The Space Between the Trees by Norm Konyu - Graphic Novel Tour

 

'Meera and Mark's search for a new home turns into a chilling descent into the unknown when and accident leaves them stranded in a forest that twists time and defies logic... where they are watched, hunted, and manipulated by a presence deep within the trees. As ancient forces stirs and fractures reality, the couple must escape the forest's grip before they're lost forever.'

Norm Konyu has very quickly become a name that I instantly trust when I see on a graphic novel. So far I've read three of their books, and each one has been one of the more enjoyable and better crafted horror reads I've seen in comic form. All too often horror comics rely on monsters leaping out at characters, or gore splashed around the page to sell it as a 'scary adult' book. Norm Konyu's work, on the other hand, not only tells its horror in subtly, in atmosphere and slowly unfolding storytelling, but the books are accessible to most age groups.

The Space Between the Trees opens in 1902, deep in winter as two woodsmen search for a pair of missing loggers after a heavy storm. They discover a huge, ancient tree that one of the loggers had started to cut into, leaving a long gash in its side, but no sign of the two missing brothers. Their packs and equipment have been left in the snow, raising further concerns about their safety. As the two men investigate the area one of them vanishes, his dropped rifle the only sign that he was there. As his companion tries to figure out what's happened, he disappears too.

Jumping forward in time to the summer of 2022 we meet Meera and Mark, a young couple who are looking for a home together. They're trying to find a place right for them in the old forest area where Mark grew up, but find boring, simple homes that all look the same. The beautiful old forest is being cut down, and the wonder of nature turned into housing complexes. Disappointed with the houses on offer, the two of them leave, driving along the forest roads where they can see more and more of the lush trees being cut down. Mark laments the changes, but also talks about the old stories his great aunt would tell him of the woods being dangerous, and how something terrible happened to her when she was just a girl; something so bad that she would never walk out amongst the trees.

As they're driving, the road in front of them seems to vanish, and their car goes off the side of a hill, crashing down into the forest beneath them. Coming too in the remains of their car, Mark and Meera gather their wits and try to find their way back to the road. However, the forest seems to shift and change around them, leading them in circles, and to impossible places. Then they discover an ancient tree, massive in size, and with a scar running across it. Then things start to get truly frightening for them.

The Space Between the Trees is a relatively short read, and the story moves at a very brisk pace that actually serves the narrative really well. Apart from an opening and closing scene, the majority of the book is all one long sequence as we stay with Meera and Mark through their ordeal in the woods, following them on their journey and watching as they try to find a way back to safety and civilisation. I found that reading it in a single sitting to not only be really easy, but it also kept you in the narrative, allowing you to feel the mounting tension, to understand their fears and their panic, and in some ways put you in the characters shoes.

Because everything was told from the point of view of the lead characters there were few answers given as to what was going on, or what was behind things. There was some information, because Mark and Meera figured some stuff out, but there was no grand reveal. And I really liked this. The book leaves you trying to figure out the answers for yourself, and the lingering mystery is a big part of the horror too. I don't know if this will be to everyone's tastes, but as a short horror story this really satisfied me.

Konyu's art style lends itself well to the horror genre, despite it at first not seeming to be the kind of art you'd expect to see used for the genre. Konyu has a pretty simple style, using very easy to understand shapes. The characters aren't packed with detail, the forest is pretty easy to understand as most of the trees are straight blocks of brown rising up out of the ground. Where Knoyu's work really stands out is in the colouring. Colour plays a huge part in giving the art life and flavour, and something as simple as a colour change lets you know that something spooky is coming, or when the characters are safe. Konyu doesn't use flat colours though, and multi layered colours and splashes of motion that are are conveyed as various colours mix give the work a vibrancy that works brilliantly with the more simplified art. It's hard for me to really describe Konyu's art style in a way that doesn't sound like I'm stumbling over my words or not doing it justice enough, but trust me, it just works.

Whilst The Space Between the Trees might not be the longest read, it more than makes up for its brevity by being a wonderfully fun cosmic horror story. There  are just enough answers to leave you feeling like you understand things, without knowing too much, and thanks to the structure of the book you'll find yourself wanting to go back and re-read it again once you understand one of the main conceits, just to see if Konyu managed to make it all work (spoilers, it does!). A perfect spooky read for the Halloween season; just maybe not one to read in the woods.

The Space Between the Trees is available from 21st October 2025 from Titan Comics.

