Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons #1 – Comic Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

‘Here there be dragons’ is a phrase that will conjure very specific images, of old maps and charts with monsters drawn in the corner, with the phrase written below to indicate unknown dangers and threats. Whilst this phrase is something of an anachronism, it has been around for centuries, and has been used throughout fiction. And it seems that now it’s the turn for one of the greatest monsters ever made to appear on such a map: Godzilla.

Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons is a historic set story, taking readers back hundreds of years to the British controlled Caribbean of the 1500s, where pirate Mr Hull is awaiting execution for a list of crimes. However, in a bid to delay his death, and possibly prevent it, be offers his captors a tale that can lead to a hoard of fabled treasure, and the hidden mission of English sailor Sir Francis Drake. Thus, we’re treated to flashbacks of pirates, navies, and the fabled Monster Island, as Hull tries to buy his life with his story.

The premise of Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons is one that I’m surprised isn’t used more. Godzilla and his fellow Kaiju are a staple of the times that their films were made, with stories set between the 1950s and the modern day, and it’s not unusual to see stories set in the future (usually some monster-created post-apocalypse future). But you rarely see these iconic monsters in the past. Perhaps it’s the idea that Godzilla was an unknown quantity when he debuted in the ’50s that puts people off setting stories earlier than that but it seems like a big missed opportunity. This book seems to be trying to cash in on that.

And for the most part it really works well. A good portion of the book plays out the way any kind of historical pirate story would, and it’s not until we see the image of a ship’s course being shown on an old map that has monsters such as Mothra, King Ghidorah, and Rodan dotted around it that you’re reminded that this is a Godzilla story. And I liked that. I liked that the story didn’t feel the need to throw monsters onto the page as soon as possible and instead relied on making a decent story to keep the reader interested. And it is an engaging and interesting narrative that ends in such a way that you want to be able to pick up the next issue straight away.

The book’s art, by Inaki Miranda and Eva de la Cruz, fits this setting very well. The characters and the environments have a realism that’s needed for these settings, and if you ignored the pages with monsters on them it could easily be a story about pirates in the real world. Everything feels perfectly normal and sane, which makes the inclusions of the abnormal all the more jarring and outstanding.

Whilst the scenes of Hull being interrogated in his cell, or images of ships fighting through rough seas look fantastic, it’s the pages where the art team are able to get a bit more creative that really stand out. There’s a page early on where the image has a brave sailor at the top, has Godzilla’s curling tail breaking the page in half, with a shackled pirate sitting in front of the shape of a compass over Monster Island beneath, and the bottom of the page is filled with treasure that looks absolutely fantastic, and sells the concept of the book perfectly. Plus, the design of the Godzilla-stamped gold doubloon is top tier stuff, and something I want in real life.

Whilst the art team has gone above and beyond on this book there is one tiny thing that does let it down a tiny bit (though I’m not letting it affect my scoring). The book is set in 1556, and Hull is telling a story about Sir Francis Drake leading his circumnavigation of the globe, and how it’s a cover for him going to Monster Island. But that doesn’t fit the timeline for Drake’s life at all. Drake was born in 1540, making him 16 at the time of this story, and he didn’t do his first circumnavigation until 1577, and wasn’t knighted until 1588. It’s a small detail, but one that history buffs will pick up on, and does take you out of the story somewhat. A simple change to the date where Mr Hull is telling his story to something like 1596 would eliminate this issue, and I did end up checking and rechecking the date given to make sure I’d not misread it.

Despite the issue with where this story could fit in history, Godzilla: Here There Be Dragons is an incredibly fun and inventive book with a solid first issue. I was instantly intrigued by the concept, and found the execution to be very well done. I’m looking forward to seeing where the next part of the story takes things.

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Hailstone by Rafael Scavone - Graphic Novel Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Hailstone, written by Rafael Scavone, with art by Rafael de Latorre and Wesllei Manoel, takes readers back in time to a small Montana town in the 1860s, where a long winter has set in, making life hard for the residents. Not only do the people of Hailstone have to deal with a lack of food, they also have to look on as the soldiers in the nearby munitions and equipment factory set up just outside town are well taken care of. Added to this, a rash of disappearances has begun. Some in the town suspect that the nearby Niitsitapi people (members of the Blackfoot Nation) are responsible for the lost townsfolk, and tensions are mounting.

When a young woman vanishes when out foraging for food, the sheriff, Denton Ross, and his half Niitsitapi deputy Tobias head out into the frozen woods to try to find signs of the missing girl. However, when something mysterious appears and saves them from a pack of wolves attacking the search party, Denton begins to suspect that something unusual is going on around Hailstone. Haunted by the disappearance of his own son, Denton is determined to seek out the truth, no matter what.

As soon as you pick it up it’s clear that Hailstone is a book wreathed in atmosphere. The eerie yet beautiful cover image of Denton Ross on horseback in the desolate, snow covered forest, his face obscured in shadow as his breath fogs in front of him, is stunning, and beautifully establishes the look and feel of the book. This is a book that’s dark in tone, yet bright in how it looks. The pages are filled with the snow covered Montana backdrop, and white is used frequently throughout; yet despite this the book feels oppressive and tense the entire time.

Rafael Scavone sets this tone well early on, with the opening scene of the book depicting a young woman, barely more than a girl, out in the frozen forest searching for anything that can provide enough sustenance to keep her and her family alive during the cold months. The sense of isolation, the desperation of having to scavenge for pine cones because there’s nothing else left to eat, makes the scene feel dour despite the smiles on the character’s faces. This is the only real moment of joy in the book, and from here on out the sense of despair and tension will only mount as Denton and Tobias search for answers. The fact that the soldiers just outside of town refuse to help, and their commanding officer doesn’t even seem to care, adds to this feeling of hopelessness, like Denton is raging against the inevitable.

