I Heart Skull Crusher 1, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees 1, Helen Of Wyndhorn 1
Three comics people are raving about. And rightly so.
This is wild stuff. Trini is an 18 year old, her parents both dead. She does still have their skulls though, and finds comfort in talking to them. Her main interest, while living in a far-flung shithole of a town in the wastelands, where water is currency, is the gladiatorial sport of Screaming Pain Ball which people are legally required to watch. Her favourite player is Skull Crusher (134 kills to her name) who she has worshipped since childhood.
Trini knows she needs her own team if she’s ever going to get anywhere, but nobody local fancies her involvement, but when news of a national competition in which anyone can enter and the prize is a place on Skull Crusher’s squad Trini knows she needs to act fast. She has saved up enough water to pay the fifty gallons entry fee, a fact she unwisely shares with some boys she’s hoping to join her own non-existent team. Naturally they steal the water instead, having revealed they have a famous retired coach, Blood Bone, on their team, so why would they need her?
AS if that wasn’t bad enough bandits come to her house to rob her. They soon regret that, but she is impressed by their moves and informs them they’re now on her team. As they’re heading towards a big city with plenty of people to rob they agree. The last we see in this pulsating opening issue is them tearing off in some mad max vehicle bound for the tournament, Blood Bone unwillingly tied to the front of the car.
It’s brilliant. On a second printing already. One to follow.
I HEART SKULL CRUSHER - Boom! Box Comics
I HEART SKULL CRUSHER - Forbidden Planet
A serial killer on the loose in the cutest surroundings possible. Our cutesy cuddly bear Sam (possibly Samantha) lives and works in Woodbrook, a pleasant little town where everyone knows your name, unless they’re senile. Sam works in a convenience store and gets on with everyone. It’s an idyllic place. Which is why Sam goes elsewhere to do the killing.
Sam has been killing innocent creatures (no humans in this anthropomorphic story) for twenty years, and getting away with it. Then carnival day comes around, one float being an impressive boat with rigged sails. Unfortunately the sail drops, to reveal to a horrified crowd a butchered corpse.
Sam realises this could spell trouble. (“A major fucking problem.”)
I won’t be buying any more as it’s animals dying, but it is brilliantly done, and the artwork is beautiful. No surprise it’s a word-of-mouth runaway success.
BENEATH THE TREES WHERE NOBODY SEES - IDW COMICS
BENEATH THE TREES WHERE NOBODY SEES - Forbidden Planet
Helen’s a right cow, but she has her problems. We just don’t really know what they are yet.
The tale is told retrospectively, a journalist or author questioning Ms Appleton, now well into her dotage, who once worked as governess of the young Helen, and a murky tale emerges.
Here reminiscences begin in the mid-1930\s when, now employed by Helen’s grandfather, she is sent to some godawful remote town to collect Helen, whose fantasy novel writing father is no longer around. Helen soon proves not to be the sweet sixteen year old she is hoping for, eventually find her sleeping off a drunken stupor in the local police cells.
The prim and infuriating proper Appleton eventually gets the chain-smoking gobshite back to Wyndhorn, a palatial mansion miles from anywhere, where there are just two kitchen staff and a butler, a peevish chap named Joseph.
Helen spends her days getting drunk until they hide the wine cellar key, and the rest of it hiding in plain sight. At night she is different, sorrowfully creeping into Ms Appleton’s bedroom and asking to sleep with her because she’s scared of the monsters outside the house. Ms Appleton doesn’t know what trauma is triggering this because, well, it’s the Thirties. Trauma was barely understood.
One night Appleton is woken by Helen’s screams, and realises Helen is outside. As is some huge demonic monster, which almost gets them before turning away. Ms Appleton notices why, as the grandfather, Barnabus Cole, has returned, complete with broadsword, which is used to behead the demon. For some reason Barnabus is clad in some sort of medical style fantasy garb, so I think we can guess where the tale is going, and where Helen’s dad got his ideas from.
It’s a stylish thing, and nicely wordy, with an intentionally dated visual look.