Graphic Content: Swine by Tyrone Finch and Alain Mauricet

 

If Joe Lansdale and Grady Hendrix has taught me anything about fiction, it’s that many out-there premises can work as a story as long as it pays attention to the fundamentals. By fundamentals, I mean plot and specifically character development. And even if those are lacking, within the horror genre, a reader can forgive a story if there are copious amounts of gore and/or surreal weirdness. Not to say that the graphic novel Swine by Tyrone Finch and Alain Mauricet is trying to heap buckets of blood into their work to disguise its shortcomings. Rather, the pair tell an insanely weird horror comedy tale that saws at the heartstrings.

Simply explaining this premise makes me feel like I’m a director explaining this to a room full of skeptical Hollywood execs. Ellis has just been released on parole for the murder of his wife, and Zoe, the victim’s sister, doesn’t feel justice has been served. In following Ellis, ready to get vengeance on behalf of her sister, she makes a crazy and horrifying discovery: her sister Becky was killed by pigs. Not just any pigs, these swine that Ellis is hunting are members of Legion, the demonic horde that Jesus had cast into pigs.Zoe joins Ellis on his quest and, along with a possessed talking pig that has broken away from Legion, they seek to slaughter the rest of Legion.

A tale like this could easily end up fodder for a Syfy Movie of the Week, but Finch’s story strikes the proper tone between comedy and horror. The pigs are set up as formidable, especially since each issue shows these immortal swine helping guide humanity into its most infamous disasters. Simon, the talking pig that serves as a divining rod for locating these pigs, offers comedy relief when needed and a dose of reality, as much as a talking pig can provide, when the situation is dramatic. Mauricet’s realistic comic illustrations are allowed to go wild as he depicts some pig animal hybrids that channel Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau. Writer Finch and artist Mauricet have pooled their efforts beautifully to create a bizarre tale that has horror, humor, and heart. You might laugh, you might gasp, but this story will definitely keep you interested. 

New Arrival: The Hungry Earth by Nicholas Kaufman

 It’s easy to make fun of the Sharknado series of movies. Even ignoring the ludicrous idea of a weather phenomenon that turns sharks into projectile weapons, there’s the stilted dialogue, one-dimensional characters, and acting that tells the audience the actor just wants the paycheck. However, that series is arguably satirizing the disaster movie genre that spawned them, and many of those disaster movies that came before were trying to be serious, using alien invasions and science run amok to explore what humans could and actually do in the face of an apocalyptic event.  This fertile ground for horror is where Nicholaus Kaufman digs deep, unearthing some ripe, fruiting bodies in his tale of mushrooms-gone-malevolent The Hungry Earth.

The small town of Sakima, New York is in a state of flux. Not only is a company planning to tear up its popular community garden to put up condos, but there is something deadly growing in that garden. The citizens of Sakima soon exhibit odd behavior, muttering dreamily about a god in the garden and blowing spores into others’ faces, making more and more people like them. It’s up to a small group of people, including the town doctor and a botanist-turned-teacher, to stop this mad mushroom before it spreads its influence across the world.

The premise of the book has some silly elements, but really it’s no more silly than a blob devouring a city or clones of people bursting out of seed pods. Kaufman knows that the drama, the horror, in these stories lies in the effects it has on the representatives of humanity who are either consumed by the alien threat or who must rise up and stop it. The relationship between town doctor Laura and her scientist love interest Booker are one of the linchpins of this book, not just a will-they-or-won’t-they vibe, but whether or not they’ll survive long enough to make it work. There’s the town oddball Victor, whose resourcefulness helps those battling this invasive fungus. There’s even Seth, who not only represents the company that wants to put up condos but the spoiler of the group’s plans, thereby creating drama. Add to this some copious body horror of mushrooms doing traumatic things to the human body and this becomes a novel that follows a well-known formula of saving a small town from invasion, but one that stands out from all the Body Snatchers and Blob clones out there. And, of course, it definitely stands out from Sharknado.

 

Have You Read This? August's Eyes by Glenn Rolfe

 Ghosts can haunt us, but so do memories. These ghosts of memory haunt us with the joys we can never again know as well as the regrets that make us second-guess ourselves. Sometimes, these memories can be patient. They can wait a long time, emerging years later, clawing their way out of our psyches where we buried them. Such is the fate of the protagonist in Glenn Rolfe’s supernatural thriller August’s Eyes.

When John Colby was a boy, he saw something he shouldn’t have. He saw a young friend get kidnapped by a killer the press called the Ghoul of Wisconsin. John buried this event deep in his mind until years later, when an adult John, now married and a social worker, is tormented by dreams where he is a boy and trapped in a place called Graveyard Land, and there is a Ghoul in that graveyard that he doesn’t want to find him. John thought that it was just a dream but that dream is intruding on the waking world, terrorizing his family and friends. The Ghoul is also very real, and he wants little Johnny to come with him to Graveyard Land and stay there forever.

Rolfe’s work is very reminiscent of Stephen King with its developed characters, slow-building tension, and epic, otherworldly confrontations. However, there’s a little bit of Jack Ketchum creeping in, or at least an extreme sensibility that shows Rolfe doesn’t mind exploring the subject of child abduction and assault. The book does indeed get dark, but it never feels exploitative. Rolfe does this by populating his book with characters that are more than one-dimensional hostages, characters that the reader can get to know, love, and cheer for as they fight their way through the story’s darkness. From wife Sarah, who is supportive of her husband while having her own interests, to Patrick, a hard-working teenager who gets a chance to put his true crime knowledge to use. Finally, there’s John Colby himself, who has his flaws, but he is still a likable protagonist and ultimately demonstrates the strength of character needed to fight back against the Ghoul and his minions. The book left a few gaps in the overall mythology, placing the main villain too deeply into the shadows at times, while the plot also moved too quickly, zipping quickly between chapters and storylines, but August’s Eyes  is still a great read for people who wish Stephen King would really cut loose. The book was still an enjoyable stroll through Graveyard Land even with some serious darkness always nipping at my heels.