More Comics Please! Issue #8

More Comics Please! is a space for comic book reviews: think of it like a friend telling you about their latest read! In honor of October, this month’s issue is all about horror comics for Halloween, all by queer and/or trans creators! We’ll be taking a look at Shades of Fear Horror Anthology, Let Me Out, and Through the Woods.

Blood, body horror, abuse, vomit, gore, graphic violence, murder, child abuse, invasive thought reading, violent institutional ableism, murder of disabled youth, clergy, Catholicism, death, guns

Shades of Fear Horror Anthology started life as a Kickstarter project and blossomed into a gorgeous 179 page compilation of perfectly creepy, beautifully illustrated comics from ten different artists.

What It’s About

“Shadows flitting from the corner of your eye beneath the neon of fluorescent lights, the visceral red beneath your skin that protects you from the outside world, the lush green of the dark forest that surrounds and beckons to you. Shades of Fear is an anthology of subtle, psychological horror comics with a focus on emotional and evocative color.

These stories will show you the horror of loss and sacrifice, of what lurks in liminal spaces, and of the unknowable that lies just beyond the veil.”

15 artists and editors contributed to this creepy anthology:

What Worked for Me

✦ The artwork in this is just stunning! The comics in here truly felt luxurious– the artists reveled in color and textures, brush strokes and line work throughout the pages, and it feels like a feast for the eyes every time I read this beautiful collection.

✦ I loved seeing multiple kinds of disabled people in here! I think disabled horror isn’t something explored enough in mainstream media (I’m not referring to when disability is used AS the horror but instead when disabled people are the storytellers and main characters), and I don’t think it’s any coincidence that Ashanti Fortson’s story The Hue of Heaven was one of the ones in particular that sent chills up my spine with its ableism-centric horror. Drawing upon real life is such a strong way to tell the story, and Fortson’s inclusion of racial dynamics and Catholicism make it all the more of a gut punch.

✦ That’s something I noticed with a lot of these stories– a grounding in the horrors of real life that seep into the pages and bring all the discomfort that the real life inspiration does. I enjoyed the ways these creators explored these ideas in their work and really sat with the discomfort of each.

✦ I’ve noticed that with short comics– and other short stories in general– there’s more of a tendency to leave an open ending than a firm conclusion to the story, and I think that was very effective in most of these stories. They invite your mind to the realms of “what if” and bring the imagination closer to home than is quite comfortable.

✦ While there were ten different artists– and their own styles– who contributed comics to the book, all ten had great lettering and legibility, which was very much appreciated.

✦ Several of the artists played around with the panel layouts, which I always enjoy, and it was so fun to see the different ways each artist approached their piece. Some went with a lineless panel style while others used more traditional layouts, and interestingly, all but one used line art in their comics.

✦ The types of stories were also an interesting mix; they ranged from exploring the cycle of abuse, isolation, the alarm that can come from how intensely you love someone and what you’re willing to sacrifice for them, ableism, ritual cult sacrifice, the horror of having your innermost thoughts exposed, and more!

✦ As the title alludes to, there is such a rich color array in this book. Even the ones that chose a more muted color palette are still full of depth and flavor, making the artwork pop off of the page and burrow into your mind.

✦ I love the diversity of the characters in this book, too. It’s always refreshing to get comics that aren’t all about white, thin, non-disabled, and cishet characters, and this wider array of people and experiences make the book all the more interesting to read. This is also enhanced by the styles of art each creator used for their story, giving each story its own characteristics and feel, and I just love that!

✦ I also want to make sure to mention here, too, the gorgeous illustrations by Amber Huff and Maya McKibbin who illustrated the interior standalone illustrations and the cover illustration respectively. Simply divine! I love all the details in both, especially the colors and composition in Huff’s three illustrations and the textures and design in McKibbin’s cover art. So exquisite!

