Graphic Content: Home Sick Pilots, Vol. 1: Teenage Haunts by Dan Watters and Caspar Wijngaard

 

Some might be aware that while I do love horror, I also love the superhero genre. I have written about superhero horror, but there are other books out there that show how seamlessly these two genres can combine to create something truly unique. There are a lot of examples of this blending of superheroes and the supernatural in the graphic novel/comic book format. One such example is Home Sick Pilots, Vol. 1: Teenage Haunts by author Dan Watters and illustrator Caspar Winjgaard, a book that has ghosts that turn its teenage characters into something akin to superheroes.

The book takes place in 1994 and features the band, the Home Sick Pilots, a band that is searching for acceptance in the LA rock scene as well as a few paying gigs. Looking for a truly unique place to play, they stumble upon an old house that turns out to not only be haunted but hungry. Bandmember Ami disappears within the house, but she ends up being recruited by the spirits within to recover other haunted items that hold mysterious powers.

Fans of young adult literature will find a lot to love in the interaction of the kids that make up the Home Sick Pilots, especially in the full-page minimalist trips into Ami’s thoughts as she tries to navigate her new state of being. The book isn’t scary, per se, despite having some very gory moments where the house attacks flesh and blood humans. The story instead focuses on the relationships among these kids, from rival band the Nuclear Bastards to a shady government agency that is trying to collect its own ghosts. The book is a great teen read, but there are great superhero moments where the possessed items within the house transform the user into something roaring straight out of an anime, and that’s not even mentioning the walking house. People might be disappointed if they were looking for a straight-up haunted house horror, but those who like manga, evil government agencies, and the Marvel universe should fly along with Home Sick Pilots.

New Arrival: My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones

 Critics of horror love to call the genre sensationalist or lowbrow, but the horror subgenre that earns the most and the most severe critical barbs is the slasher. Focusing on physically attractive yet mentally unobservant characters who are merely there to die in horrible and creative ways, the plot in these tales are often seen as just a way to get the victims in front of the killer. But horror is also great at subverting expectations and Stephen Graham Jones has greatly subverted the expectations of slasher critics with his latest book My Heart is a Chainsaw. Not only does this book give a beating, feeling heart to the slasher genre, it may also be Jones’s most poignant and emotional work.

The book follows Jennifer “Jade” Daniels, a young girl who just graduated high school, but she doesn’t have much to look forward to in life in small-town Idaho by scenic Indian Lake. With her mother abandoning the family and her father being the town drunk, no one really expects much of Jade. But Jade knows that a killer as evil as Freddy Krueger and as unstoppable as Jason Voorhees is coming to her small town to lay waste to it, just as a cadre of billionaires are ready to spend massive amounts of money to build their vacation homes here. But money won’t stop the terror that’s coming. It falls to Jade and her encyclopedic knowledge of horror movies to find a final girl to stop this evil and save everyone, if the town even deserves saving.

If there is one thing one can expect from Stephen Graham Jones is his ability to take a reader’s expectations and turn them on their head. Yes, he demonstrates his love and knowledge of the slasher genre, especially in the chapters displaying Jade’s extra credit assignments, but there is more to this book than blood and body counts. This is a heartfelt, tragic, and soaring story that showcases all of Jones’s talent as a writer along with his love of horror. Jade is put through the emotional wringer in this story, but so is the reader. The ending of this book is one of the most powerful I have ever experienced. Yes, there will be blood and death and destruction, but its emotional core is what makes this book so powerful. This book is indeed like a chainsaw and the heart of the reader will be cut through like a block of wood.

Have You Read This? Dismal Dreams by Red Lagoe

 

Short story collections can be like a buffet with each tasty story representing different flavors of an overall author’s work. Does the author write stories that are creepy or emotionally crushing? Do they generate fear or excitement? Do they flavor their tales with just a smidge of gore or do they like to drown their readers in it, pretty much the same way I drown my french fries in ketchup. If you haven’t noticed, I do like the analogy of short stories as entrées, but that analogy also may be reductive, ignoring the potential of quality among a large quantity of tales. Short stories, as a reminder, are not necessarily novels compacted but their own art form, a quick bite but still immensely satisfying. Such fine morsels of fiction are just waiting to be discovered in Red Lagoe’s story smorgasbord Dismal Dreams.

Fans of short fiction are sure to find ones that are true showcases of Lagoe's talent. For example, there’s “Creation of Man,” for those who like to see stories from a different and provocative point of view. Fans of ratcheting tension in their fiction will love “Never Have I Ever,” which explores an app that, once downloaded to a woman’s phone, forces her and her friends to confess their sins or face some painful consequences. Lagoe’s really disturbing stories, though, look at how love can go wrong and be twisted into obsession and even hatred. Such stories include “One Year Anniversary,” concerning a woman who goes for a very unique kind of revenge on an abusive spouse while “A Cold Day in Hell” recalls a very unique ghost story where the ghost may very well be the protagonist of the story. “The Terminator Line” is a revenge story that thoroughly surprised me, which is something that doesn’t often happen in a genre that many argue can rely too much on formula.

