Graphic Content: Thistlebone

 

Folk horror seems to be hitting a resurgence. Whether it's the fact that technology is striving to connect all of us or the way political tribalism seems to be pushing us apart, writers and readers are heading out to the fields and forests for their horror. Authors like Adam Nevill and Stephen Graham Jones have explored folk horror, and in fact there’s even an entire collection devoted to it. There is also a graphic novel whose connection to the land is spelled out in the deity that haunts the book and gives the book its title. So follow the path through the dark woods and get acquainted with Thislebone and Thislebone Book Two: Poisoned Roots.

Thislebone is the name of a pagan deity worshiped by a cult led by the charismatic Jasper Hillman. They had rejected decadent modern society and embraced the old ways, which included human sacrifice. Years ago, Avril Eason escaped the cult after almost being sacrificed, and the experience still has its hooks deep in her. Journalist Seema Chaundy takes Avril back to Harrowvale, the town once occupied by the cult. Thislebone, and other unusual characters, also await and the ancient god, and what it represents, is putting both women under its spell.

Writer T. C. Ellington offers a solid, by-the-numbers plot that doesn’t have a great deal of twists but is practically dripping with atmosphere. Both these graphic novels feel like the storyboard to a horror movie, with long pans and jump scares already added in. What really stands out in both books is Simon Davis’s hyper-realistic artwork. The faces he draws are uniquely detailed and all of them look haggard, with angular cheeks and sunken eye sockets and the color choices look like each page–each panel–could hang on a museum wall. These books are great for lovers of folk horror as well as lovers of fine comic artwork.

Have You Read This? Andy Davidson's The Boatman's Daughter

Read and find out 
what happened to this guy

Like westerns, fantasy, and science fiction, Southern Gothic fiction uses the environment as another character. Often full of tall grasses that seem to soak up the sweltering heat, lush and massive trees where evil lurks behind and within, and murky marshlands, swimming with hidden dangers, this landscape serves as both the backdrop for the characters’ various misdeeds and its own character, as much alive as the people who plot and murder within its confines. This is the setting of Andy Davidson’s latest book The Boatman’s Daughter, a beautifully fantastic, Southern gothic tale of dark magic and darker stains upon the soul.

The protagonist Miranda Crabtree grew up in the swamps of Arkansas. After losing her father at an early age, she is adopted by a mysterious witch, earning herself an adopted brother, and soon begins working with a cast of shady characters. Miranda’s world is upended when a mysterious girl comes into the swamp. The girl has strange powers, and some bad men want her, men willing to burn down or tear through whatever gets in their way. The girl’s entry into Miranda’s life also upends everything she thought she knew about her life and her makeshift family, even as she strives to defend both.

The Southern gothic tradition boasts such luminaries as Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, and even if Andy Davidson’s writing doesn’t transcend the prose of these luminaries, he shows his love for the genre, perhaps even an innate understanding of it, through the prose he writes. The land that he writes about is as textured and thrumming with menacing as the diabolical preacher Billy Cotton and the sadistic constable Charlie Riddle. The book could take place a year ago, five years ago, and even twenty years ago, the setting so alien and separate from what we know that the intrusion from the outside world, the world beyond the swamp, is minimal. Davidson’s prose draws you into this world, as fantastical as anything Frodo walked through, but grounded in a gritty reality familiar to fans of noir and suspense. Readers will marvel at the spectacle of the world Davidson paints even as they watch their steps for water moccasins.

New Arrival: The Low, Low Woods

When I first heard about Hill House Comics, the DC horror comics imprint spearheaded by Joe Hill, I was excited. Like kid-on-Christmas excited. I have very fond memories of Locke & Key, Hill’s first foray into comics and where I discovered he was more than just Stephen King’s son. Hill has time and again proved himself superior to his father when it comes to weaving the fantastical into his fiction. However, I discovered that he would not be writing the comics, but my disappointment was short-lived upon discovering that the writers are some of the most well-known in speculative fiction, providing their own unique tales within a graphic novel format. Such a tale is Carmen Maria Machado’s rural horror The Low, Low Woods.

The story focuses on the small town of Shudder-To-Think, Pennsylvania, a town like many mining towns where the mines make money at the cost of human lives. People die in the mines, people get sick in the mines, but the town also has skinless men, monstrous hybrids, and periodic amnesia among its female population. Best friends El and Vee try to find out the secret that has been haunting the town all while trying to escape the fate that has befallen all the women in Shudder-To-Think.

Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and OtherParties, has a lot of moving parts in this story. Everything from bizarre body horror to the deep friendship between Vee and El. This friendship is not only by the town’s secrets but also by another force that has pulled apart the tapestry of friendships: making plans after high school. Machado’s ear for dialogue fleshes out so many of the characters in this piece, just as DaNi's artwork seeks to twist that shape into disturbing contortions. Think Jock’s artwork in Wytches and you’ll have an idea of the realistic yet at times surreal artwork in these pages.