What Didn’t Work for Me

✦ While I found a few of the stories truly spine-chilling, a few of them didn’t necessarily feel like horror to me. They were a bit odd or gross (in an intended and satisfying way), but they didn’t frighten me. They were still good stories, to be clear! I also have begun to suspect that comics don’t tend to scare me in the same way as other storytelling forms do, such as oral storytelling or movies, so it could just be me lol.

✦ A couple of the comics didn’t really clarify for me what was going on in the story. Most of them, I understand clearly, but I wish a couple of the others had been able to provide more context as to what was going on so I could understand it a little better.

Overall

I give Shades of Fear Horror Anthology 4.5 out of 5 speech bubbles, rounding up to 5: This gorgeous collection of short horror comics is a wonderful read, filled with a wide range of comic styles and fears explored.

How to Read It

Interested in checking it out for yourself? You can pick up a physical copy at Radiator Comics or Rat Incantati, or you can get a digital copy at Balustrade Press.

Read This Next

If you liked this, check out Artie and the Wolf Moon, Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology, and Young Men in Love: A Queer Romance Anthology

Discrimination against queer characters, transphobia including the use of deadnames, misgendering, slurs, gore, violence, dead bodies, ableist language, involuntary restraint, torture, police, and state-sponsored abduction and murder

Let Me Out is is a great queer twist on the nostalgia for the “simpler times” of the 70’s and 80’s trending so often these days. It has wonderfully expressive art and a devilish story set in the backdrop of a small town content to allow evil until it happens to “one of their own”– and then there is hell to pay for the local group of queer and racialized teen punks who will stop at nothing to protect one another.

What It’s About

“A face-off with the devil! From writer Emmett Nahil (Leatherwood) and illustrator George Williams (Croc and Roll) comes a riveting queer horror story set against the backdrop of an outbreak of ‘satanic panic’ sweeping the New Jersey suburbs in 1979.

When Pastor Holley’s wife, Kelly, is found murdered, FBI agent Garrett takes on the case with local New Jersey Sheriff Mullen. Together they start drumming up a convenient satanic-flavored scapegoat to cover up their own crimes of murder and experimentation. That scapegoat comes in the form of four friends: Mitch, Terri, Lupe, and Jackson. The punks, the queers, and the outcasts. Soon the group becomes the prime suspects of Kelly’s murder. Now on the run from Garrett and Mullen, the group finds themselves in the midst of a deal with the devil themself.”

What Worked for Me

✦ Ugh, I can’t even begin to tell you how much I enjoyed the art in this!! I kept looking at it so much that I would forget to keep reading at points lol. I loved so much about George Williams’ style: his textured brush use, his colors and light, his fun style, and his facial expressions all brought me so much joy.

✦ Williams’ colors in particular were helpful in establishing so much of the mood and setting for each scene. The use of red throughout in places it wouldn’t normally be seen was great for building an ongoing sense of uneasiness and reminding the reader that something dangerous looms close by, even if you can’t see it yet.

✦ I really loved the relationships Emmett Nahil created with the main group of friends. It had a great dynamic that felt well-worn and familiar. I immediately felt drawn into their group and loved how they took care of another and looked out for each other. Nahil also made it easy to understand the nature of their circumstances as individuals and as a group throughout without having to outright state the issues, which I thought was great writing.

✦ Nahil also did an excellent job portraying the way white supremacy, cisheteronormativity, and Christian nationalism seeps into every aspect of a small town life and using anyone who is even remotely queer as a target for distracting from their own misdeeds. The 1979 New Jersey of this comic and the late 90’s/early 2000’s southeast United States I grew up in aren’t terribly different, and the desire of those in the majority to scapegoat and dispose of those they deem violent for being different is all too familiar both in my memories and, unfortunately, to this day.

✦ I loved Williams’ way with the speech balloons, too! I really like the look of balloons without lines around them (which isn’t always easy to make work in a comic), and I felt that Williams did a great job overall differentiating the balloons from the background so that it was still easy to read.

✦ I also really enjoyed the dialogue, especially with the main group of friends. It felt easy and flowed naturally, and there was great distinction in voice between the differing groups: queer and punk, parents, law enforcement, the church officials, the devil, and so on. It really helped emphasize the dynamics of opposition with the queer kids against the world.

