September 11, 2009

Comic Book Review: North 40 1 2 3
In the Mouth of Conover County

September 11, 2009 / Comics/Manga / 1 Comment

Sep 11 2009

Zombos Says: Excellent

The residents of Conover County are in the grip of an eldritch, surreal, horror like the one John Trent faced in John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness. Changing everyone into demons, devils, or potential deliverers from the green sticky spawn of the stars, the-sleeper-awakened, Cthulhu, writer Aaron Williams and illustrator Fiona Staples leaven their apocalyptic despair with dry humor and back end o' the Bible bad monsters.

Now Entering Conover County, North 40, Issue 1 — The water here must make people retarded…

One very bored Goth girl, Dyan, and her eager to please, slow-to-glow, acolyte, Robert, wile away the time by reading from a restricted–but cool looking–book at the local library. Robert remarks "D&D geeks make things like this all the time out of old dictionaries and epoxy resin." Paging through it, they inadvertently read that spell; you know, the one that opens the gate-never-to-be-opened that lies between our backyard and theirs.

And theirs is some backyard.

Events happen quickly in the hayseed town of Lufton. People start changing in one of three ways: loathsomely, powerfully, or not at all. Sheriff Morgan falls into the not-at-all category, but he must deal with the people who fall into the other two. For them, the transformation can lead to bad personality traits becoming really bad for everyone else.

Helping the Sheriff is Luanne, who is powered up with a World of Warcraft kind of far sight, so she can tell him what's happening around town and direct him accordingly, and Wyatt, who can fly and becomes impervious to harm. Stirring up trouble is David–make that a giant-sized trouble–and his backroads kin, and the townsfolk who have metamorphosed into nasty hungry creatures or undead ones.

The witch, Marguritte DeVris, instructs her apprentice Amanda–a halfie–from the shadows. She empowers Amanda with a symbol of authority, a scythe, and the always-useful-in-chaos-magic sigils to battle the darkness.

Staples disarming artwork is both humorous and serious when needed–her character's faces are full of life–as Conover's predicament worsens, and Williams dialog and narrative are concisely measured for each character and situation, and especially for Sheriff Morgan, who remains unrattled by the chaos around him and surprisingly (suspiciously?) resourceful at handling its more challenging moments.

An' the Word Was Law, North 40, Issue 2 — Somethin' went wrong with the world in Conover County last night, and folks was just startin' to see how deep this well was…

In issue two, Amanda arrives in Conover County to join the fight for salvation, Wyatt tries to come to grips with his couch-potato dad who has turned into a potato on the couch, sprouts and all, and the local high school dance is still on in spite of the dangers. Teenagers. Sheriff Morgan also has his hands full with the redneck, misbehavin' Atterhulls and David, who can toss around big cars like Matchbox die-casts.

The opening gruesome splashpage sets the tone, and while I am not sure whether Staples and Williams did the panel layouts together or it is just Staples' arrangement, each page moves the story smoothly along with an economic, yet stylistically expressive, visual storytelling. The colorization for daylit scenes is comprised of rustic tones, reinforcing the small town countryfide quality of Lufton.

A Time to Mourn, an' a Time to Dance, North 40, Issue 3 — Conover County's past is steeped in hate n' blood. The lines was drawn over a hundred years ago, an' nobody's erased 'em since…

Night. A giant robot. Zombies crash the high school dance. The Atterhulls get help from Granny, who can now see with her new eyes (a very clever way to also give her far sight), and Dyan–filled with the spirit of vengeance–becomes a key player in the fight to save Lufton, but for the wrong side. Williams and Staples ante up with issue three; there is more dialog, more tension on every page as the situation worsens. Old rivalries heat up and Sheriff Morgan needs Wyatt to focus more on helping him rather than spraying his dad with a water bottle. Staples draws the variously afflicted teenagers–some are glowing ghosts, some are stalk-eyed, some are just plain undead, humorously terrifying.

North 40 flips the black flavors of American Gothic's relationships and characters, salt's them with the simplicity of The Walking Dead's direness, and then runs amok with monsters, mayhem, and a Stephen King's worth of darkness stretching across the landscape. And with all of this powered by Lovecraft's leviathan from the stars, the reading experience is exhilarating.

Meet the Horror Bloggers: Temple of the Matmos

Many fans of horror, amateur and professional alike, have devoted themselves to blogging about the thrills, chills, and no-frills side of the genre as seen in cinema and print. In this ongoing series that highlights the writers behind the blogs, we meet the unique personalities and talents that make the online horror scene so engaging. Up close and personal.

In this installment, Robyn (aka The Great Tyrant and Diabolik72) of the Temple of the Matmos reveals there is no hot babe minding the temple. Damn.

If I had to pinpoint a moment where it ‘all started’ it would have to be Xmas 1984 (I think) when I was given Denis Gifford’s Pictorial History of Horror Movies as a gift from my Uncle Steve. Pouring over it for the next few days, I decided that I absolutely had to see every goddamn movie in there. I saw An American Werewolf in London around the same time and from there got into the Universal and Hammer movies. The next big leap was discovering Fangoria, when my father brought me a copy home from a shop he’d been signing at (he was and still is a comic artist) and through this I discovered Romero, Argento, Fulci and the likes. I’ve been pretty much obsessed ever since.

One of my heroes is the late Forry Ackerman, and like him I’m a firm believer that writing about horror and sci-fi should be fun as well as informative. I’ve also always liked the idea of having a fun ‘host’ for this kind of thing. I think this partly comes from growing up reading the British sci-fi comic 2000ad, which had (and still has, I believe) ‘The Mighty Tharg’, an alien from the planet Betelgeuse, as its ‘editor’. Of course, later I was introduced to the EC stuff with The Crypt Keeper and The Old Witch and the rest.

Much later, as an adult, when I edited and wrote for a short-lived photocopied horror movie fanzine, it was under the nom de plume of ‘Robyn Graves’. The Temple of the Matmos is just a fanzine without the hassle and expenditure of printing and distribution really. It started off as bit of random ‘stuff I like’ blog I was doing to keep me sane when I was working as a high school teacher – as soon as I quit and got a job I was happier with, I started doing it in earnest and it was clear to me that the Euro horror route was the way to go. I’ve no plans to stop anytime soon.

It’s quite liberating to write under the guise of ‘the Tyrant’, because I can be a bit haughty and imperious and nobody takes it too seriously, although I think there’s more than a few out there that don’t know the Barbarella character and click into my profile thinking I’m some hot babe! If it gets ‘em reading, then…