This is where the horror of the book comes in, the feeling of being unable to do anything. It’s clear that Denton and Tobias are men used to helping their community, who try to do the best they can for the people they’re sworn to protect, and that being unable to solve this issue causes them deep distress. It’s a feeling that I think most readers will be familiar with, that sense that no matter what you do you can’t win, and seeing it here, worming its way through this mystery, makes this an uneasy read at times.

Hailstone also does a decent job at subverting expectations. The book felt like it was telling me a story I’d seen before, and I started to anticipate the eventual conclusion and revelations. But I think it knew that it was hitting a lot of horror conventions, and did so as a way of surprising me when the story went off in an unexpected direction. It’s not impossible to figure out the answers before they’re revealed, but Hailstone at least tries to get you to guess wrong a time or two, and it makes the eventual conclusion that much more surprising and satisfying.

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Dead Mall by Adam Cesare - Graphic Novel Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Dead Mall, written by Adam Cesare, feels like the kind of story that a group of friends would tell each other whilst gathered around a fire at night in a place that they shouldn’t be in – out in a creepy woods, or exploring some long abandoned building. It’s the kind of twisted tale made to get you looking over your shoulder to make sure that there’s nothing creeping up behind you.

Our story begins as a group of teenage friends break their way into the Penn Mills Galleria, an old shopping mall that’s been left abandoned and alone. Once a thriving heart of the community, it stands quiet and empty – or at least it appears to. As the group of five teens make their way into the old building and begin their night of drinking and fun, an invisible narrator follows their actions, providing a commentary and trying to gain insight onto their personalities. At first you think that it’s someone inside the building watching them, that it’s one of the shadowy figures lurking in the backgrounds of panels, but after a while it becomes clear that the narrator is the mall itself.

It turns out that Dead Mall isn’t a story about something or someone awful lurking inside an old building, but of a building come to life, twisted by bizarre, cosmic powers into a nightmare location. And the teens soon learn this themselves as the building shifts around them, trying to separate them, trying to herd them where it wants. Unfortunately for the teens, the mall is also home to twisted, monstrous creatures that were once lured in like them, now hunting them through the halls and abandoned stores. Now the group will have to try to find a way out before they’re killed, or before they become more of the mall’s residents.

One of the best ways that I can perhaps describe Dead Mall would be the sifting changing reality of a nightmare, mixed with Hellraiser. Instead of a puzzle box, however, the mall itself is the conduit, the thing that summons nightmarish beings, and transforms those it captures. The creatures that inhabit Penn Mills Galleria are very twisted, and some of them could easily be lifted from the page and dropped into a Hellraiser movie with little to no changes to their designs and fit right in. And these similarities mean that the weirdness of the story is easy to digest, because it’s a concept that’s familiar. Getting on board with the concept is done quickly, and you’re then able to delve into the details that make the story its own unique entity.

David Stoll’s artwork for Dead Mall is really superb stuff. For the most part the book feels very normal. The characters have nice clear styles and personalities presented through their looks, the environments feel familiar to anyone who’s ever been to a shopping mall, and everything is neat and tidy. It’s when the building begins to shift and change, moving through the decades, that things begin to feel unsettling, and the first time you see one of the twisted creatures that lives there is a truly shocking moment. The creature designs are a stand out part of the book, with some of them having a very twisted kind of beauty to them.

Dead Mall was a surprisingly fun and twisted read, with a story that wasn’t afraid to take a familiar concept and take it in some interesting new directions and just have a blast doing it. If you’re a fan of bizarre, almost disturbing cosmic style horror there’s going to be a lot to this book that will appeal to you.

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Minor Threats by Patton Oswalt & Jordan Blum – Graphic Novel Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

The comic medium has been around for centuries, with stories of heroes and monsters recorded in artwork to tell sequential stories in cultures across the world. But when people say the word comics it often conjures to mind very specific images of modern day superheroes.

Whilst the medium itself is as versatile as any other, able to be as varied in genre and style as any film or novel, people tend to have very specific views on the kinds of stories that comics tell;, and as such, the superhero genre has become big business in comics. Outside of the ‘big two’ (Marvel and DC) you tend to not get as many large universes inhabited by hundreds of costumed characters, and instead get more self contained and specific deconstructions of the genre. Minor Threats from Dark Horse comics and writers Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum fits nicely into this style, as it takes a fun, interesting look at superheroes and their villains.

Minor Threats drops readers into the middle of its own bustling superhero universe, in Twilight City, where costumed heroes and villains are a common occurrence. We meet Frankie, a down on her luck former villain fresh out of prison. Having been raised by her super villain mother, Toy Queen, Frankie grew up using her powers to create any kind of complex machinery she wants to fulfil the role of her mother’s side-kick as Playtime. However, having spent the last few years in prison she’s trying to go straight, to find solid work, and prove to her ex that she can be a decent mother to her young daughter. But, not many places will hire a meta-human former con, so Frankie ends up serving drinks in a dive bar frequented by the crappiest D-list villains around.

Her life is disrupted, however, when a villain comes into the bar cradling the body of his lover, who’s been beaten near to death by the costumed vigilante known as The Insomniac. As the assembled villains ponder why this expert vigilante would turn so violent, news reports come in that the villain Stickman has murdered The Insomniac’s kid side-kick. With The Insomniac on the warpath, killing any villain between him and Stickman, the assembled heroes are trying to find the killer first, leading to a super villain crackdown. Knowing that their lives might be at risk, and their very futures as villains could be over, Frankie dons her former costume and gathers together the loser villains of the city for a mission to take down Stickman themselves.