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She's the He - Film Review

 

There is a very long history of trans people, and general deviation from cisnormative societal expectations, being used in fiction, especially in film. These are often done without the involvement of trans people, and with little research into trans identities. It's why the most common depictions of trans people have been as sex workers, murder victims, or killers. Some of the most famous 'trans' people in film are Norman Bates from Psycho, and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, both twisted murderers who are not actually trans even in those stories, but who the public have come to see as transgender. And these negative, incorrect depictions have affected the very real lives of trans and gender non-conforming people the world over as anti-trans laws, restrictions, and hate campaigns are more prevalent now then ever. So it's not only a wonderful thing to see a story about transness created by a trans cast and crew, but using a transphobic bogeyman as the main conceit of the story and showing it for the ridiculous scenario it is.

She's the He tells the story of two life long friends, Alex (Nico Carney) and Ethan (Misha Osherovich), teen boys who go to what seems to be a fairly queer-accepting if odd school (some of the staff's attitude towards the LGBTQ+ students are wonderfully ridiculous). The problem they have is that because they're such good friends, people think that they're a gay couple. Whilst neither of them have an issue with being seen as gay from a homophobic stance, it's hurting their ability to date girls. And so they come up with a plan to help the girls in the school see them as potential matches, they pretend to come out as trans in order to gain access to the girls spaces.

This is where the film plays into the anti-trans scaremongering scenario of cis men pretending to be trans that's used to try and justify banning trans women from women's spaces. But instead of going the same direction as the awful Daily Wire anti-trans film Lady Ballers, it actually becomes a rather sweet story of self discovery as Ethan is surprised to find that she actually connects with the femineity she was at first emulating, and comes to realise that she is in fact a girl.

She's the He ends up taking this fake scenario that has been used to affect real world harm and flipped in on its head to become the basis for a coming of age teen comedy that ends up feeling more genuine, more heartfelt, and more important than most of the big name films in that genre. I think that this largely due to the fact that the film is being created by trans and queer people, people who understand how to handle these themes with more nuance and delicacy, whilst still being able to poke some fun at it and not being preachy; there's still an opportunity to laugh at guys in drag trying to be predatory without painting anyone who doesn't fall into a rigid gender binary as a villain.

The film also stands out for how it uses its cast to subvert gender. There has for a very long time been film and television where a trans woman would be played by a man in drag at worse, or by a cisgender woman at best, for example. Far too often trans people are excluded from taking part in stories that centre us, and when we are included it tends to be as someone who has already come out and transitioned. So to see a film using a trans man to play a cis man pretending to be a trans woman, and a non-binary person playing a closeted trans woman discovering her identity both are both amazing to see. 

The film feels very bright and almost cartoonish at times. The colours are bold and saturated, and there will be bold, neon coloured words and drawings thrown onto the screen for emphasis and to shape the feel of the moment. The film also feels kind of nebulous as to when it's set, and almost feels like it could be set anytime over the last 30 years thanks to a lack of obvious technology and social media, and to the fashion. These elements give She's the He a quality that makes it feel a little removed from reality, one that creates its own kind of world, but one that I think will allow the film to endure a bit more as its not really tying itself down to any one time or place.

She's the He is marketed as a comedy, and it certainly is one, but there's a lot more depth to be found. There are some wonderfully toughing moments as we follow Ethan's journey of self discovery and coming out that I think a lot of trans people will be able to connect with, and that a lot of cis people will be sorely lacking from mainstream entertainment. She's the He manages to do way more than I was expecting, and ended up being an absolute delight.

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System Preference by Ugo Bienvenu - Graphic Novel Review

 

'Information is the future, history is the past. Where data storage is scarce and social media reigns supreme, history is simply deleted. An archivist risks everything to save humanity's greatest works, hiding them inside the memory of the surrogate robot carrying his unborn child. But when he is discovered, the cost of preserving the past may be his family's future.'

We live in a time where we have more access to information than at any other point in human history, though we are seeing restrictions and rollbacks on our rights to access certain things in many places now. There's simply more entertainment, history, and academic texts than a single person could experience in their entire lifetime if that was all they did. But what happens when that ever expanding information reaches a breaking point, when our ability to store and record that can't keep up with its production? This is one of the key questions of System Preference a graphic novel that creates an interesting, and often morally grey future.

