Have You Read This? A Light Most Hateful by Hailey Piper

 

The drive-in is a vanishing part of the cultural landscape, which is rather sad considering the myriad and delightful horrors that once graced their screens. Many people have fond memories of the drive-in, even those who haven’t watched horror movies, but for horror fans, the drive-in conjures thoughts of monsters from the stars like the ones from Joe Lansdale’s magnum opus The Drive-In. It’s fitting, then, that Hailey Piper begins her latest book A Light Most Hateful at a drive-in on the night of a reality-rending storm, but Piper also takes the concept to some original and terrifying places.

This journey into the frightfully fantastic begins in the small town of Chapel Hill, Pennsylvania where Olivia lives after running away from home. She has managed to eke out a life while she deals with small-town boredom and an unrequited crush on her best friend Sunflower. Then a summer storm shows up, bringing more than just thunder and lightning. This storm brings with it the power to bend the will of the people of Chapel Hill to an otherworldly intelligence, even as it transforms the landscape. Olivia now tries to survive the night and rescue Sunflower before the storm and the being it serves wipes Chapel Hill off the map.

This tale’s beginning in the drive-in and what happens to people after the storm approaches makes it feel like a by-the-book but still enjoyable monster movie that would entertain the late night drive-in crowd, but Piper has always excelled at taking her fiction in new and exciting directions that subvert her audience’s expectations. Rather than a simple tale of running and more running from a mob of brainwashed humanity, Piper has crafted a tale that explores the power and limits of friendship, exploring both the bonds that strengthen us and those that hold us back. Without revealing too much of the twist that brilliantly transforms the book as much as an unnatural storm, Piper also explores concepts of identity and the connective threads that are so tenuous yet somehow manage to hold us together. Come for the pseudo-zombies, but stay for the high-concept, mind-bending story.

Graphic Content: Dead Mall by Adam Cesare and David Stoll

 For many adults, the mall was a distinct part of their childhood, whether as a hangout, a place to eat, or the place to get the latest Third Eye Blind CD or Stephen King novel. But the mall has fallen on hard times. More and more of these monuments of consumerism have become empty, derelict, and simply waiting on nature or a well-placed wrecking ball to end its misery. Such a structure makes it the perfect place where something malevolent can haunt and can hunt souls who simply want their heart’s desire. The Penn Mills Galleria from Adam Cesare’s and David Stoll’s Dead Mall is such a place.

The galleria has long been abandoned and is about to be demolished. Before the wrecking ball wipes it off the face of the earth, five teens decide to break in and see the empty stores before they’re gone forever. The galleria might have been dormant, but it’s still hungry for souls. These five teens must resist the siren call of the mall if they are to survive the night. The mall promises to give you just the product to fill the hole inside you, but that price will be very high indeed.

People might remember Adam Cesare as the twisted mind behind Clown in a Cornfield and its sequel, and he definitely brings that madcap kind of horror to Dead Mall, where the story is told by the titular mall who is not sorry that it must consume its patrons like they were Auntie Anne’s pretzels. Like in Cornfield, he takes the trouble of creating fleshed-out teen characters with their own wants and desires, then pushes them into the wood chipper–the chipper in this case being a mall that transforms its victims based on where they decide to shop within the mall (“shop” might be a misnomer since no money’s exchanged, but the mall’s victims pay the price with their humanity).

Stoll’s illustrations bring the mall’s victims to life in grisly detail, adding a touch of irony to their designs, such as a 50’s looking housewife who seems to have a doughy face (HALF HER FACE appears made out of dough). Stoll, however, shows some real cosmic horror chops as the teens descend into the mall’s depths and see all its fleshy insides and Cthulhu-inspired decor. Fans of the Hellraiser movie series (especially part 3, which had a man shoot razor-sharp CDs at people) will love the artwork here.

Overall, the book is great for fans of Cesare’s writing and of gutbucket body horror that skews ironic.

