OCTOBER COMICS (2015): Ann by the Bed, by Emily Carroll

“Ann by the Bed,” Emily Carroll’s contribution to Youth in Decline’s quarterly monograph series, Frontier, is a comic that will linger with you long after the final page.  Horror is tough to do in comic form.  There are no musical cues, as with film and television, to enhance one’s emotional reaction and add dread or discomfort to a scene.   Any use of gore within the comic medium can never be as visceral as that found in film, and the scare tactics utilized within those other visual media are almost impossible to replicate in comic form.  So, despite rare exceptions, horror doesn’t work in comics.  But if a creator chooses to attempt a horror comic, one is often left with creating a moody, atmospheric narrative as the best approach.  Emily Carroll achieves that brilliantly.

“Ann by the Bed” revolves around the grisly murder of a young girl, Ann Herron, and her family in early twentieth-century Canada, and the urban myth that has come to surround this heinous act.  In later years, it has become a parlor game, of sorts, similar to the Candyman myth or a Ouija board, utilized by older children to scare themselves and their friends.  Carroll interweaves the “true” history of Ann Herron (I place the word true in quotes because I am uncertain about whether Carroll created the history of Ann Herron for this tale, or if it is, in actuality, a true historical happening) with various instances of children playing Ann by the Bed, and the odd happenings that follow these games – often embodied by Ann Herron’s spirit visiting them.

Presenting these disparate scenarios – Herron’s history and the varied children playing Ann by the Bed –adds a sense of gravity to the tale that insinuates itself into your psyche, as you read, ratcheting up the tension slowly even as your mind shifts from reading this as fiction and begins treating it as non-fiction.  Carroll capitalizes on this shift in perspective with the final page, a full-page image that burns itself onto the back of your brain as it lurches the breath from your lungs, leaving you wondering:  Will Ann visit me tonight, or will I be able to avoid dying in my sleep?

Carroll’s art, and the way she deftly teases out the narrative in this story, is phenomenal.  She creates a looming sense of unease that is hard to shake off.  This is one of the most successful horror comics I’ve ever read.  Not only has the impact of the narrative remained with me, but I have also been pondering the craft encompassed therein.  This is a book I want to study a bit more, to try and fully understand how she pulled off this amazing feat.  It’s a rare creator who can imbue a narrative full of static images with such emotion and dread, and Carroll needs to be applauded for that.  She is a serious talent, and one whose work you should seek out (I know I’m going to be keeping an eye out for her comics and do a little digging to find what she’s done before).  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Highest recommendation.

chris

Comic of the Year [2014]: FRONTIER #6 by Emily Carroll

I was familiar with Emily Carroll’s name, but not with her work.  Until this year.  I read her collection, Through the Woods, and was terribly impressed with it.  So when I saw she had done the most recent issue of Youth in Decline’s quarterly monograph series, Frontier, with a story titled “Ann by the Bed,” I decided to check it out.  Am I ever glad I did.  This is easily my favorite comic of the year.

Since reading “Ann by the Bed” a few weeks back, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.  Horror is tough to do in comic form.  There are no musical cues, as with film and television, to enhance one’s emotional reaction and add dread or discomfort to a scene.   Any use of gore within the comic medium can never be as visceral as that found in film, and the scare tactics utilized within those other visual media are almost impossible to replicate in comic form.  So, despite rare exceptions, horror doesn’t work in comics.  But if a creator chooses to attempt a horror comic, one is often left with creating a moody, atmospheric narrative as the best approach.  Emily Carroll achieves that brilliantly. 

“Ann by the Bed” revolves around the grisly murder of a young girl, Ann Herron, and her family in early twentieth-century Canada, and the urban myth that has come to surround this heinous act.  In later years, it has become a parlor game, of sorts, similar to the Candyman myth or a Ouija board, utilized by older children to scare themselves and their friends.  Carroll interweaves the “true” history of Ann Herron (I place the word true in quotes because I am uncertain about whether Carroll created the history of Ann Herron for this tale, or if it is, in actuality, a true historical happening) with various instances of children playing Ann by the Bed, and the odd happenings that follow these games – often embodied by Ann Herron’s spirit visiting them. 

Presenting these disparate scenarios – Herron’s history and the varied children playing Ann by the Bed –adds a sense of gravity to the tale that insinuates itself into your psyche, as you read, ratcheting up the tension slowly even as your mind shifts from reading this as fiction and begins treating it as non-fiction.  Carroll capitalizes on this shift in perspective with the final page, a full-page image that burns itself onto the back of your brain as it lurches the breath from your lungs, leaving you wondering:  Will Ann visit me tonight, or will I be able to avoid dying in my sleep?