We're introduced to this world through Yves Mathon, a young man with a beautiful wife, a child on the way, and a well paying job. However, he's recently gone though the loss of his father, and he's come to hate his work. Yves is an archivist, whose job it is to go through huge data stores, select historical works, and evaluate if they need to be deleted to make more storage space. Whilst this doesn't sound bad on the surface, it means he has to destroy great works of fiction, pieces of art that have inspired and shaped the world to make space for people's fashion photos, and their vlogs about their daily lives. Yves feels like he's destroying the vital pieces of our past so that the inane, almost pointless slop of the modern day can be saved.

Going against regulations, Yves has been stealing copies of these works and sneaking them out of work, uploading them into Mikki, the family robot who also happens to be carrying his unborn daughter; a piece of tech that allows his wife to forgo being pregnant. However, this decision is putting his family at risk, as those who've done similar in the past have simply vanished. So when the powers that be discover what Yves is doing he and his family must go on the run; a choice that leads to shocking consequences for them.

In a lot of ways System Preference feels like a story of two halves, two narratives that could have easily carried their own books, but who work wonderfully here to produce a finished piece that manages to explore some interesting themes.

The first half of the book follows Yves as he puts everything on the line to save pieces of the past, and shows us how sterile the world has become in a lot of ways. Whilst this world isn't as cold and controlled as some dystopian tech futures we've seen in fiction it has a lack of any real hope. We see that the entertainment being produced in this time is soulless, made to order where hairstyles, faces, and actions can be changed in post at the direction of the studios. It's made for no one and everyone at the same time, with no vision behind it, no aim other than to be made. At the same time we see that what would still be considered art, pieces in galleries and shows, are being made simply for money, with the artists themselves admitting they know their work won't last, won't make an impact or inspire. It feels like people are going through the motions of creativity without any real passion or reason to do so.

In this way it feels like System Preference is a piece that's in part taking aim at AI 'art', even if that was perhaps not the intention of Ugo Bienvenu. We live in a time where resources are being used and destroyed so that people who have never wanted to create art, who have never cared to explore learning to do so, to develop those skills can type some commands into a machine and have it spit out flat, fake, soulless 'art' for them. Whether it be still images or videos, this fake art takes from what's come before, what's been created by others who had that passion, who were trying to make something special, and has been recycled into something no one wants. And the internet is being swamped with it, real human art is being pushed aside for this slop, and it's leading to a future like the one Bienvenu has created here.

This half of the book has the most drama, the looming threat that Yves is going to have people come for him, to steal him away in the middle of the night. There's an underlying sense of dread to these scenes, and you can't help but see this future as a sanitised hell, one where any non-conformity, any act of love is seen as other and wrong. And when that hammer does drop the book almost becomes a thriller, with Yves and his family having to vanish, running from pursuers, staying off the grid in order to survive.

However, at the halfway point disaster strikes, and the entire tone of the novel changes. Due to tragedy, Mikki and the baby he's carrying, Isi, are the only survivors, forced to run into the forest to survive. Finding an old home off the grid and long forgotten, Mikki begins the task of raising young Isi, being the parents she's lost.

Things slow down in this half of the book, and whilst we know that the two of them are still in danger that threat moves into the background as we focus on the relationship between this girl and her robot guardian. Mikki does his best to raise Isi, teaching her how to survive in the world, how to cook, hunt for food, care for her body, and to love the wonders of nature. He also shares with her her fathers love of the art that he stole away from deletion, sharing films with Isi, reciting poetry and stories to her. It's a beautiful section, one that continues the theme of saving our history so that it can be imparted to future generations, but also examining if machines, robots may some day be human enough to be able to care for us.

The book doesn't outright say that Mikki loves Isi, and based on earlier conversations in the book it seems like Mikki goes out of his way to tell the reader that he's incapable of love, but if that's true it's hard to lay all of his actions and choices squarely on programming. The bond that forms between this machine and girl feels like love, it feels parental, and you come to care for the two of them greatly.

System Preference is a fairly layered and complex narrative, but it's balanced out with some simple, elegant artwork. Bienvenu keeps things straightforward, with fairly flat, large blocks of colour with minimal use of colours for shading or layering. People and environments are largely big blocks of single colours, and it creates a sense of simplicity, of functionality without passion that fits the tone of the world that Bienvenu has made. This changes in the second half of the book, when we enter the countryside. Here, the trees have multiple shades of green in them, rocks are more than one simple colour, and animals have life to them. Mikki and Isi are still coloured simply, showing how out of place they are, how they've brought some of that sterility of the human world with them. It's a subtle detail, but once you notice it it becomes very obvious, and I think it further adds to Bienvenu's theme of how humanity has lost something of itself.

