Through the Woods by Emily Carroll

(This review was also published in Books and Lesser Evils)

Through the Woods by Emily Carroll is one of those rare gems in the literary world that crosses genres effortlessly and becomes an example of what makes those genre great. This is a graphic novel, but don’t kid yourself, it is not aimed at young readers. These are fairy tales but not like any ride you are going to find at Disney. This is young adult reading but doesn’t insult the reader by talking down to them. This is horror, not today’s watered down crap. This is horror. Creepy crap under your bed, things at your window, and tales of monsters that will haunt you as they haunt those who are telling. This is really good stuff!

“…That evening, the sun set bloodred in a white sky…”

In the first of five stories, three sisters are left alone when their father must leave, with instructions to go through the woods to the neighbor’s house is he does not return by the third day. Their father does not return but the girl’s are visited by someone else and one by one they disappear until only one is left.

“…I married my love in the springtime.
But by summer he locked me away.
He’d murdered me dead bu the autumn.
& by winter I was naught but decay…”

A Lady’s Hands are Cold

“…But the worst kind of monster was the Burrowing kind.
The sort that crawled into you and made a home there.
The sort you couldn’t name, the sort you couldn’t see.
The monster that ate you alive from the inside out…”

This collection of five disturbingly illustrated tales of the macabre, centered around the woods, will remind you of the type of scary stories that kept you up all night before the onslaught of dim-witted slasher tales came along to ruin the horror genre. There are monsters here. Bloody, beautiful creatures who will chill and seduce you.

Some of the marketing for this book says, “… These are fairy tales gone seriously wrong…”, but I disagree. These are fairy tales done right!

Through the Woods is a refreshing trip down the nightmares that use to haunt you and you only pretend they no longer do.

Fables: 1001 Nights of Snowfall – Bill Willingham

(Disclosure – This blog post originally appeared on my blog Books And Lesser Evils as a book review. But as this is a graphic novel, I thought to add it here to my comic book blog as well.)

Snow White travels far from the land of Fables to meet the Sultan of the faraway Kingdom and elicit his aid in battling the Adversary that has plagued her small community of outcasts. Unbeknownst to her, she is used by the Sultan’s most high Wazir and sent before him in place of the Wazir’s own daughter. She is sent at night, bejeweled and dressed seductively, into the Sultan’s bedchamber. She begins to plead for her people when the Sultan explains to her that she is tricked. For the Sultan only entertains women in his chamber for one thing and in the morning, they are killed.
Every night, the Sultan takes a young woman from his kingdom and after that night, they are killed so that they may never betray him with another as his wife had done.
Snow White listens to the Sultans’ sad tale of betrayal and pain when the morning comes delays her fate by saying, “Not just yet, O King of the Age,” Snow said. And it’s here that she summoned all her wit and subtlety, artifice and subterfuge, for she had no intention to lie with the Sultan that night, or die with the coming dawn. “It’s not fit that you’ve entertained me with a tale of your past, but received no gift in return. It’s not so late. The bright moon rises to take up the work of the flickering oil lamps, and I have my own small tale of revenge and its terrible lessons. Would you like to hear it?”
And that is how, every night, for years to come, Snow White kept her death sentence at bay, with tales and fables of her kind and land.

1001 Nights of Snowfall is a retelling of the 1001 Arabian Nights saga of Scheherazade and how she kept herself alive by telling stories to the Sultan Shahryār. It is Snow White, yes that Snow White, who finds herself in the same predicament and uses the same solution to save herself. The Fables that follow are new and old, much more like the original telling than what has been sanitized for us when we were children.

This graphic novel sets up the ongoing comic book series Fables from Vertigo that has established and incredible cult following. Willingham pays incredible and proper respect to the tales he is borrowing from and does not look to enhance them by overdone cleavage and sex and blood. But instead has the audacity to actually elevate them by the process known as story. Yes, he tells a damn good story. Backed up with good artwork he writes not for the pre-pubescent teen crowd but for an older clientale that would remember that this is what comics once were. Tales, morality tales perhaps, but tales all the same.

    

For that, Fables is worth the price of admission.

Pinocchio Vampire Slayer- Dusty Higgins (Review)

An awesome sequel to the Pinocchio mythos. What happened after the story we all know. As Pinocchio is living is peace with his father, visitors come in the dead of night and the boy puppet learns the truth of the terrors that dwell in his small village. In horror he watches as Geppetto is murdered at the hands of a band of Vampires. It is then he learns that he is uniquely equipped to slay these demons. By telling a lie, Pinocchio can create an endless supply of wooden stakes!

With Cherry the carpenter, Fairy and the cricket at his side, Pinocchio hunts in the night for the creatures who took his father from him. But unfortunately he finds that Gepetto did not just die that night, but instead becomes one of the undead that Pinocchio hunts!!

This is independent comics at its best. Done in black in white, the graphic novel is dark and fun. Pinocchio’s constant lying comes in handy as he must slay an entire forest of gypsy vampires with his friends and fellow puppets!

Snarky and tongue in cheek, Higgins has created a terrific sidebar to the childhood story of the little wooden puppet who wanted to be a boy. Loads of fun!