Graphic Content: Hauthology by Jeremy Haun

 When the pandemic hit, many people suddenly had a lot of free time on their hands. Some people baked

bread, some people caught up on all the Netflix and Hulu shows they never had time to finish, and some just squeezed themselves into a fetal position to futilely escape the crushing sense of existential dread. Writer and artist Jeremy Haun, creator of the body horror series The Beauty, took a different approach. He created a very unique collection of short graphic stories and collected them in the book Haunthology.

Haunthology is a large collection of very short stories. Many of these reflect the horrors of isolation, brief snippets of people suffocating under the weight of existential worry. Others are stories about haunted houses and horrifying curses that are lodged like a stinger in your mind before Haun delivers another one. Each story is its own little monster that’s guaranteed to burrow under your skin.

Haun is well-known in horror circles for The Beauty as well as The Red Mother, but he’s really flexing his creative muscles here. Some might think that writing super short stories is simpler than longer works when, in fact, the opposite is true. In a very limited amount of space and time, the author/artist (Haun is doing double duty here) must incorporate the setting, the characters, and the conflict, before delivering the climax that gives a tale its emotional punch. Each of these stories are great examples of how to create a short short story and should be read by those who want some prime examples of saying a lot with very little.

Graphic Content: Boys' Weekend by Mattie Lubchansky

 

One of the sad facts about growing up is growing away from what you once knew, perhaps even loved. That especially includes friendships, Where you once thought that your best friend would be a part of your life forever, now you find you both have drifted away from each other. The truly sad thing is that the blame does not rest on the shoulders of one person. People, as they grow, get new interests, gain new ways to think about the world, or they might even decide what they once appeared as wasn’t really them. This conflict between drifting apart and staying together, along with a strange cult, is what turns the bachelor party in Mattie Lubchansky’s Boys’ Weekend a literal bachelor party from Hell (or at least Hell adjacent).

Newly-out trans art assistant Sammie is living their best life in New York until their best friend Adam asks Sammie to be the “best man” for his wedding. Sammie meets up with Adam’s groomsmen at El Campo, a bizarre mix of Las Vegas and Atlantis that has few rules since they are in international waters. Not only does Samme have to endure the awkward situations that the other men subject them to, but there’s apparently a cult that has no compunctions about human sacrifice or summoning their god to this realm.

Lubchansky’s artstyle, and the book’s overall tone, isn’t for those looking for a straight-laced Lovecraftian nightmare; those that are would be missing the point. Many of the book’s terrors come from Sammie trying their best to fit in and be subsequently rejected, all while supposed “nice guy” Adam lets it happen. The conflict with the cult is actually secondary to Sammie’s conflict with Adam’s passive-aggressive friends and Sammie’s own desire to live as they want. The book even ends on a touching note that no amount of sea water could drown and should resonate for those, trans and not trans, who are not allowed to live as their authentic selves.

Have You Read This? Those We Drown by Amy Goldsmith

There are those that love the sea for the same reasons that many fear it, and many have written stories about it: the sheer expanse of it as well as the accompanying mystery. There might be joy found riding jet skis atop its surface and beauty seen only by diving down beneath its surface, but there are plenty of places that sunlight doesn’t touch. And that’s not even getting to what happens when you're left out at sea with no solid, familiar ground to be seen. That intrinsic terror one feels is what drives Amy Goldsmith’s young adult horror debut Those We Drown.

 

The story is told through the eyes of Liv, a girl who is going to spend a semester at sea with her best friend Will. The trip starts going wrong when Liv and Will have a big fight, and then Will suddenly disappears. Most of the other kids are not interested in Liv and the crew of the ship isn’t talking. Soon more people start disappearing and Liv not only has to find her best friend but to get help from someone not possibly involved in making sure those people stay lost.

The premise of this novel is intriguing because there’s a lot of horror to be squeezed out of isolation and Goldsmith does a great job of making Liv seem isolated. Not only because many of the people on the cruise don’t believe her wild stories but because she feels so out of place among kids whose parents are in a totally different tax bracket than hers. Liv is a whirlwind of emotions, flitting from reassured to panicked to self-conscious, but it doesn’t make her unlikable; it just makes her a more relatable heroine. There are many undersea horrors, along with the secrets the ships’ crew are keeping, but Goldsmith has created a story for young adults that’s perfect to devour while sitting in a deck chair on a presumably safe cruise ship.