The concept for Minor Threats is a wonderful twist on the superhero tale that is kind of familiar in a lot of ways. One of the biggest ‘oh my god could you imagine!?’ twists on the superhero formula is turning heroes into monsters. We’ve seen it happen numerous times with figures like Superman, and when done with existing heroes it gets stale quickly, feeling like a bastardisation of their entire identity. Even when people create their own worlds to tell these kinds of stories, such as in Invincible or Irredeemable, the focus tends to either be on the hero turned villain, or the former hero’s friends and colleagues tasked with stopping them. Minor Threats does things different by focusing on not just the villains, but the bottom of the barrel villains.

The main cast of characters, Playtime, the medic Scalpel, the hulking Snakebite, the elderly Pigeon Pete, and the delusional puzzler Brain Tease, feel like throwback characters to the golden age of comics. They’re not interested in taking over the world, they’re not cosmic level threats, and none of them really have any powers that make this flashy or deadly. They’re barely above hired goons in the hierarchy, and are either hanging on to their lost glory days, or simply tying to move on. In a lot of ways they reminded me of the Flash’s Rogues, a group of bad guys out to make money, with their own codes, and lines that they won’t cross; and that makes them the perfect kind of group to follow in a more brutal comic world.

There’s even a part at the start of the book that talks about ‘the alien invasions, the time travelling despots, and the secret multiversal wars’, poking fun at several stories from the big two publishers, as well as the evolution of superhero stories in general. Minor Threats feels like a celebration of older style comics, ones without end of the world stakes, without the big events and massive cross-overs, where you’ve got two people in brightly coloured costumes facing off against each other, both knowing that neither is going to try to kill the other. And it does this wrapped in a modern package of brutality, gore, and violence. This is a very difficult thing to manage, yet the writing team manage to walk this line perfectly, and strike the tone needed not just to make the story work, but to make it truly delightful.

Speaking of the writing team, Jordan Blum is no stranger to writing in the superhero world, having written for characters such as Venom, Spider-Man, the X-Men, and MODOK. And, speaking of MODOK, his MODOK Head Games co-writer (and MODOK voice actor) Patton Oswalt is also working on the book. Oswalt is no stranger to comics, having worked behind the pages of several books over the last twenty years, as well as appearing in comic projects like Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Sandman, and Big Hero 6: The Series. It’s clear that both writers know the genre well, and hold a lot of reverence for it, and much of that love comes through in the writing.

The book’s art, by Scott Hepburn and Ian Herding, looks fantastic, and wonderfully merges the bright flashy costumes and gadgets of the superhero genre with the grimy gritty realism of everyday life that perfectly sells how crappy these characters and their lives are. One of the best parts of the book is looking at the wonderful details that are put onto the page that help to bring more life to the world and add context, such as characters like Brain Tease having clear straps and clasps on his helmet, and a suit that looks worn and stretched in places like something you could make at home, whilst the bigger heroes and villains look flashier and sleeker. The moments with action also work fantastically well, and there’s one delightfully strange scene where the art team get to try different looks and styles that feels truly special.

Minor Threats is a book about superhero comics, by people who love superhero comics, for people who love superhero comics. It’s got plenty of nods and winks to the characters and worlds of places like Marvel and DC, yet never feels like it’s poking fun at it or making it out to be silly. And even more surprising, it ends up being a world that you want more of come the end, and could easily see becoming its own universe if the creators wanted to, thanks to how well crafted and realised everything is. This is not one to miss out on.

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Samurai Reincarnation (1981) – Blu-ray Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Kinji Fukasaku is a name that may be familiar to fans of Japanese cinema, with the director having racked up a number of hits in the yakuza crime genre such as Graveyards of Honor and Yakuza Graveyard, though he might be best known for the astonishingly popular action thriller Battle Royale. And whilst Fukasaku is clearly well versed at crafting gritty modern day movies packed with violence, he also turned his hand to historical fantasy with Samurai Reincarnation in 1981, which like Battle Royale saw him adapting a book to the big screen.

Samurai Reincarnation tells the story of a Christian rebellion in Japan, an uprising that was brutally destroyed, loosely based on the real-life Shimabara Rebellion of 1637 which saw 37,000 rebels beheaded. This is where the film begins, in a field of the dead, with heads jammed onto spikes, and some cut in half to make it look like more people were killed. The spirit of one of the dead, the warrior Shirō Amakusa (Kenji Sawada), denounces God for allowing the slaughter of his followers, and instead pledges his soul to Satan, promising to bring evil to the land if he’s allowed new life in pursuit of revenge. Thus, Shirō returns to the land of the living as a demonic revenant, and sets out to recruit others to his cause.

The first half of Samurai Reincarnation follows Shirō as he travels from place to place, recruiting the dead and dying to his cause. He seeks out Gracia Hosokawa (Akiko Kana) the wife of a samurai betrayed and killed by her husband, Musashi Miyamoto (Ken Ogata), the aged warrior desperate for youth so that he can keep fighting, and a murdered rapist looking to cause more terror. Those that he recruits make for an interesting mix, as some come across as lost souls led down a path of darkness and corruption that they would never normally choose, whilst others are gleeful in the pain they cause in life. This part of the film is perhaps the oddest, and the least well paced, as we spend a good deal of time with each of these recruits and get their backstories as Shirō  makes them his offer.