 

Graphic Content: Let Me Out by Emmit Nahil and George Williams

 

Some of you might be too young to remember the Satanic Panic, even if you are living through a rebranding of it as drag show banning and “parental choice.” Anything that seemed to deviate from traditional Christian values was branded as “Satanic.” Everything from Dungeons and Dragons to He-Man was labeled as being an instrument of the Dark Lord that would bring more wayward souls under his sway and thus destroy Western civilization. What was really going on is that it was used to stigmatize anyone the religious right saw as different, including those in the LGBTQ community. That is the horror, other than the actual demon, that is behind the story in Let Me Out, from writer Emmit Nahil and illustrator George Williams. (spoilers ahead!)

It’s 1979 and the devil is loose in the New Jersey suburbs, at least that’s what FBI agent Garrett and New Jersey Sheriff Mullen want you to believe. When a pastor’s wife is discovered brutally murdered, the two men concoct a story involving ritual sacrifice that covers up their involvement in the crime and of an overarching conspiracy. They’ve even found four scapegoats (Terri, Mitch, Lupe, and Jackson) that are considered outcasts. These four friends are soon running for their lives, but they soon get help from an unlikely source. All it might cost them is their souls.

George Williams’s illustrations don’t denote a gritty realism that most associate with horror comics, but his characters are always expressive and his depictions of violence are quite visceral. He also makes sure to illustrate the various ‘70s styles and anachronisms, like tape recorders and chain smoking in public offices, that immerses the reader in that decade. When the demon finally appears, the more cartoony art style takes away some of its sharper edges. It’s a demon but it’s actually a demon readers can root for.

That fact is also helped along by Nahil’s story which focuses on the teens caught up in this conspiracy. They come from different walks of life, whether it’s being the children of immigrants or being LGBTQ. The dialogue and interactions between this group is endearing in that they always stand up for each other and will carry them after they literally get beat down. When the demon finally makes its move, he almost becomes like a fifth member.

My only issue with the story is its ending and how abrupt it is. It seemed like there could have been more closure, but it might also be Nahil’s point. Perhaps even the devil himself is unable to completely save those LGBTQ kids who are encountering prejudice and violence in the past and in the present.

Recommended for patrons who love horror, LGBTQ stories, and the devil (or stories about the devil).

 

Graphic Content: Playthings by Jon Clark and Travis Williamson

 

Many of us grew up with toys. Toys of all shapes and sizes, from games to dolls, have provided a great deal of our childhood memories. But like clowns and restaurants featuring animatronic mascots, toys that were created with the singular intent of providing joy to children become twisted when portrayed within the horror genre. Imagine Toy Story and Joe Hill’s N0S4A2 had a horrifying baby that lived in the tunnels beneath Fantasyland in Walt Disney World and you might come up with the elevator pitch for Playthings, a comic series created by writer and colorist Jon Clark and illustrator Travis Williamson.

The story begins with Alison Hart waking up in a brightly colored room surrounded by toys that seem to be moving on their own. She’s also tied to a chair and appears to have plastic hands, but that’s not even the worst thing that’s happening to her. Her daughter is missing, taken into this warped wonderland by one of these toys and she will do anything to get her daughter back, even things that she once thought were unthinkable.

Clark’s story might bring up thoughts of Child’s Play and its killer doll Chucky, especially how one doll in particular loves to attack its victims legs, but it differentiates itself through its setting and its protagonist. Alison is not initially portrayed as a good mother, or at least it seems she’s an indifferent one. It isn’t until her daughter is taken that her protective nature emerges. Then she begins her descent into a demented playhouse that is more terrifying than anything Alice ever encountered in Wonderland.

This psychedelic trip that would give Liam Neeson second thoughts is gloriously rendered thanks to Williamson’s illustrations, along with Clark’s choice of colors. Williamson has made the interesting decision of leaving a more cartoonish aspect to his character design (something akin to Image’s The Maxx series for those comic fans with long memories). The people populating this universe don’t look too different from the toys that are supposed to shock when they start coming to life. This aesthetic choice makes the book look less like a bad touch of Christmas magic and more a questioning of reality, leaving the reader constantly guessing as to what’s going on.

Playthings is currently on Hoopla but I hope it gets its own trade paperback very soon.

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.