System Preference is a fantastic read, one that has a lot more to say then you first think, and is a book that even though you can ready pretty quickly in a single sitting, it invites you to go back and read it again, to dive deeper into it and examine what it's trying to say.

System Preference is available now from Titan Comics.

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Night of the Living Dead by John A. Russo - Book Review

 

'The classic film that changed cinema by redefining horror and zombies forever. George A. Romero’s hit movie is reimagined in this novel by John Russo, the co-screenwriter of the beloved flick.

'While visiting their father’s grave, Barbara and Johnny see a man slowly approaching them. Grotesque and ghost-pale, the man kills Johnny. Barbara manages to flee to a nearby farmhouse, where six other strangers have gathered to escape an outbreak of the unburied dead returning to life and attacking the living. This ragtag group struggle to fend off the horde of flesh-eating ghouls. Will any of them make it out alive?'

Night of the Living Dead was a gamechanger in many ways. Not only was it the beginning of the career of one of the most respected names in the horror genre in George A. Romero, but it forever forged a new type of monster in Romero's undead. Instead of the more ghoul-like slave zombies resurrected with magic audiences were given the shambling, flesh eating corpses that most people would think of when hearing the word zombie nowadays. Whilst not every aspect of the creature was locked in yet, and these features tend to change from story to story, you cannot deny that Night of the Living Dead forever changed the horror landscape and created one of the most used monsters to date.

The film became one of the most shown horror films of all time, thanks to a mistake that put the film into public domain immediately. Instead of being a bad thing, this made it so any movie theatre, drive-in, or television station in the world could show it; and this 'mistake' did more to help the film and the careers of those involved in it than anything the filmmakers could have done. With the film coming close to its 60th anniversary, and with zombies being the go to monster in film, TV, and video games for decades now, it feels like a perfect time to dive into the novelisation of the film written by the co-creator of the film John A. Russo.

The book is immediately striking, with a beautiful cover that features the image of the infected Karen Cooper, a character whose shocking turn into one of the undead is one of the more memorable moments from the original film. The black and white image is accompanied by the books title in big, red letters that stand out on the mostly white cover, evoking the black and white imagery of the film itself wonderfully. The back cover is also more than worth pouring over, with some imagery from the film and bold text that feel more like a movie poster then a normal back cover. 

The story itself stays very true to the events of the film, and those hoping to see something new in the pages of this book might be a little dissappointed as there's no alternate scenes or new events and characters added to the narrative. However, Russo does go out of his way to try and add more context to what we have on the screen. The opening scene in particular stands out for this as we get some time inside Johnny's head before he dies, seeing from his perspective and building on what was only really suggested in the film in regards to his relationship with his sister. As the story progresses, however, these moments aren't always found, and there are times where things feel a little light in comparison; which is a shame as the novel format would allow us a much better opportunity to find out how characters are handling things and the thoughts that they don't openly share.

For myself, the book slows down where the film didn't. The opening scene in the graveyard is translated wonderfully, and it's a delight to follow Barbara as her world is shattered and she's forced to run for her life. However, once she reaches the farmhouse and Ben enters the story Barbara is reduced to much more of a background figure, passive and unreactive a lot of the time. I understand that this is because the character is in shock, but the pace shudders to a crawl when this happens, and it almost feels like Russo is just describing what's happening rather than making the moment feel alive a lot of the time. I can't also help but feel that this might be part of why the book is as short as it is, at around 180 pages, as there's little meat on the bones; perhaps because the dead got to it first?

As someone who really enjoys the film though, I couldn't hate the book for simply retelling the movie's events as even with very basic, quick to read prose it's still a great story. Is it as good as the film though? Well, I'd have to say no, as unless you've seen the film a lot, or have a photographic memory, your imagination isn't going to be framing or pacing things the same way that Romero did, and much of the punch and creativity of the final piece is missing here; kind of showing that even a strong story and script can be given more in the hands of a competent director. Weirdly, however, no matter how much I tried I couldn't picture it in colour, and my imagination presented me with the story in black and white, possibly yet another testament to the iconic nature of the movie being so good that even my brain tried to recreate it without colour.

I enjoyed Night of the Living Dead, and thanks to its short length it didn't take long to finish. It made for a fun way to start the Halloween season, ushering in October with the book, and for those who are fans of the work it'll make for a nice read. The new edition from Titan Books is also gorgeous, and if you're looking to get a copy you should definitely grab the hardcover while you're able.

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