The second half of the film focuses on Jūbei Yagyū (Sonny Chiba), the son of the rival of Musashi Miyamoto, an eye-patch-wearing warrior who keeps encountering the demonic warriors, and whose friend has been seduced by them. With Musashi Miyamoto determined to come after his father, and with the demon warriors spreading terror across the land, Jūbei seeks out the legendary swordsmith Muramasa (Tetsuro Tamba), who can forge a blade that can kill even demons.

Thanks to the first half of the movie unfolding in a way that feels more like an anthology of connected stories than a single cohesive narrative, the latter half of the film changing its style feels like something of a shock. The change from multiple stories to a single narrative, and the shift from following the villains to focusing on the hero of the piece does end up making the movie feel slightly odd, almost like it’s two different projects pasted together. Having never read the novel that the film is based upon, I can’t say if this pacing is due to the structure of the book, and if author Futaro Yamada structured the original story this way. Having both watched Battle Royale and read the book, Fukasaku did seem to take pains to keep a similar structure there, so it’s not impossible that this is the reason for the odd structure here.

That being said, the latter half of the film is easily the best, and Chiba is great in the role of Jūbei Yagyū, a character based upon one of the most famous samurai in Japan’s history. It’s possible that folks watching Samurai Reincarnation for the first time will be familiar with the character of Jūbei Yagyū, thanks to him being used in a dozens of stories over the years ranging from film and TV, to comics and video games. Chiba himself would play Jūbei Yagyū across four feature films, a television movie, and 91 episodes of TV. But, he isn’t the only character here to appear in other stories, with both Miyamoto Musashi and Muramasa being figures that have lived on across the centuries in folk tales, and in film, TV, and other media in the modern age. Thanks to the use of familiar names Samurai Reincarnation does feel somewhat more accessible, which helps when dealing with the opening half of the movie which does test the audience’s endurance to stick with it.

Samurai Reincarnation is a pretty dark film, and this is reflected in the violence of the action scenes. The film has some great set pieces, and the fight choreography tries to straddle the line between the impossible and realism. There are some moments that feel fantastical, largely due to the demonic combatants, yet it still oddly feels entrenched in the real world too. It manages to ground the supernatural elements in a way that feels effortless, and results in a film that often pushes the line between what’s expected and the shocking, which feels very much like Kinji Fukasaku.

The new release from Eureka Entertainment offers a new restoration of the movie in high definition, and the film looks great thanks to this, with some absolutely gorgeous visuals. The film comes in both the original Japanese audio, and with the option for an English dub, alongside a full length audio commentary from Tom Mes, an expert on Japanese cinema. There’s also a long interview with filmmaker Kenta Fukasaku, the son of director Kinji Fukasaku, that’s full of interesting information about both this film and Kinji Fukasaku’s career.

Samurai Reincarnation is not one of the easier films of Kinji Fukasaku that I’ve watched. Whilst technically well crafted and interesting it does take a long time for the film to really grab you, and the odd pacing in the first half does end up leading to a film that feels very hard to connect with. For those that stick through the rocky beginning however, there’s a solid supernatural samurai movie to be found here.

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Girls of Little Hope by Sam Beckbessinger & Dale Halvorsen - Book Review

 

'A chilling and eerie tale of monsters, teen angst and small-town America for fans of Stranger Things, The Thing, and the 1990s. Three girls went into the woods. Only two came back, covered in blood and with no memory of what happened. Or did they?

'Being fifteen is tough, tougher when you live in a boring-ass small town like Little Hope, California (population 8,302) in 1996. Donna, Rae and Kat keep each other sane with the fervour of teen girl friendships, zine-making and some amateur sleuthing into the town’s most enduring mysteries: a lost gold mine, and why little Ronnie Gaskins burned his parents alive a decade ago.

'Their hunt will lead them to a hidden cave from which only two of them return alive. Donna the troublemaker can’t remember anything. Rae seems to be trying to escape her memories of what happened, while her close-minded religious family presses her for answers. And Kat? Sweet, wannabe writer Kat who rebelled against her mom’s beauty pageant dreams by getting fat? She’s missing. Dead. Or terribly traumatised, out there in the woods, alone.

'As the police circle and Kat’s frantic mother Marybeth starts doing some investigating of her own, Rae and Donna will have to return to the cave where they discover a secret so shattering that no-one who encounters it will ever be the same.'

I have a fair few books sitting on my reading pile, books that I've picked up to review long enough ago that by the time it's come to actually sit and read them I've kind of forgotten what the blurb was. This, often leads to pleasant surprises when I delve into a book that I sometimes don't even know the genre of. I agreed to review them, so I know that they at least sound like something I'm going to like. Girls of Little Hope might be the best time I've ever had with having picked up a book I've wanted to read and having forgotten what it's going to be about, and going into it without any foreknowledge is absolutely the best move to make. So, if you want a fantastic, surprising experience go grab a copy now and stop reading this review; otherwise, keep reading to find out more.

Girls of Little Hope begins with one of the most frightening experiences that a parent can go through, as three teenage girls vanish from their homes in the small town of Little Hope in the mid 90's. After being gone for three days, two of the girls, Donna, and Rae, return naked and screaming for help on the outskirts of town. Their friend, Kat, is still missing though. The girls seem to have little to no memory of what happened to them, and are unable to give the police much information to work with in their search for Kat. However, it's soon revealed that the girls are hiding something, and that more than they're letting on happened out in the woods.

As Donna and Rae try to fit back into their old lives after having gone missing, the rest of the town concentrates on trying to find Kat. Kat's mother, Marybeth is determined to find her daughter, and begins to suspect that the other two girls know more than they're letting on. With the search continuing to bear little results, Marybeth starts to take matters into her own hands.

