Graphic Content: Dark Ride Vol. 2 and 3 by Joshua Williamson, Andrei Bresses, and Adriano Lucas

One of the many ways I procrastinate when I should be writing is I watch roller coaster videos on Youtube. I have resorted to living vicariously through these videos because it takes a while to travel to the locations of these roller coasters and I don’t want to pay $20 for a corn dog. Luckily, writer Joshua Williamson and artists Andrei Bressen and Adriano Lucas have pooled their talents to create the graphic novel series Dark Ride, which combines two of my favorite things: amusement parks and horror. I reviewed Volume 1 of this series for the website No Flying, No Tights, and Volumes 2 and 3 offer a fitting end to this tale of Faustian bargains and trying/failing to live up to your parents’ expectations. 

Volume 1 of this story introduces readers to Devil Land, the Scariest Place on Earth, a horror-themed theme park designed by eccentric genius Arthur Dante. As heirs to his legacy, Arthur’s children Samhein (Sam), the dutiful son, and Halloween, the goth girl influencer, constantly try to show their father they are worthy to run the park, but they soon discover that there is something truly terrifying that helped Arthur build Devil Land. It turns out the streets of Devil Land are paved with human souls, and Sam and Halloween’s souls may be up for grabs. 

The series is enjoyable with Bressen and Lucas’s artwork helping writer Williamson fully realize the look for this park, especially the diabolical mascot that performs its own brand of vile mischief. Williamson, though, develops his characters to tell a compelling story, allowing Sam, an absentee father, becoming the book’s moral center as Halloween, often seen as shallow by her family, becoming a wild card that could save the day or send them all to Hell. For those horror fans that love the visual aesthetic as much as the spooky storytelling, all three volumes of Dark Ride are worth the price of admission, especially if you check it out at your local library. 

 

Graphic Content: Killadelphia Deluxe Edition Book 2 by Rodney Barnes and Jason Shawn Alexander

There are some that say horror shouldn’t deal with anything political. My initial response to such a statement is to ask the person making said statement how much actual horror they’ve seen in the last 50 or so years. Horror, indeed a great deal of speculative fiction, hits not only the universal truths of human existence but provides a mirror, no matter how cracked, into our currently broken times. Some may pejoratively call such horror “woke,” but such stories also bring a bright light to some very dark and harmful social issues. Rodney Barnes’s book Killadelphia is an excellent example of this, using the idea of vampires as the Founding Fathers as an example of our current broken system. I had already reviewed the first deluxe edition of this series, but Killadelphia Deluxe Edition Book 2, like any good sequel, raises the stakes for all the characters involved. 

The book opens with Philadephia as a fallen city. Abigail Adams, wife of former president John Adams, and her vampires are not roaming the streets at night to slaughter any innocent humans in their way while humans fighting for survival are turning on each other in the bright light of day. Undead detective James Sangster, Sr., along with his son, find help in the form of the enigmatic vampire Seesaw, a pack of werewolves who know a thing or two about war, and a trickster god, but the vampire army have boosted their numbers with the addition of founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. 

With the stellar depictions of vampiric carnage rendered by artist Jason Shawn Alexander, the meat of the story is filled in by writer Barnes. Barnes does quite a bit of narrative lifting in this volume, having to handle so many new characters, from werewolves to new vampires. In the hands of an inexperienced writer, all the new characters could have flitted past the readers without leaving any impression, but Barnes balances them all, letting them all develop organically and contribute to the overall story in their own ways. Along with character development, Barnes uses the vampire metaphor to shine a light on the dark underbelly of America and the promises it has left unfulfilled with monologues by a man who helped build it. 

Have You Read This? The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

There are works of horror that have violence and works of horror that are violent. They are violent with their depictions of a human body’s surgical deconstruction, violent with their brazen exploration of taboo subjects, and violent with their wanton disregard to the fairy tales that remain sacrosanct for many people. This is, of course, a good thing, even necessary, since horror is a genre that often pushes and even destroys boundaries. Cassandra Khaw’s retelling of The Little Mermaid story, The Salt Grows Heavy, is a novella that rejoices in its violence. 

It starts with the tale that everyone is familiar with, that of a mermaid princess who falls in love with a prince whose kingdom is on land and her sacrifices to be with him. What those books don’t mention is how the prince mistreated the mermaid once she was his or how the mermaid’s daughters went on to eat the kingdom. Disney execs would likely be horrified to learn that this mermaid then goes on the run with a nonbinary plague doctor who discovers a village full of murderous children ruled by “saints” who really love performing surgery. 

As a novella, this is a quick read. As a story, it’s a fever dream/acid trip of a fairy tale retelling. This is mostly due to Khaw’s writing. Not content to simply describe events as they happen, she paints a gloriously visceral picture with her words, blurring the boundaries between what is beautiful and what is horrifying. In this retelling, the mermaid who is not named Ariel is no longer a victim; instead she is a force of nature that will tear through anything to get what she wants.