COMICS AND GRAPHIC NOVELS
STEVE TOASE PRESENTS HIS LATEST PICKS FROM THE WORLD OF SEQUENTIAL ART
Tiny Acts of Violence
Martin Stiff Comic Toolbox, 2020
Hb, pp224, £23.99, ISBN 9781838131203
In terms of fantastic fiction the German Democratic Republic is an underused setting. We’re more used to encountering East Germany in spy stories than horror stories, yet the sense of paranoia and betrayal, and the complex relationship of citizens with the state (such as in the film Good Bye, Lenin!), makes it a perfect location for horror fiction.
We see all these elements coming into play in Martin Stiff’s latest comic. Tiny Acts of Violence focuses on Sebastian Metzger, a teacher, ex-officer of the Stasi (the DDR’s omnipotent state security apparatus), and very damaged person. Something is stalking Metzger, a figure glimpsed by reporter Astrid Kruckel, who is dragged further and further into Metzger’s orbit.
The comic is intercut with one of the Grimm Brothers’ fairytales. This story of two siblings really captures, for me, the theme that seems to be at the comic’s heart: the damage that can be inflicted on families trying to survive in a city perfectly described by Stiff as “like a coil of wire. It turns its citizens into magnets. It pulls them into conformity.”
In both art and storyline, Stiff perfectly captures a sense of the hidden, whether that is the unexploded bomb under the street, the informer at the kitchen table, or the stalkers in the shadows: you can almost taste the cloying paranoia in his portrayal of East Berlin.
Complicity is a big theme here, as well as the monsters that complicity can create, both social and metaphorical. The artwork embodies a claustrophobic sense of the narrative closing in, an effect enhanced by very specific colour choices. One of my favourite examples is on the first double-page spread. Over a series of six panels, a smear of blood transforms first to brick, then the lesions patterning Metzger’s body, against a background image of the barbedwire-topped Berlin Wall. People carry the city within them, silent and hidden, and Stiff teases out their secrets and conflicts.
I’d highly recommend this comic, which manages to be an effective monster story as well as a social examination of living under very attentive state mechanisms.
Monster MACS
John Reppion and PJ Holden Twitter.com/@Monster_MACS, www.patreon.com/holdenreppion
Anyone who follows #folklorethursday on Twitter will almost certainly have seen John Reppion and PJ Holden’s small comics based on different folkloric themes. This has proved so successful that they’ve started a new ongoing fortean series aimed at younger readers. Monster MACS follows the adventures of the Macintosh Area Cryptozoological Society (made up of Li, Evie, Biko, and Fort the dog) as they search for strange beasts in Macintosh.
As of writing, only one issue has come out (John and PJ are posting them every Saturday), but I can report that the artwork is lush, with just the right balance of humour and mystery to introduce your children to the joys of cryptozoology and forteana. While they will be sharing the comic via Twitter, as with any of these independent comics, it’s good to support the creators, and you can do that via Patreon, where you’ll get a chance to see the comics before anyone else, plus access to sketches, scripts and so on.
Nicnevin and the Bloody Queen
Helen Mullane, Dom Reardon
H1 (Humanoids), 2020
Pb, pp128, £14.99, ISBN 9781643377131
On one level, Nicnevin and the Bloody Queen is a coming of age story, with all the touchstones you’d expect from such a tale: school exclusion, family angst, teenage crushes and boredom – yet there is so much going on here. Following the aforementioned exclusion, Nicnevin, her mother and younger brother Gowan, travel to Yeavering, Northumberland, for a summer in the mother’s family home.
While this might be set up to play as a fish out of water story, the connections between the family and the landscape are deep – and what a landscape it is, beautifully captured in the Dom Reardon’s art and Lee Loughridge’s colourwork. Both bring Helen Mullane’s storytelling to life. This is a tale that entwines and entrances, weaving together modern life, folklore, and nature red in tooth and claw. It’s elegantly paced and, from the first appearance of a bisected barghest crowned with mistletoe, visceral and uncompromising.
To bring together so many themes is no easy task, but the creative team have produced a comic that will appeal to those who love to see the darker side of folktales brought to life. Highly recommended.
Trad Stories
Lex Lamb www.tradcomic.com, 2020
Digital, 40pp, £10
Trad Stories is a joy, packed with enough symbology, forteana and general weirdness to delight readers of this magazine. Trad is a ghost, or an interdimensional being, or a god (though certainly not omnipotent). At times his decisions seem callous, but Trad just does.
Many forteana topics appear in the nine stories Lex has collected in this volume, from the strangeness of electricity pylons, to underground tunnel networks built by the Manhole Guild, mysterious musical notes, modons, and otherworldly lights. As well as Trad, Lex includes a supporting cast filled with tourists, researchers, musicians, airmen, and Accidental Death.
Trad Stories strikes me as surrealism in the truest sense. Even after two sittings, each one a pleasure, I’m sure there is so much I’ve missed that it definitely warrants spending more time with Trad as he passes through the vast number of worlds he inhabits.
Early Haunts
TW Burgess, Mike O Brien, David Romero, Bri Neumann www.kickstarter.com/projects/manoghosts/early-haunts-ahorror-anthology-of-early-ghost-stories/
Digital, 110pp
Early Haunts, containing stories adapted by TW Burgess, is a lovely thing. The collection presents a series of ghost stories, each with an introduction explaining how they influenced later writers. The book opens with ‘The House in Athens’, a story attributed to Pliny the Younger, before going on to ‘The Death Bride’, ‘The Wild Huntsman’, and ‘The Tale of Dish Mansion’. Although the stories have been adapted by Burgess, each has a different artist and its own distinct character; even the lettering has been tailored to the particular story. The short essays link the tales to works by Dickens, Mary Shelley, Washington Irving and Koji Suzuki. These are just the right length – informative without overpowering the stories. If I had to choose a single piece of art, it would be the visceral portrayal of ‘The Death Bride’ on the cover page for that story.
The finished volume will also include panels which become animated using a free app. As I write, the Kickstarter is underway, so there may be more content as the project hits its goals. The weblink above is probably the best way to keep up to date with the evolving project.