The first half of Girls of Little Hope is a fairly normal mystery thriller story. Three girls go missing, two come back; where's the third girl? It's the kind of story that you've seen a dozen times before in film, TV procedurals, and in crime novels. Some folks have a secret, and that secret will come out. And, because I'd forgotten everything I'd read about this book I assumed that this was what the book was, that it was going to be fairly normal. And I was very much enjoying that.

The book spends a great deal of time letting you get to know the three girls, how their friendship formed, how they relate to each other, and why they feel like misfits in their quiet, sleepy community. Their characters becomes a huge focus, and you end up getting dragged into the story of Rae and Donna trying to put their lives back together. I loved seeing the relationship that Donna had with her dad and how past trauma's had formed a unique family unit; and resulted in a young girl determined to rebel against a system and way of life that she saw as unjust. This also acted as a strong counterbalance to Rae, who on the outside seemed to have the perfect life with parents, a sibling, a decent house, and a strong religious community around them. Learning that this was a thin veneer, and that Rae is living in an abusive household made you come to care about her very quickly.

We even learn a lot about Kat, even though she's not present in the narrative, thanks to her friend and mother constantly thinking about her, and small snippets taken from the pages of her diary. It's interesting to see the two sides of Kat that we get via this method. Her mother builds a picture of her sweet daughter having lost her way in her teens, turning her back on her beauty pageant hobby and, in her mothers view, wrecking her future prospects by gaining weight to rebel. Meanwhile, via her friends and her diary we see that Kat is flourishing as a teen, embracing parts of herself that she loves and wants to nurture, and that her gaining weight isn't some tragedy, but her creating an armour for herself.

As the book goes on we're given a number of possible suspects for who might have tried to harm Kat, there are ideas of where she might be and what might have happened. One of them, the first to be dismissed and the one that seems the most outlandish, is part of the account Rae tells Donna as she begins to remember part of what happened to them. That Kat was attacked by a monster in a cave. This is clearly the ravings of a girl going through trauma, some kind of false memory her mind has created to protect her from the events that really happened. There's no way that this crime story would take a hard turn halfway through with monster... right?

I won't say much about what happens in the latter half of the book, except that this interesting character driven mystery quickly changes tone in one of the most surprising and shocking ways. At least shocking when you've forgotten that the blurb mentions The Thing. The latter half of the book becomes an incredibly tense and frightening experience at times, and it's genuinely hard to try to predict the twists and turns that the authors are going to throw at you next. 

Speaking of the authors, this book is written by a duo. I've read some books by dual authors where you can see the seams, and you can see very different styles from chapter to chapter when the authors split writing duties. But with Girls of Little Hope you'd be hard pressed to find this, and if you didn't know that it had two creators you'd never know. The two of them work very well together, and have clearly spent a decent amount of time working out how to work together in a way that serves the narrative best.

Girls of Little Hope is a hugely enjoyable experience. If you can read it not knowing that there's more here than it first appears all the better. It's like the literary equivalent of watching From Dusk Till Dawn and not knowing that this movie about a couple of criminals becomes a vampire horror half way in, or watching Predator thinking it's just going to be some macho action movie. Keep as much of what this book is about as quiet as you can, but try to get as many people as you can to give it a try.

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Night of the Ghoul by Scott Snyder - Graphic Novel Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

As the title of this may suggest, Night of the Ghoul is a horror book, written by Scott Snyder, with art by Francesco Francavilla. Originally published digitally across six issues, Dark Horse republished the series last October as a three issue tale. Despite having been published twice before it’s possible that this book may have slipped under your radar, but with the new graphic novel release now is perhaps the best time to pick it up and give it a try.

Night of the Ghoul tells the story of T.F. Merritt, a film director from the 1930s. Already quite well known for his work, the director dropped off the face of the Earth following a studio fire that ruined the end of what was set to be his greatest film, Night of the Ghoul. In the modern day, film restorer and movie buff Forest Inman has stumbled across small parts of the film, believed lost forever. Having found the pieces in a back room at the studio he works at, he’s spent time piecing together the partially destroyed negative to try and salvage as much as he can. Having watched half of the movie, he believes it might be one of the best horror films of the era, if not ever.

Forest has become determined to track down the missing director and talk to him about the film, and hopefully find out how it was supposed to end. With the help of his teenage son, Orson, Forest has tracked Merritt to an odd, remote hospice facility where he’s being cared for under a different name. Posing as a solicitor, he manages to get in to talk to the dying director, but what he and his son find in that facility will change them forever.

Scott Snyder is a writer whose work tends to be either very well received, or absolutely hated. Even in the books of his I’ve read I’ve found them very divisive. Stories like Batman: Court of Owls is an enjoyable read that adds a lot to existing lore in fun ways, but then things like Dark Knights: Metal and Dark Knights: Death Metal seem to – how do I say this politely? – sh*t the bed completely. As such, going into this book I was very unsure of what kind of story I’d be getting from Snyder. But only a handful of pages into the book I realised that not only was it really good, but I’d been hooked.

The narrative does a fun thing as it skips between the real world and the rescued pieces of the Night of the Ghoul movie. The movie segments are really cool, presented in a sepia toned black and white way, with rough edges to the panels. When these segments end the pages begin to melt, with the damage to the negative coming onto the page, and the perforation holes becoming visible on occasion to remind you that these segments are from a movie.

Whilst both of these stories run together, and the parts of the film that we get to see don’t just work with the current narrative, but on occasion inform it, these segments would make for a really good story all on their own if the missing parts were included. Snyder has gone out of his way to not just create moments that work for the main narrative but feel like parts of a whole story.