✦ The character designs were excellent. I enjoyed the diversity of body types in the main cast, as well as the queer punk teen/young adult aesthetic Williams gave the characters. It felt very organic to the individual characters and the group as a whole.

✦ I loved how Nahil gave us a look at the rage of the friends as well as the care for each other in response to the violence they’re forced to put up with. There were complexities and nuance to the responses that did and didn’t happen, and we always got to see this push and pull between allowing themselves to act upon their anger and not. The angry reactions were validated by the others while also grounded in the reality of not being safe from the consequences of their response the same way their white, cishet peers were from the violence they enacted on the queer, racialized kids. And regardless of how the others felt in response to their friends reactions, they always took care of one another and kept each other as safe as they could.

✦ I enjoyed how Nahil and Williams’ work came together to build suspense throughout the story. The tension and worry of the scapegoating narrative combined with the colors and expressions of the art really worked well together.

What Didn’t Work for Me

✦ I really hated the reliance on ableist language throughout the script. Using slurs throughout a book about scapegoating disempowered people in particular really bothers me. I think writers are incredibly creative people, and I know they can make more creative choices than relying on slurs. I honestly think I would have enjoyed this book more if I didn’t have to read so many iterations of d*mb, st*pid, and imb*c*le throughout.

✦ There were a few times in the story that I became confused and wasn’t sure what was happening or felt that something wasn’t followed through on enough. I think they needed just a page or two more to give us more information and context to better understand what was going on. 

For example, there was a single page that seems to be indicating a flashback in the middle of an irrelevant scene, but there’s no indication about that. It was extra confusing because it seemed to involve a character we knew to be dead. It wasn’t until I was reviewing and looking at this page over and over again that I finally began to puzzle it out. Its placement in the storyline just didn’t make sense and could’ve been a lot stronger in a different place in the story.

✦ The ending of the story didn’t completely fulfill its promises for me. It felt a bit rushed and not entirely clear. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll be vague here, but it felt a bit forced to me when the big moments began happening. I didn’t understand the connection between the [spoiler] and the kids and why it was necessary in the first place. I would have appreciated a bit more information to get it more.

✦ I also felt the explanation between the bad actors throughout the story and the [spoiler] weren’t explained enough for me, too. I needed more information about what was happening, why, and how it came to be.

✦ Related to that, I felt the relationship between the cop and the federal agent could have benefitted from a little more clarity. At the beginning, it felt more like an equal footing situation, but it later was revealed to be one where the cop was directly reporting to the federal agents. Perhaps that was the case the whole time or perhaps it evolved into that, but I think if the reasoning for the actions of the villains in this book had been a bit clearer, it would have been a little easier to understand the dynamics between more of the characters in the story.

Overall

I give Let Me Out 3.5 out of 5 speech bubbles, rounded up to 4: This was a good queer horror story with some great characters and an interesting plot! It has some flaws, but I think it’s great for a queer Halloween read or anytime of the year for horror lovers.

How to Read It

Interested in checking it out for yourself? Here are a few ways you can get your hands on a copy!

Read This Next

If you liked this, check out Darlin’ and Her Other Names – Part 1: Marta, Squad, and Something Is Killing the Children TP Volume 1

Blood, gore, murder, death of a parent, body horror, trypophobia, abduction, domestic violence, child abandonment, being hunted

I was moved to read Through the Woods based on a single short comic with a wolf shared on twitter that sent shivers racing down my spine. That’s all it took to convince me to read it! This collection of short comics is delightfully creepy and perfect for people who love oral storytelling given the similarities of rhythm and other techniques used in these gorgeously illustrated pages.

What It’s About

“Journey through the woods in this sinister, compellingly spooky collection that features four brand-new stories and one phenomenally popular tale in print for the first time. These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong, where you can travel to ‘Our Neighbor’s House’—though coming back might be a problem. Or find yourself a young bride in a house that holds a terrible secret in ‘A Lady’s Hands Are Cold.’ You might try to figure out what is haunting ‘My Friend Janna,’ or discover that your brother’s fiancée may not be what she seems in ‘The Nesting Place.’ And of course you must revisit the horror of ‘His Face All Red,’ the breakout webcomic hit that has been gorgeously translated to the printed page.