To conclude the food metaphor, Lagoe has served up some scrumptious stories that make me want to try some of her other creations, which include her other collection Lucid Screams. Dismal Dreams wasn’t completely full of fiction that wowed me, but I also know that, as of this review, Lagoe may be just beginning her writing journey as far as publications. I hope there are more novels and stories in her future because there are a few stories here that have definitely whetted my appetite.

Screen to Scream: Boys from County Hell and With Teeth

 

Vampires! What associations does that one word conjure in the minds of horror fans? Well-dressed pale beings sipping blood from crystal goblets? Creatures with chalk white skin, sharp teeth and mouths smeared with blood? What springs forth in the readers’ imagination depends, of course, on what vampire media they have consumed. And there is a lot of vampire media to consume. Some simply glut the zeitgeist with mediocre monsters, but a few creators of vampire fiction can sculpt their bloodsucking fiends to fit any kind of story they want to tell. Two examples of this are the movie Boys from County Hell and Brian Keene’s latest novella
With Teeth.

Boys from County Hell follows Eugene Moffat (Jack Rowan) who lives in Six Mile Hill, an Irish town where there’s nothing for he and his buddies to do except drink and spook tourists with tales of Abhartach, the vampiric creature that supposedly inspired Bram Stoker to write his classic novel. He and his father Francie (Nigel O’Neill) are responsible for putting in a new bypass, one that will destroy an old friend’s farm while also releasing Abhartach from his prison under the earth. Now Euguene, his father, and a group of locals must bandtogether to defeat Abhartach and save the town, or at least survive the night. Mixing comedy and horror, Boys from County Hell milks its laughs from the colorful characters, who end up being very unlikely saviors. Its horror comes from those that are killed by Abhartach, who come back as bloodthirsty monsters unable to recognize their friends. It’s a delicate balance that this film, for the most part, achieves.

People who watched this movie and pick up With Teeth will not be getting as many laughs but will be getting some fearsome vampires and some down-on-their-luck main characters, even though Keene’s novella takes place in rural West Virginia. To earn more money, Frank and his buddies decide to start cooking meth. All they need is a secluded spot away from the prying eyes of law enforcement, which leads the men to a holler with very little sunlight and a few vampires that are excited at the prospect of human blood. The humor present in With Teeth, such as it is,  is very dark. Keene begins the novel by narrator Frank explaining that “Vampires don’t sparkle” as well as busting up any romanticized myths about vampires. These vampires are not charming or cultured; they are hissing, snarling monsters that don’t spout catchphrases and murder with grisly, gory glee. The book can be interpreted as a decline of fortunes in Appalachia and how easy it is for men looking for a big score can quickly get in over their heads, but the book never becomes didactic, the “vampires don’t sparkle” speech notwithstanding, thanks to Keene’s character development, particularly with Frank. Some of the men in this tale might be readily dismissed as fodder for the undead onslaught, but their early banter establishes that they mean more to Frank, and to the reader, than running, screaming bags of blood.

Graphic Content: Family Tree, Vol. 1: Sapling by Jeff Lemire and Phil Hester

 

The title of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings” isn’t hyperbole or symbolism (that comes later in the story). The subject of the story is an old man with wings sprouting from his back. He crashlands in a couple’s yard and with his arrival flock the pious and the curious, those who see the old man as either a celestial being or an oddity to be put in captivity for our amusement. If the story has a moral, it’s that  when humanity discovers something truly awe-inspiring, we’d probably find some way to ruin it. The “humanity ruins everything” trope has been explored throughout literature, both fantastical and mundane, but there are times where it goes beyond simply that people are intrinsically terrible. Jeff Lemire and Phil Hester, for example, created a story where they combine the fantastic and mundane to  explore familial bonds in the aptly titled Family Tree, Vol. 1: Sapling.

The story centers on single mom Loretta, her angsty teenage son Josh, and her young daughter Megan, who seems to be turning into a tree. What begins as a rash on her skin soon becomes bark complete with branches and leaves. Adding to the drama is the return of the kids’ grandfather/Loretta’s father-in-law Judd, an old man who’s handy with a shotgun. Soon the reunited family goes on the run from a mysterious group called the Arborists that wants Meg for their own ends. As the family flees and tensions between them rise, more is revealed about what the Arborists want and what Megan’s skin-to-bark affliction actually is.

The images of Megan’s skin becoming bark, plus some other spoiler-laden images of what this affliction does, puts it in the realm of body horror, but there’s also a fantastical undercurrent, particularly when Lemire’s story explores what is happening to Megan and many others around the world. Beneath the bark of this body horror fantasy are layers (or rings) of familial relationships that seem to give the title of this book a deeper meaning beyond the obvious pun. These layers include Loretta and grandfather/father-in-law Judd sniping at each other over what happened to the kid’s father or Meg learning more about her father thanks to what’s happening to her. Yes, there’s some graphic skin-to-bark depictions, but Hester shows real skill in depicting the pain in each family members’ expressions from annoyance to anger to terror. This story incorporates body horror, but those expecting a bloodbath with monster trees might be disappointed. This Family Tree is more about the lives of individual branches trying to discover their roots (yes, the tree puns are done). Just like Marquez used a pseudoangel to explore human weakness and a desire for meaning, Family Tree, Vol. 1: Sapling  uses an apocalyptic tree disease to explore how family makes us who we are, for better or worse.