But you shouldn’t ignore the main events of the story. Whilst the film segments slowly reveal the secrets and the lore, the modern day parts of the book have some seriously creepy moments. There are several scenes throughout where something so twisted and disturbing is happening behind the back of one of the characters that it makes your skin crawl. These are the kind of moments that would work fantastically well in a film medium, but Snyder and Francavilla do a hell of a job at translating these scares into comic form.

Speaking of Francavilla, the art on the book suits the horror tone well. In some ways the art feels very simple, as it doesn’t embellish moments with tons of detail, but it never feels simplistic or lacking. It manages to find this nice balance where you get tons of information whilst not over filling the page. It also uses shadows and darkness a lot, creating some bold images that convey tone pretty quickly. The palette also reflect this, with a minimal range of colours, and shadows and shade often being contrasted with colours that really make some of the moments pop off the page. Perhaps the only criticism I could find with the art is that the character of Orson is revealed to be fifteen during the book, but the artwork makes him look closer to twelve, and as such it does feel kind of jarring when his age is revealed as I’d been reading him as much younger.

Night of the Ghoul is, perhaps, the best Scott Snyder book that I’ve read in years. It manages to weave an interesting and engaging tale that feels very pulpy in places and really manages to capture that 1930’s horror feel. It has some genuinely creepy moments, and a narrative that will keep you guessing throughout. If you want a horror story that doesn’t rely on blood and gore, as horror comics so often do, this is an ideal read.

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The Black Demon – Film Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Ever since Steven Spielberg brought the novel Jaws to life on the big screen there’s been a demand for shark movies. Despite being nowhere near as dangerous as the films portray them to be, sharks have ended up capturing people’s greatest fears about the oceans; the fear of being helpless in an environment humans just aren’t equipped to survive in.

Sharks have gone on to represent a primal fear, and it looks like their popularity as a monster of the deep isn’t going away any time soon. Since Jaws we’ve seen regular sharks going after swimmers in films like Open Water, man-made monsters turning on their creators in films like Deep Blue Sea, and we’ve even got prehistoric sharks returning from extinction in stories like The Meg. If you’re looking for sharks, there are plenty of different takes on them to scratch whatever itch you’ve got. They’re even in tornados now too.

The Black Demon begins in the dead of night, at a remote oil rig off the shore of Baja, where a pair of workers are preparing to take a sneaky dive into the waters below. It’s clear that the two of them are up to no good, and that there’s more going on than first appears, and when one straps an explosive device onto part of the rig those suspicions are confirmed. However, we don’t get much of a chance to learn more about them, as something strange begins to happen to the diver as he starts to see things that aren’t really there, before he’s attacked and killed by a shark.

From this intriguing cold open we meet the Sturges family, who are driving to a small town on the Baja cost. Paul (Josh Lucas) works for an oil company that owns El Diamante, the rig we saw at the start, and he’s on his way there to perform a safety inspection. Along for the journey are his wife, Ines (Fernanda Urrejolas), teen daughter Audrey (Venus Ariel), and young son Tommy (Carlos Solórzano), who are planning to spend some time relaxing on the beach whilst Paul heads out to the rig. Expecting to find the quaint little town where they first fell in love, Paul and Ines are shocked to find a ghost town, a place on the verge of collapse where most of the citizens have already left it.

With much of the town’s woes being firmly placed at the feet of the oil company, the Sturges family soon meet animosity from the locals, and Ines and the children are forced to flee for their own safety, jumping on a boat and following Paul out to the rig. Unfortunately for the family, the rig is under attack from a massive shark; one that won’t allow anyone to leave alive. Trapped on board with a pair of survivors from the original crew, they’ll desperately need to find a way to survive, little knowing that their time is quickly counting down.

The Black Demon will likely feel quite familiar to those who’ve seen a few shark attack films. The El Diamante rig’s isolation makes our protagonists unable to escape to safety. The angry locals means that rescue isn’t coming. And the old, half broken rig and literal ticking clock means that they simply can’t just sit back and wait for help. The characters are alone, without help, and need to think of something fast. It’s the kind of scenario you expect with this movie. But The Black Demon does at least try to do a few things slightly differently. The first of these being that this isn’t a regular shark: it’s a megalodon. Megalodon’s are ancient, prehistoric sharks that existed for 20 million years, and died out around three million years ago. The largest sharks to ever inhabit the Earth, they could reach up to 60ft in length, and dwarfed even their modern day cousins, the Great White.

This isn’t the first film to use a megalodon, and The Meg book series became a huge hit for doing so, and whilst that story and its big screen adaptation went out of its way to explain how a prehistoric shark species could still survive and return to our oceans, The Black Demon does not. However, that does kind of play into the second thing that the film does to try and be a bit different: it introduces the supernatural. There is suggestion in the film that the shark has been sent as a punishment by the rain god Tlāloc, and that there’s no scientific explanation for its presence. Whilst this could be chalked up to local superstition (a view Paul has to begin with) the film doesn’t seem to want to give a concrete answer. The shark does seem to have the ability to make people see things that aren’t real, and the film makes a point of lingering on images of Tlāloc at times. It leaves it down to the viewer to decide if this is a prehistoric survivor, or a gods revenge.

Whilst the possibility that the killer shark might be a supernatural being gives the movie an interesting edge, most of the rest of the film ends up feeling like things that we’ve seen before. The script doesn’t seem to want to try anything too innovative, especially with its characters. The characters that we do have are fine, but there’s nothing about them that’s hugely interesting, and even familial strife does little to add drama. Sadly, because the characters do little to stand out or really appear interesting (other than the young Tommy) it means that you don’t care a huge amount about who lives or who dies. Added on to this, there being young children involved seems to lessen the tension somewhat, as you never really feel like they’re going to be in any real danger.