For those that have read Machado’s previous works and expecting some horror mined from a woman’s experience, Machado doesn’t disappoint here. When the mystery is revealed, it becomes apparent that the evil in this town is not just supernatural and it will take more than putting a wooden stake through a ribcage to end it. Machado’s work explores the notion of traumatic memories, whether it is best to remember and potentially grow stronger from experiencing them, or is it better to discard these memories and move forward? Fighting and defeating the monster is often the definitive end of stories of supernatural evil, will all that’s left is to stand in the sunshine of a new day. If anything, the ending lets the reader know that the fight, and the subsequent healing, is just beginning.

Screen to Scream: Near Dark and In the Valley of the Sun

Bill Paxton's Severen looks like me 
eating hot wings.

Vampires have often been portrayed in movies and books as sensitive, brooding, and sexy monsters. There are some media, however, that show them to be just monsters, monsters that happen to feed on blood and violence. They may make these vampires compelling, but they never let the reader/viewer forget what they are. Two such examples of this are examples of a mashup genre people might call Vampire Westerns: the gritty 80’s movie Near Dark and Andy Davidson’s debut novel In the Valley of the Sun.

Near Dark, acclaimed director Kathryn Bigelow's best kept secret of a vampire movie, stars Adrian Pasdar as Caleb Colton, a nice guy cowboy who falls for drifter Mae. Mae (Jenny Wright) has a secret, however, and all it takes is one bite before Caleb is indoctrinated into her vampire family, including patriarch Jesse Hooker (Lance Henriksen) and scene-chewer Severen (Bill "Game Over, Man" Paxton). The family takes Caleb in, even taking him out to dinner. Of course, dinner involves starting and subsequently consuming bloodbath at a local bar. Not partaking, Caleb still holds onto his humanity, even as he tries to both save his younger sister and help his new girlfriend as the family comes looking for them. Long before Twilight, Caleb and Mae exemplified a vampire romance and all the internal conflict and bodily bloodshed it entails, especially as both young lovers try to quell their murderous urges. 

Travis Stillwell, the protagonist of Davidson’s novel, knows something about fighting these urges, but he is also no stranger to killing. Not only is he a Vietnam veteran whose seen his fair share of death, he’s brought it to many young girls throughout Texas. He is given eternal life by Rue, a vampire who shares her blood with him and insinuates herself into his existence. Rather than use his vampiric abilities to sate his hunger with the blood of young women, he focuses on one family, a single mother and her son. Near Dark is horror, but it also has a few action movie moments, like a Terminator moment involving a semi-truck. It moves quickly from one scene to the next while In the Valley of the Sun focuses on Travis, the mother, and the Texas Ranger trying to stop him, fleshing out these characters while drawing them closer until the understated Western-like showdown that serves as the novel's climax. Near Dark features flaming vampires in the sun while In the Valley of the Sun features people and vampires exploding with unrequited passions. 

Have You Read This? The Twisted Ones

Folk horror seems to be a trend right now. Whether that's a backlash to the encroachment of technological advancement, with people sacrificing traditions on the altar of Apple, or the evolution of writers who like Stephen King had found supernatural horror in a very familiar small town America, folk horror has been receiving attention in both the movies and in novels. Before continuing with this review, however, I should offer some defining characteristics of folk horror:

1. Typically a rural setting. 
2. A religion or ideology that goes beyond traditional Christianity (or completely twisting Christianity out of shape, as in "Children of the Corn"). 
3. The land or earth is involved in the religion/ideology the story references. This may also lead to a kind of ritual. 

These elements are present in T. Kingfisher's The Twisted Ones, which relies heavily on local folklore while also referencing cosmic horror.
The story focuses on Mouse, a woman who is tasked with cleaning out her grandmother's house. Joined by her dog Bongo, she encounters a house that is overflowing with clutter as well as a secret world in the woods behind her grandmother's house. With only some quirky local characters, some bizarre stones, and the words of a stepgrandfather she barely knew to guider her, Mouse is gradually pulled into this world and attracts the interest of the eponymous twisted ones.
The character of Mouse is a very sympathetic character and a humorous first person narrator. Her humor is something that doesn't distract from the creepy atmosphere of the novel but endears us to her struggles both supernatural and mundane. Another surprising positive in the book is the relationship she has with her dog Bongo. Some may find it distracting that she talks about her dog, but Kingfisher shows Mouse's obvious love for her best friend and Bongo also gets the opportunity to return that love by helping his master discover who the twisted ones and their masters are.
The twisted ones and their masters are also an appeal of the book, particularly for those who like world-building and who likes their worlds weird. The twisted ones are given names by everyone else, from effigies to poppets, but they are all unique, terrifying, and described well by Kingfisher. Made from everything from wire to bones, stones to wasps' nest, the images of these junk and corpse piles animated and full of intent provides some disturbing images that make me look forward to a graphic novel adaptation.
These two elements, the relatable Mouse and her experiences with the bizarrely unrelatable twisted ones, creates a dynamic that kept me reading until the last page. The rural setting offers an anchor for Mouse, but it's ultimately the love of her friends, both two-legged, and four that ultimately gives the book its center.