia have an air of tragedy about them. Theirs is a relationship that readers will want to see succeed despite the multitude of hurdles placed before them. Instead of syrupy, afterschool-special sweetness, McGregor opts for something more bittersweet, which many would argue is closer to an authentic portrayal of adolescent love. 

 

Graphic Content: Killadelphia written by Rodney Barnes and illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander

 

Vampires are monsters. This is a fact, but what makes a monster? Is it simply the teeth and claws? Most animals have those, and even if they use them on other beasts, we don’t necessarily think they are monsters. Maybe it is intent, the willingness to do evil. That could make something a monster, but what if that intent to do evil is born in what some might call noble intentions. This quandary is explored in rather bloody ways in the vampire graphic novel Killadelphia, Deluxe Edition, Book One, written by Rodney Barnes and illustrated by Jason Shawn Alexander.

Philadelphia is a town rich in history, but that history is a bloody one that decides to rise again. Vampires walk the streets in the city of brotherly love. James Sanger, Jr., along with his recently resurrected father, must stop the machinations of President John Adams and his crew who want to start a very bloody revolution.

Barnes’s story has a surprising number of layers. Besides the main conflict of living vs. dead, there’s the frayed relationship between father and son detectives James Sanger, Jr. and Sr. The father is a legendary homicide cop and Junior feels he could never hope to fill those shoes. Senior also does little to boost his son’s confidence, spending most of the book putting down his son and his abilities to the point that readers can see it's not just the bloodlust talking. That rather toxic dynamic is actually detrimental to the horrors they are facing, namely the Adams and their army of vampires, all pulled from lower socioeconomic classes and all looking to rise up for something other than blood.

However, this book has plenty of blood, thanks to Alexander’s artwork. I would say it’s spilled but there are plenty of vampires in these pages ready to lap it up, and the action can get frenetic enough to lose track of what’s going on. Alexander doesn’t lose track of the fact these vampires are truly monstrous to behold, sprouting serpentine fangs and grasping talons that help the reader perceive them as not quite human, not while in the throes of bloodlust. Yet there’s also more subdued moments that Alexander shows his talents at rendering people not sprouting fangs, creating realistic faces that emote when necessary.

The real strength of this book, and of the included werewolf story Elysium Gardens, is Barnes’s characters. The cast of characters permeating Killadephia don’t feel like filler or like stereotypes; they all have distinct motivations, both monsters and humans alike. These characters, at multiple points in the unspoken social hierarchy, all speak to its many levels and just how precarious that structure is.