Echoes

Written by: 

Joshua Hale Fialkov 

Illustrated by: 

Rahsan Ekedal
Released by: 

Minotaur Press

Minotaur is the dark love-child of Top Cow and Image... a long dead imprint recently reanimated in the form of their new horror label. Mind you they haven't officially called it their horror label. They use the phrasing "darker and more nuanced", but I personally think that's redundant, as Top Cow with titles like; The Darkness & Witchblade, is already a pretty dark universe as it is. Anyway, sorry about that history lesson, Echoes is one of Minotaur's re-launch titles. A somber gray & white family affair, steeped in dementia & shaded in serial murder.  

It opens with a troubled man named Brian visiting his father on his deathbed in the cold tomb of the hospital, just after hearing his child's heartbeat for the very first time. As his father starts to slip behind the veil he urges Brian to check the crawlspace in the basement of their old home, the one at 1339 Haymaker. Wide-eyed he keeps insisting, and then immediately passes on. Not wanting to let his father down in death, a grief stricken Brian is compelled to set off right away to honor his father's dying wish. He heads back to the old, empty, house he grew up in. Abandoned by everything but it's run-down furniture; a dusty, threadbare graveyard to the memory's it once housed.  As his anxiety comes to a boil, Brian's reality starts to crack. He's seeing things. His schizophrenia which can be kept in check with the right medication is invading.  His burdened mind is starting to collapse under the weight of the stress of his father's death, and the anxiety over the birth of his new child. His alarm keeps buzzing to remind him. It's his wife calling.  It's time to take his pill. Clozapine to be exact. Sadly the faucet only leaks out a murky, undrinkable sludge.  Running out of time and reality, he starts to look for the basement, for the crawl space... for the dark and evil things hidden there. Tools of his father's secret trade... knives.... knives and.... porno, nudie magazines.  He laughs, relieved, and lays down on his fathers other secret; a bed of children's bones, surrounding a box. 

He pulls open it's lid and sees hundreds of them staring out at him. 

Dolls made from the flesh, and hair, and bones of the girls they were molded in memory of.  His father buried this secret behind a wall, and kept it till his last breath... but Brian isn't so lucky. 

That's the set-up!!  This is only the first fucking issue!!  I just picked the second one up, and I can't wait to crack it's tiny, little, stapled spine!! I have always been a huge fan of black and white art, (remember the "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark" trilogy?) I feel a lot of detail is lost in the coloring process, Whether it's true or not; this is a fine example of visual storytelling. Detailed, excellent use of shading and gray tones that perfectly compliment it's melancholy mood. The way Ekedal (Creepy, The Cleaners, & Warhammer) illustrates eyes is stunning.  You can see the horror, the pain, the sadness, visibly expressed in every pupil. The series wouldn't be nearly as dreary if it were done in full color.  

I found myself captivated by Joshua Hale Fialkov's brooding storyline.  Every panel serves to set the mood. Known for his work on "The Crazies: Motion Comic" which he also worked with Ekedal on, "Alibi" and "Elk's Run"; both of which are getting the cinematic treatment... "Tumor" the first comic ever available on Amazon Kindle, and his Wildstorm one-shot "Friday the 13th: The Abuser & The Abused"; Fialkov is really starting to make a name for himself in this medium.  It seems, and this is just pure conjecture, that he's making the transition from film to comics. Either way; Echoes will have you kneeling on cracked bones, & begging for more by the end of the first issue. Whether it's an all out horror story, or a psychological thriller (a term I personally hate); I for one can't fucking wait to find out what dark & gloomy road this 5 part mini-series is headed down.  While it's unclear which path this comic will take, one can certainly speculate.  I'll give an update once I read some more, though I will say; this made my pull-list in just one issue... something that rarely happens. 

With that, happy reading!
Krys the comic chick signing out :) 

Crossed: Family Values

Written by: David Lapham
Illustrated by: Javier Barreno
Released by: Avatar

I honestly thought, in the bubble where I keep my thoughts, that it couldn't get much more extreme than Ennis' run on Crossed. How could it? How could it get worse than heartless, point-blank, kid murder. How could anyone top a married couple getting raped while their little girl is torn limb from limb in front of their screaming eyes?  No way!  End game. Than I opened the cover to Crossed: Family Values, David Lapham's (Stray Bullets) sequel to Ennis' all-too-short-lived run on Crossed. And panel for panel I was sickened. Three shades of pea-soup, puke green, sickened.  Finally when a little girl who was raped by her father, and turned into a Crossed, ate her newborn baby it had become right-in-my-fucking-face apparent that David Lapham had taken things to a whole new level of what was formerly known as extreme. I've watched movies like "A Serbian Film", "Flower of Flesh & Blood", "The August Underground Trilogy".  I've read "The Bighead", "Girl Next Door", "Survivor", and made it out ok.  Well not ok, but scotch tape works wonders for the shattered soul.  So I never in my life would have expected to get shocked like this again. Oh let's just be fucking honest here; I have never wanted so badly to take a shower, and cry, while I held myself, and rocked on the balls of my ass in my bathtub from reading something before.  I was fucking offended. Frustrated, crescent-moon fingernail-imprints-dotting-my-palms offended.  I have to give kilotons of credit to this series. It forces the reader to feel the absolute worst they possibly can!!  Did I like it?  It was a wee bit too fucking vulgar for my fucking tastes. (lol)  I will say though; it was way more fleshed out than the first.  But with characters like these vile scum-bags.. in a situation that goes 7 circles beyond fucked up... is that really such a great thing?  