Already revered for her work online, award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll’s stunning visual style and impeccable pacing is on grand display in this entrancing anthology, her print debut.”

What Worked for Me

✦ Emily Carroll is a brilliant comic artist and storyteller! Her work really does remind me of the oral storytelling tradition with the rhythm and structure it carries in so many of the stories. This is helped by the fact that she’s chosen to tell stories not in the modern day, so we as the readers get to feel submersed into the story as if around a fireplace as someone tells us a scary story.

✦ Carroll’s stories always start out fairly blasé as if nothing out of the ordinary could possibly happen, and I find myself almost bored by the mundanity of it until she twists around the corner and pops up with a dreadful thought, a sinister question, or a sly voice coming from where it shouldn’t. I think that’s an incredible skill to very quickly establish the normalcy of a situation and then almost immediately turn it upside down on its head and creep the bejeezus out of you.

✦ I love Carroll’s art so much! I love the way she doesn’t limit herself to only one kind of illustration technique, but you can still see the threads that identify the work as hers throughout. Her work invites creativity and draws upon the reader’s imagination, relying on the human mind to fill in the blurred edges and dark corners she uses to convey an immaterial sense of danger.

✦ I love how she plays with panels, even at one point interweaving them in the curves of a speech balloon that is in itself a panel in a way. She doesn’t stick to any one kind of panel design or layout, instead treating the page layout like a kind of character itself, using the story to determine how the panels will be set up to maximize the flow of the pages for each one.

✦ I loved seeing a physically disabled character in here! And it wasn’t a story about pitying a disabled character or infantilizing her either! It was about a girl just like any of the others in the story, and she was an active participant in her own horror sequence. I don’t want to spoil anything, but it was a delight to see the way the character navigated the situation she was put in!

✦ The limited color palettes throughout the book truly were so skillfully used. I loved the stark black and white palette with eye-wateringly bright pops of color in some of the comics and, in contrast, the desaturated colors paired with the pops of color in different ways in other comics. It really supported the stories themselves, enhancing the mood and unsettling feelings throughout, giving you the feeling that something is dangerously off.

✦ The stories themselves were simultaneously inventive and a play off of old stories, giving that wonderful sense of familiarity I mentioned before. By relying on already established formats of storytelling and archetypes, she was able to exploit that sense of familiarity and turn it into something that can no longer be trusted, leaving you wondering what’s going to happen next.

✦ There’s a couple pages in the end of the book in particular where the wolf of the story forms the shape of the mountains, the lake, and the trees as the girl walks alone through the forest at night that is just impeccably and beautifully done! It’s such a clever way to bring the wolf into the story without actually bringing it in an immediately obvious way, and I just adore it.

What Didn’t Work for Me

✦ I can’t think of anything that didn’t work for me in this book. It’s not my first reading of it, and it was just as much a delight reading it the second time around as it was the first! I’m really glad to know that she’s recently published a new graphic novel called A Guest in the House so I can follow this read up with some more of her work. 

Overall

I give Through the Woods 5 out of 5 speech bubbles: This is truly a fantastic collection of short and creepy comics that’s perfect for anytime of year, but especially on a cozy fall night! Highly recommend giving this stunningly illustrated comics collection a read.

How to Read It

Interested in checking it out for yourself? Here are a few ways you can get your hands on a copy!

Hardcovers provide higher royalties for writers and illustrators, but a royalty is a royalty, so go forth knowing your purchase will support them either way!

Read This Next

If you liked this, check out Mage and the Endless Unknown, Beechwood Helm, and Wolvendaughter

That concludes this month’s issue of More Comics Please! What did you think of today’s comics? Have you read any yourself? Are you itching to go check these out now? Let me know in the comments!

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