The Black Demon tries to push the killer shark genre in some interesting directions at times, whilst at others it seems to want to play it safe and rely on tried and tested tropes. Because of this, it ends up being one of those films where you’ll be entertained but will likely not come back to it again. Some of its ideas might stick with you, but thanks to the film not doing much with it the project kind of feels like a missed opportunity. Pushing more into the supernatural angle, and making a firm stance on it may have alienated some viewers, but it would have ended up with a stronger final product. As it is, The Black Demon is a decent way to spend an hour and a half, but ends up being nothing more than that.

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Us by Sara Soler - Graphic Novel Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

Us is an autobiographical comic memoir by Spanish artist Sara Soler, which tells the story about her relationship with her partner Diana. What makes her story interesting is that her partner is a trans woman, and this story begins before Diana came out, and charts not only her journey to womanhood and acceptance, but Sara’s own journey of self discovery in regards to her identity.

Before now parts of US were produced as a small fanzine that Sara created for a comic con in 2014. But since then the book has expanded, becoming this new graphic novel. This is the first time that the book has been produced in English, and it offers a whole new audience the chance to discover a lovingly crafted, beautiful looking, personal story about what life is like both as a trans person, and as someone who loves a trans person.

I feel a small disclaimer is needed before going too deep into Us: I am a trans woman. I’ve made no secret of that on this site, and have talked about it a number of times, but thought it would be worth mentioning here as I feel that reading Us felt very different for me than it would to a cis reader, especially one who might not know much about what it’s like to be trans, or the trans experience. My review will absolutely be coloured by my own experience (as would anyone’s review), and I think that I’m going to connect with this book in a different way, but one that made reading Us a very special experience.

Us begins with a couple of pages that gives the reader a lot of info up front; Sara doesn’t bury the lead here. It explains that Diana is a trans woman, that some of the stereotypical experiences of being trans in the media are not going to be present here, that all types of gender discovery journeys and expressions are valid, and gives a little history on the book. After that, we begin with what is to many trans people one of the most frightening and nerve-wracking experiences: Diana’s coming out. Most of the time these scenarios are presented from a trans perspective, so seeing it from the point of view of the person that’s on the receiving end is an interesting change. Sara knows her partner well, and knows when something is bothering her, and slowly teases the information out of her, encouraging her to open up. The way that the fear and the panic around Diana is drawn feels incredibly relatable, that aura of pain and worry that leaks off of you.

This sparks an interesting part of the book – Sara’s own journey. Whilst Diana’s initial coming out doesn’t go very far, and she represses her feelings for two years and pretends to be a perfectly fine and happy cis guy, it doesn’t stop Sara from having to think about what this would mean for her. She begins to question if she’d stay with Diana, if that would make her gay, if there had ever been any signs of her being queer in the past. In some ways Diana’s coming out changed who Sara was, though it wasn’t until Diana couldn’t keep pretending anymore that she came to a firm conclusion about her own queerness.

After this somewhat rocky start, of Diana not knowing if she wanted to come out or not, of the two of them not knowing if they could even stay together if she did, they come to an acceptance that Diana is a trans woman, and that Sara is bisexual, and that their love and relationship would continue.

From here the book covers a lot of the things that you would expect: Diana beginning to medically transition, having to come out to family and friends, having to deal with both open and veiled bigotry, and about finding the kind of person you always were meant to be. But again, this story also has Sara there, going through the same, supporting her partner, and dealing with those same issues. It’s rare to see a duel coming out story like this, and whilst much of the focus is on Diana and her journey the book never forgets to show you Sara’s perspective, and her feelings.

Sadly, as with most trans stories, the book has to deal with some dark things. Diana and Sara’s journey isn’t a smooth one at times, and bigotry does rear its head in Us. It can be hard to write about such things in a way that doesn’t feel full of doom and hopelessness, and talking about experiencing bigotry can easily bring the mood down because it’s an awful experience. But somehow Sara Soler has managed to make these moments not as bad as you’d expect.

Yes, they were painful to read at the time, in part due to having experienced the same and it bringing up those memories, and trans people being targeted by hate is an incredibly common occurrence (I’ve literally received messages on social media whilst writing this very article where I’ve been called a paedophile and a groomer just for being trans). But, thanks to Sara being there for Diana, and thanks to the way the book is presented, these moments are a fleeting speck of darkness in what is otherwise a wonderfully bright and hopeful narrative.

Sara isn’t just the writer of the book though, she’s also the artist. The art on Us is very, very pretty. The artwork on the front cover is absolutely gorgeous, but isn’t what you’re going to be getting throughout the book 100% of the time. There are several moments that have that style, but for the most part Sara uses a much simpler style, with stylised and cartoonish versions of characters. And this style works wonderfully for the story.

Thanks to the kinds of emotions running rampant during Sara and Diana’s story, it could be a lot less fun to draw in a more realistic way then you’re drawing yourself and your loved one in panic mode, going through fear and heartbreak. As such, the more stylised version means that it’s easy to convey these emotions without having to go deep into them. It also means that the flip side is easy to do too, and the moments of pure joy, the times of gender euphoria and love are represented in wonderfully fun and clear ways. And the moments when Sara and Diana break the fourth wall to talk to the reader directly feel right for the tone too. Plus, the colour palette of pink, white, and blue works perfectly too.