It starts out on the Pratt family ranch. The Pratt's are a lovely family who raise horses.  But not just any horses. These are the best fucking horses on the planet!! Everything about them is perfect. The same could be said about the Pratt family, at least on the surface.  10 kids ranging from 19 years to nine months old.  A darling mother, a fun-loving Uncle, and a Father to be feared.  Adeline their eldest daughter has been waiting a long time to confront her father about raping her younger sister Emily. When she finally musters the gumption in the form of 4 inches of sharpened steel... he damn near kills her... takes his belt off, and whips her within an inch of her life. He was a child-rapist, the closest man can get to monster.  Then the Crossed came in raping, ravaging, bloodthirsty droves.  And this vile, stomach-churning, scum was suddenly a hero.  It's funny how fast one can throw down their morals in exchange for survival.  Addy did just that.  So now everyone Addy's father saves is subject to a whole new brutality.  He went from revolting to valorous, from a monster to the god of the new world.  His was the word of the lord.  

This story arc poses 3 questions:  How fast are you willing to drop your convictions in the face of adversity & tragedy? Is the Crossed really that much different than us? How do you make a monster into a hero?  And the answer to these questions are even sicker than all the travesty's taking place in each panel.  You thought what Regan said in The Exorcist was bad?  The shit this little Crossed girl says would make a 9 to 5 street-walker embarrassed.  I thought A Serbian Film was the top of the mountain, man that wasn't even the tip of the molehill.  I'm pretty sure Lapham earned himself a place on a list somewhere.  Just kidding.  It took a lot to top what Ennis did with Crossed. Well if that title gets the cinematic treatment, it certainly won't be getting a sequel, or at least the sequel won't be Crossed Family Values.  More incest & child-rape than anyone would ever want to read about.  And it's not just discussed in passing, it's discussed in graphic detail. You're getting every ounce of gore & scum on both a literal & a visual level. 

David Lapham succeeds in surpassing Ennis' run in terms of depravity & in terms of character development.  Every denizen is a person, and not just a character type.  A complaint I had about the series' prior run, which was clearly fixed in this installment.  This time around we get treated to real characters we can feel for in a situation that is both unimaginable & unforgettable.  A fundamentally fucked-up family dynamic within a devastated world that has been completely flipped on it's fucking head 14 or 15 times.  We not only get to witness a world where humanity has been laid to waste, we also get to observe the Crossed, as the Pratt's capture one to get a better understanding of them.  I don't want to give more away, but c'mon it's Crossed. The most extreme comic since like ever. And this sequel tops itself to vile proportions.  This shit is biblical.  It sets out to offend, and does just that.. in spades!!  Send the troops home. Mission Accomplished!  It's a tough read, real tough, but that's the point. I had to read 6 light-hearted comics to glaze over the images this series left flashing behind my eyelids. It shows un-humanity, raw and gruesome. The Crossed are the embodiment of the evil, acting out the most deviant atrocities you keep filed in the back of your mind folder. So the most reprehensible people make the most wicked crossed. 

And let me just say... Javier Barreno, Mr. Illustrator, Holy Fucking Wow!!  The shit this guy was paid to draw.  Just plain old Damn!!  But like a pro he caught every degenerate detail in a way that made it even more offensive.  I don't mean that in a bad way. Offensive is the topic, you know that going in. Balls is the word I'm really looking for. Balls is what it takes to draw this kind of shit out in scathing detail. You'll see a Crossed fucking a decapitated head just off to the side in the background of a panel.  I'm talking about that kind of painful detail. Even the background is out of it's mind. Let's not even mention the covers.  Two words; sickest around. Sure it's completely fake, but that shit leaves an impression. I can still feel my skin crawling off the bone!! That's effective art!!  

Anyway I need to go wash my eyes out with drain-o and a wire brush, and hug my kids lol.  I'll end on a warning: This comic has a FUCK-TON of kid rape and it's talked about A LOT.... constantly in fact.  If you've read Garth Ennis' run on "Crossed" I'm sure you know what you're getting into.  Well you don't, this is a whole new rodeo. There is going to be a follow up called Crossed: Psychopath, and of course the long-awaited Crossed 3D. As offended as I am... you can bet your ass I'll be picking up those two the micro-second they drop.  Read at your own risk!!