Graphic Content: Stray Dogs by Tony Fleecs and Trish Fortner

 Horror is not just a category; it’s also a spectrum, moving from silly to serious, haunting to gritty.

There are so many subgenres in horror that anyone who likes a good scare is sure to find something to like. Horror also isn’t afraid to go beyond its comfort zone to tell a good story, borrowing from different genres to create something both creepy and original. Praise should go to any work that’s brave enough to incorporate Don Bluth-style animation and anthropomorphic animals. This is the formula for the graphic novel Stray Dogs, and somehow it works.

The story is told mainly through the adorable eyes of Sophie, a small dog who is dealing with a lot of new things, a new owner and several other new dogs that she doesn’t recognize. Sophie is also having trouble remembering her past owner, but as the story progresses, she becomes convinced that something terrible has happened to her previous owner, known as “her Lady,” and she is convinced that the man who has taken her into his home has done something to her. All dogs might go to heaven, but Sophie will do whatever it takes to avoid that fate, especially since the man who now has her may have done terrible things.

One of the big appeals of this book is its seemingly incongruous elements that somehow come together. Tony Fleecs’s story, told through the dogs the man has collected, not only generates actual suspense and stakes with the standard he’s-coming-back-early approach, it also takes advantage of a fallacy of dog memory, which is explained in the book’s prologue. Dogs are more focused on the now, meaning that Sophie doesn’t remember her Lady clearly, and even Sophie’s new four-legged roommates tell her to forget about who she was with. The reader will practically beg Sophie to remember even as she and her new friends try to escape. The story is solid, but Trish Forstner’s artwork makes this work stand out, making it look like a Disney film with a villain very much like Hannibal Lecter. Story and art don’t take away from one another; rather, they combine to create a tale tailor-made for fans of adult animation and true crime. I know that I’m a fan of both as well as of odd combinations.

Have You Read This? To Be Devoured

 

Some horror stories are a rumbling bulldozer, not meant to break any land speed records but designed to crush the reader with its emotional power. Stephen King has written many of these, and for me, the end of stories like IT and The Shining left me feeling like the end of a long journey, battered emotionally but somehow getting stronger for the experience. Then there are novellas and novelettes that are more like high-performance race cars. They go fast and drag you screaming along for the ride. Often able to read in one sitting, these can be true white-knuckle experiences where the reader finally breathes once the book is closed. One such novella that pulls readers along for a horrifying ride is Sara Tantlinger’s lean-and-mean novella To Be Devoured.

The book certainly has an odd but interesting premise. Andi, a young woman in a committed relationship, is trying to work through her various mental issues. Having experienced a great deal of death in her young life, she seeks to be normal for the sake of her girlfriend, but she also becomes fascinated with the vultures that she sees gathering over carrion, which reawakens her fascination with death. Andi must soon decide if she can resist these urges to live as the vultures do, including their appetite for the dead, or will she give in to them?

This story benefits from its slimness, keeping the focus on Andi’s POV as her life spirals out of control. How Andi views life, especially as she begins to lose her grip on sanity, is both beautiful and grotesque. There are indeed moments of profound horror and stomach-turning depictions of viscera and violence, but one still has to marvel at Tantlinger’s approach to depicting seemingly taboo violence in a way that rivals Clive Barker, particularly as the story flirts with body horror. To Be Devoured has no intention of overstaying its welcome as the reader reads, rocketing the reader through Andi’s descent into madness while making sure the reader is given the opportunity to assimilate every visceral detail. There is something refreshing to this bare bones approach to horror, the speed of how the reader reads through a work like To Be Devoured mimics the same fast tempo of the reader’s heartbeat. For those horror fans who want their horror more like roller coasters than bulldozers, they should give To Be Devoured a try.

Have You Read This? Night of the Mannequins by Stephen Graham Jones

There are some works of fiction that defy mere summary. These kinds of works are so outlandish that

summarizing them for the benefit of someone unfamiliar with the author’s work is liable to raise some eyebrows. It is also one of the great things about speculative fiction. A story can have completely unreal elements as long as its grounded in some reality. Joe Lansdale demonstrated his understanding of this when he wrote "Bubba Ho-Tep," making his mummy-fighting, rest-home-dwelling Elvis a deeply nuanced protagonist. Stephen Graham Jones also understands the grounding within reality, as demonstrated by his novella Night of the Mannequins.

I am hesitant to go into details about the actual plot of this tale because half the fun of reading this is trying to wrap your mind around the sheer lunacy of the plot. I can go into some detail about what this book includes: mannequins (a given), slasher films, sacrifices, kaiju-sized monsters, coming of age. The story focuses on a group of friends whose relatively innocent prank involving a mannequin goes way out of control, leading to death, destruction, and the collapse of friendships.

The book is narrated by Sawyer, a very entertaining but unreliable narrator, who tells the tale from introducing his friends, to the prank that was the first domino, to the aforementioned death and destruction. Reading this made me wonder what talking to Stephen Graham Jones is like. Not so much when he narrates his fiction, but when he just tells a story, sitting in a bar, recalling what happened to a cousin’s cousin or a great aunt’s friend. He displays a definite gift for description in an almost stream-of-conscience way that creates a truly unique literary voice. This tale owes a lot to slashers and Godzilla but you don’t need to be an overwhelming fan of both genres to appreciate the craft Jones brings to this story.