Carroll’s art, and the way she deftly teases out the narrative in this story, is phenomenal.  She creates a looming sense of unease that it is hard to shake off.  This is one of the most successful horror comics I’ve ever read.  Not only has the impact of the narrative remained with me, but I have also been pondering the craft encompassed therein.  This is a book I want to study a bit more, to try and fully understand how she pulled off this amazing feat.  It’s a rare creator who can imbue a narrative full of static images with such emotion and dread, and Carroll needs to be applauded for that.  She is a serious talent, and one whose work you should seek out (I know I’m going to be keeping an eye out for her comics and do a little digging to find what she’s done before).  I don’t think you’ll be disappointed. 

Highest recommendation.

-chris

What It Is – week ending 21 December [2014]

With apologies to Dave the Thune (as well as Mike Baron & Steve Rude).

WRITING:

Every day.  1000 words.  That’s the goal.

So, things are a bit slow in the writing department at this time of year.  We celebrate a purely secular Christmas here in the heart of Maine and there are presents to be wrapped, decorations to be hung (finally got the final bits up this week), and specials to watch.  This cuts into my writing, but I did manage to get some work done this week, padding out the 300K words for the year, which is going to make it difficult to equalize next year.  Sure, there’s some wiggle room, but not a lot, especially when one has a full-time job and a family that deserves one’s attention.  Plus there are all those good books and comics to read.  You need to feed the beast if you want to do this.  It’s good to have a bar to reach for, though. 

But, enough lamenting.  Here’s to the magic of Christmas!  When you can believe a man in a red suit can fly all around the world in one night to bring happiness to children at every corner of the Earth. 

READING:

The Wrenchies, by Farel Dalrymple, published by First Second Books.

I’d seen lots of headlines touting the wonder of Dalrymple’s book, and I am a fan of his art, so I figured I needed to check it out.  Sadly disappointed is how I might best sum up my reaction to this.  The settings and scenarios, the art and the color palette especially, the ideas surrounding a lot of this dystopian alternate-reality story are great.  But it was a slog to read, for me.  I don’t know.  It felt, a lot of times, like this should have been a novel.  Other than visualizing this dreary, sad world full of monsters and shadows, there’s no good reason why this was a comic.  Much of the dialogue revolves around explaining the history of the world or the scene on the page.  It’s full of expositional bits that could have been better realized through wordless pages of wonderful illustrations (if explanations were needed at all).  Writers like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman can make text-heavy comics sing in a way few can, and Dalrymple is not one of those creators you come to for his deft hand with prose.  Maybe I missed the entire point of the book, and that’s wholly possible, but I did not enjoy this at all.  If not for the wonderful art, I probably would have returned it to the library without finishing it.

FRONTIER #6, “Ann by the Bed,” by Emily Carroll, published by Youth in Decline. 

Frontier is a quarterly series of art comics featuring a different artist with each new issue.  This most recent one, from Emily Carroll (whose Through the Woods has been getting much-deserved rave reviews), was amazing.  One of the best comics of the year.  In 32 pages, Carroll managed to infuse this short tale with enough atmosphere and dread that when I turned to the final page – which was one hell of an exclamation point – I worried, sans hyperbole, that I would be having nightmares about the main character of this short narrative.  Carroll builds the tension gradually and inventively throughout the course of this short comic and manages to tie it all up in a way that is chilling and brilliant.  Highest recommendation. 

Also jumped back into my pile of classic G.I. Joe comics.  I read issues 51-56 plus Yearbook #3.  These stories take place after the big anniversary issue, number 50, where the Joes attacked Springfield, home to Cobra, and were repelled by Cobra’s newest soldier, a composite from the DNA of the ten most acclaimed soldiers in history, Serpentor.  In these seven issues we see G.I. Joe disbanded, a full-out assault on the Pit by Serpentor, along with Cobra Commander, Destro, the Baroness, et al. that results in the decimation of the Joes’ secret headquarters, the reinstatement of the G.I. Joe team as a nimble, mobile unit with no set headquarter to help avoid future issues like this, Destro and Cobra Commander forced to work together to escape from beneath the rubble that is the Pit, and these two eventually discovering that Cobra Commander’s son, Billy, is not dead but in a coma, which causes CC to reevaluate his life, while back on Cobra Island Serpentor starts up a new plan to sell their Terror-Drome assault bases to third world, Communist countries like Sierra Gordo, in order to help finance Cobra’s plans and lead them to becoming a more above-ground and legal group, which comes with the new Cobra consulate building in Manhattan.  (*phew* … take a breath)  With the revelation of the new Terror-Drome, a disguised Snake-Eyes (in the guise of Flint) is dropped into Sierra Gordo with the plan of being captured so that he might infiltrate the base and learn more about it, which is followed by a rescue mission, led by Stalker, that goes wrong, leading to Scarlett seeking out Storm Shadow (who dropped into the Pit in one of these first issues and got the key to Snake-Eyes’s mountain cabin so that he could get away and contemplate his recent death and resurrection) for an infiltration of the consulate building to finally rescue Snake-Eyes from Cobra – a silent issue redux from Yearbook #3 that also introduced my favorite Joe artist, Ron Wagner, who will go on to draw most of the issues between #57 and 89.