Us is the kind of book that brings me very mixed emotions when reading it. The lows feel really impactful, the moments that remind me of my own journey’s stumbles and pains hit hard, but it also means that the moments of happiness and joy grab me too. There’s a lot of love in the pages of this book, not just in how they were made, but in the people this story is about. Sara and Diana are a beautiful, wonderful couple.

Their love story isn’t just engaging, it’s inspiring. With so many people casting loved ones aside when they come out as trans, and with some women who leave their partners for being trans being so disgusting as to call themselves trans widows, seeing a story of such unconditional love, of such deep affection and caring for a trans person is the kind of story we all so desperately need right now.

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The Surviving Sky by Kritika H. Rao – Book Review

 

Originally published on Set The Tape

'High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilisations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. In these living cities, architects are revered above anyone else. If not for their ability to psychically manipulate the architecture, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below.

'Charismatic, powerful, mystical, Iravan is one such architect. In his city, his word is nearly law. His abilities are his identity, but to Ahilya, his wife, they are a way for survival to be reliant on the privileged few. Like most others, she cannot manipulate the plants. And she desperately seeks change.

'Their marriage is already thorny—then Iravan is accused of pushing his abilities to forbidden limits. He needs Ahilya to help clear his name; she needs him to tip the balance of rule in their society. As their paths become increasingly intertwined, deadly truths emerge, challenging everything each of them believes. And as the earthrages become longer, and their floating city begins to plummet, Iravan and Ahilya's discoveries might destroy their marriage, their culture, and their entire civilisation.'

The Surviving Sky is the debut novel from Kritika H. Rao, and tells the story of a married man and woman whose relationship is close to breaking point, and who are trying to find a way to reconcile. It’s also a story about the last of humanity surviving the end of the world on giant floating cities made from plants, so there’s something a little bit more unusual thrown into this well crafted human drama.

The book takes place in Nakshar, one of a number of flying plant cities. At some point in the past the Earth became uninhabitable thanks to Earthrages: massive, destructive storms that move across the surface, destroying all human life that they come into contact with. In order to survive, humanity took to the skies.

Thanks to a specialised group of people called engineers, humans found a way of manipulating plant life, shaping it to their will. These engineers are able to enter a special state called trajection, where they’re able to see both the world around them as it exists, and the life-force and connective pathways of flora. Using these connections, engineers can transform plants into everyday objects, from furniture to the buildings that people live in, and even the floating cities that humanity uses as their refuge.

Whilst this has allowed humanity to survive, it has also resulted in fraught tensions within the last of humanity. The engineers are held up above other citizens, as their survival means the survival of all of humanity. Treated as the best of the best, the engineers have become the leaders of Nakshar; reluctantly sharing a few council seats with the sungineers, the inventors and mechanics of Nakshar.

Iravan is one of the best engineers on the council, able to manipulate plant life in ways others could only ever dream of doing. Despite being one of the best in the city, his marriage has taken a turn for the worse. His wife, Ahilya, is an archaeologist, a profession most see as useless, and is looking into humanity’s past to try to find better ways to exist in the future. Sadly, this often brings the two of them into conflict, especially as she thinks engineers treat those unable to traject as lesser people.

When Nakshar lands on the Earth below during one of the lulls in the Earthrages, Ahilya sets out into the jungle with a small expedition group to study the animal life that manages to survive the massive disasters, hoping to find information that could lead humans to do the same. However, when a disaster leads to one of the group being killed, and the city is forced to take to the sky again, Iravan is accused of being close to becoming Ecstatic, a state in which engineers lose themselves in their powers and become destructive. However, Iravan insists that something is wrong in the trajection, and that it could spell disaster for the entire city. Now he and Ahilya will have to work together to try to figure out what’s wrong, not only to clear Iravan’s name, but to save all of humanity.

The Surviving Sky is one of those books where you have to double check that it’s a debut novel. There are a lot of times where you see an author’s first novels and you can tell that they’re still trying to find their feet, still figuring out the style they want to use, and how to clearly tell their story. Kritika H. Rao, on the other hand, seems to have arrived on the scene with a firm grasp on the kind of writer they’re going to be. This is not a simple story, nor is the world that Rao has created an easy one to describe.

It has a complex system and a very alien way of living that could result in a book that leaves the reader left behind as they try to figure everything out, but Rao is able to make the most impossible and alien feel real and relatable. More established and experienced writers have tried to craft complex worlds like this, and have failed to convey things in as clear and easy to understand a way as Rao does here. Add onto that, they’re able to craft a wonderfully realistic and engaging human story at the heart of the book too, and this is an author whose career you’re going to want to keep an eye on.

Speaking of the human relationship, Ahilya and Iravan are messy people. They’re complex, they have flaws, and whilst they both clearly love each other they also both frustrate each other in a lot of ways too. They’re not one of these romantic couples whose relationship is in trouble who just spend a little bit of time together and fall back in love all over again. No, they have to work hard, they have to get over their flaws and annoyances and learn to look past that at what really matters. Their relationship feels incredibly realistic because there are no easy answers for them here, just like there are none in real life.

The Surviving Sky is a wonderfully creative and interesting story, set in a world unlike any other you’ll have seen before. It’s a wonderful mix of science fiction and nature magic that takes the best of both worlds to craft something wholly its own. It’s also a wonderfully inclusive world, filled with loving queer characters, and is inhabited by people of colour (it’s amazingly refreshing to have a story with no white people in it for once). The central mystery will very quickly draw you in, and the realistic human stories will get you invested. The Surviving Sky is a superb debut novel that is hard to find fault with, and I can’t wait to see what the author does next.

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