Book Review: The Skin You're In, Ashley Robin Franklin

Title: The Skin You're In: A Collection of Horror Comics
Author: Ashley Robin Franklin
Published: Silver Sprocket, 2024
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 375
Total Page Count: 526,110
Text Number: 1923
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library c/o Hoopla
Review: A collection of eight comics, many short stories, one a novella, of queer horror: bodies, social dynamics, to meet or be the monster. I really want to like this, and sometimes do. It opens strong with "One Million Tiny Fires" and the closing novella runs overlong but has a perfect ending, and this is the strength: body horror as transformative, as destructive, as desirable, is beautifully queer and highkey aspirational. But all the other stories, I'd pass on. Short fiction collections often have issues with repetition and variably quality, especially ones like this that visibly grow with the artist. Some of the other plots are interesting, too many spent time with boring problematic men when I'd rather be getting weird with horror, and even at its most polished I'm not crazy about Franklin's art, which has heavy line weights and struggles to convey action, which, frankly, feels messy.

Book Review: Totem, Laura Pérez, trans. Andrea Rosenberg

Title: Totem
Author: Laura Pérez
Translator: Andrea Rosenberg
Published: Fantagraphics Books, 2023 (2021)
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 145
Total Page Count: 526,255
Text Number: 1924
Read Because: browsing graphic novels shelf at..., hardback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: In interlocking narratives and flashbacks, a recent murder case frames the protagonist's memories of her girlfriend's disappearance. The art is exceptionally clean, airy, with a minor (if intentional) case of same face syndrome which makes the abstruse plot a little too hard to follow, especially in the middle sections. But that floaty style, the cultivated inaccessibility, also invites interpretation, without which the vague spiritual/interconnectedness plot might be a little too hand-wavey. I read this twice, seeking more depth and coherency on reread; and it reads fast, its atmosphere is captivating, but I didn't find that payoff.

Book Review: Infidel, Pornsak Pichetshote, illus. Aaron Campbell, José Villarrubia

Title: Infidel
Author: Pornsak Pichetshote
Translator: Aaron Campbell, José Villarrubia
Published: Image Comics, 2018
Rating: 2.5 of 5
Page Count: 170
Total Page Count: 526,425
Text Number: 1925
Read Because: browsing graphic novels shelf at..., paperback borrowed from the Timberland Regional Library
Review: Racism as horror: after what appears to be an extremist attack in her building, a young Muslim woman is haunted by the angers that reside there. The paratext attests that horror & politics in comics are rare and rarely successful, so I guess I'm glad this is making strides with its WoC leads. Otherwise, I'm not impressed: my takeaway from most American comics is that I don't like comics, and this is no exception; I should have DNF'd, but instead struggled through the art and typesetting, and found no scares here, which left just talky politics not strong enough to support the narrative.

Book Review: The Black Lord, Colin Hinckley

Title: The Black Lord
Author: Colin Hinckley
Published: Tenebrous Press, 2023
Rating: 3.5 of 5
Page Count: 125
Total Page Count: 526,550
Text Number: 1926
Read Because: reading the publisher, ebook borrowed from Multnomah County Library
Review: The disappearance of an infant presages the return of an entity that has haunted his family for three generations. This opens strong with its horror, no slow build from mundane to speculative, and I admire that; and then the narrative loops back, an unusual, risky structure, introducing new PoVs to explore the backstory of folk horror meeting cosmic horror. Hinckley leans into kinesthetic descriptions, into precise unsettling moments, which I find refreshingly effective (as an aphantasic reader who bounces off of most horror monsters as a result). But the titular Black Lord is too late introduced to a narrative otherwise so exhaustive in developing its lore, and while parts of the family dynamic feel true, family history isn't an anxiety that speaks to me; this most me a little as it went on.

Included is a short story: another spooky tree, another remarkably evocative moment, interestingly oblique Noodle Incident treatment of the inciting events, another climax that doesn't quite sell me. Hinckley is doing cool things with narrative structure and has an eye for horror, but his meeting of themes to horror is a little staid for me.