These were some fun comics.  I continue to be impressed at how well they stand up, with thirty years of hindsight.  Larry Hama writes some exciting narratives and rushes through myriad plot point, churning through story in a way that would be unfathomable today, while also managing to include the exposition in a manner that does not bog down the story too much.  And his artistic collaborators in these issues, Rod Whigham and then Ron Wagner, with Andy Mushynsky doing most of the inks, provide imagery that is clear and well-delineated without being too flashy.  An all-around enjoyable experience.

WATCHING:

Continuing with The Americans.  It’s still pretty great and well worth checking out if you’re a fan of exciting action/dramas or Cold War narratives.  Fun stuff.

  

MISCELLANY:

If you’ve not checked out the ITDMODcast (the podcast from In The Mouth Of Dorkness), and you are a lover of movies, you are missing out.  These guys talk intelligently about all types of film, and it’s just like all those conversations you had with your friends while hanging out in the parking lot, or when you all got together at someone’s house.  It’s a blast, and if you don’t watch out you might end up learning something.  The latest one I listened to was their Christmas special focusing on Die Hard (oh, and those other die hard movies; yes, lower case is intentional).  I haven’t seen this film since it first hit theaters.  Like Matt (@TheOmegaDork), I was not a fan of Bruce Willis and having him in the movie turned me off a bit to it, and I never did go back.  But after listening to these guys, I now realize I definitely have to watch this again – if, for nothing else, the way it is structured as a story.  Sounds like there are a large number of lessons I can take away from Die Hard for my own writing. 

SIGN OFF:

And, as always, check out Brad& Matt – mentioned above – and Don McMillan for their own weekly recaps on things comic-y and geeky, and we'll see what's what in seven.  

-chris

FRONTIER from Youth in Decline

I believe I discovered Frontier, the quarterly art and comics monograph series from Youth in Decline, while listening to the podcast Comic Books are Burning in Hell.  I got the initial offering for this new series and it didn’t really grab me.  I was expecting a short narrative comic, but instead it was more a collection of artwork by Russian illustrator, Uno Moralez.  Not that it wasn’t worthwhile, I was just expecting more comics.  So, the series fell off my radar. 

Until I saw that Emily Carroll  recently did an issue (it should be noted that the conceit around the series is that each quarterly issue features a different artist).  I recently read Carroll’s collection, Through the Woods, and was blown away by that.  So, I decided to get her issue of Frontier along with the previous issue, number 5, from Sam Alden.  Am I glad I went back to this well. 

Alden’s offering is an excised piece from his longer work, Hollow.  It’s a haunting tale revolving around older siblings looking back at their life and working to exorcise the demon that haunted, and still haunts, them – a demon embodied as a whirlpool threatening to suck them beneath the water, if they get too close.  There are no easy answers in this short narrative – How real is this horror?  What does the whirlpool mean?  How come it still haunts them, even at this age? – and I like that, a lot.  Discovering that there is more to this story also has me excited.  Now I need to track down Hollow. 

Now, if Alden’s issue was fantastic (which it was), then Carroll’s issue of Frontier, with a story entitled “Ann by the Bed,” is amazing!  Carroll knows what she is doing and is masterful at creating atmosphere in her comics that is unsurpassed by anyone working today – and possibly very, very few who have worked in the medium throughout its many decades.  Her story sucked me in and latched onto my brain with a vigor I don’t often experience when reading comics.  And that final page had me worried I’d be visited by nightmares after I shut out the light (that is no hyperbole, but thankfully I slept soundly).  Carroll is smart enough to understand that it’s not the gore or the surprises that will stick with readers of a horror comic, but the pervasive sense of something bad happening, or about to happen, and she deftly drags you deeper into each of her stories until it wraps itself around you and pulls you under.  Carroll’s comics are some of the best I have read in a long time.

And, getting back to the topic at hand, Youth in Decline has just announced subscriptions for next year’s Frontier series, with books from Jillian Tamaki, Anna Deflorian, Becca Tobin, and Michael DeForge forthcoming.  That is one helluva lineup.  If you like cool comics, you need to get on this now.  Trust me, you won’t be disappointed.