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Happy Halloween everyone. Today wraps our 7 days of Halloween review special and you are in for a very special treat today. Since it is Halloween I would be remiss to not review a comic that is based on the monster that defines the holiday, Michael Myers. That's right, I will be reviewing Mr. Halloween himself in "Halloween: The First Death of Laurie Strode". And since it is Friday, and October 31st, by the way 31 is the antonym of 13, so by antonym it is Friday the 13th. So you are also getting a review of Jason Voorhees in Friday the 13th: Fearbook.
Let us begin, shall we.
Many people in the town blame Laurie for the rampage that Michael inflicted, like she did the killing herself. This particular subplot speaks volumes to the way society blames the families, parents especially, after some nut job goes all psycho in a mass killing. The reality is, in many cases (not all, but many), the family are victims as well.
The story delves deeply into Laurie's survivors guilt, being as she was one of a select few friends that survived Michael's rampage. She suffers from PTSD which is where she has vivid visual hallucinations that are brought on by triggers, like seeing the Meyers house. She has a hard time differentiating between what is real and what is in her mind. She is also disconnected from friends and family like when a friend, Sally, offers to hang out with Laurie on her birthday, and just mellow out, smoke some weed and laugh until they pee. Laurie takes the "laugh until they pee" remark as literal and Sally has to correct her. Laurie is also very angry with her parents, who up until that point had never told her she was adopted. We also get a glimpse into the diary of Laurie's older sister which begins to describe a young Michael as disturbing a little boy as his home life was, much like the Rob Zombie version of a young Michael Meyers and contrary to John Carpenter's story in which he just snaps one night.
There is one particular panel that hit home for me in regards to Laurie's continuing struggle. There is a single panel in which Laurie is recanting how horrible it was to read all of the brutal details of the murders in the paper, where the victims were stabbed, mutilated and generally suffered. I don't know if this was intended by Hutchinson to be an indictment against the our modern day press, but that is how it came across.
To me, it feels like the press, at times, is competing with Hollywood for gruesome storytelling. This perceived competition could be because that is what sells in the news. But gruesome details like that in a news story, to me, always feels exploitative, and never comes across as journalism, but rather as dirty attention getting whoring. We have laws against criminals making money off their crimes, mass murderers can't write tell all books about their crimes, yet the media in this country make a metric-shit-ton of money all at the cost of the survivors of these horrible events. My respect for Hutchinson raised several points based on that single panel statement alone.
My only complaint about the book's story is Hutchinson felt it to be a good idea to jump around, randomly at times. There is rarely a key indicator as to when a flashback in the storytelling is happening. Jumping from present day to past, to present day can happen from one panel to next to the next and so on, or at least that is how it felt. It made for a read where I had to focus and pay attention, no skimming, or you could quickly be lost. So this book isn't for the casual skimmer. Even for a reader like me, focused and into the story, I had to go back a few times to make sure I didn't miss something. For this Hutchinson only gets an A for the story.
The artwork of Jeff Zornow is visceral, gory and pulls no punches nor does it make any apologies. Each panel is carefully crafted to fit the story being told at that moment. This is why Zornow gets an A+.
All in all, this is a Grade A book, worthy of a read and worthy of a second book. If you have not read this and are a fan of the Meyers mythology, this is definitely a must have book.
In a not-so-subtle nod to the movies, two of the mercenaries happen to be named after actors that played Jason in the movies:
- Graham - A reference to C. J. Graham who played Jason in "Friday the 13th Part 6
- Caine - A reference to Kane Hodder who played Jason in "Friday the 13th Part 7 and 8" as well as "Jason goes to Hell" and the beloved "Jason X"; a.k.a. Jason in Space.
It is at this F.O.B. that Violet uses her sexuality to get the upper hand on one of the guards, isn't that always the case. There is a board meeting called to discuss the Crystal Lake incident and, as always, corporate greed wins out over humanity.
Only this time Jason trumps even corporate greed.
As a plot point, why would a corporation want to capture Jason? Money of course. The corporation wants to study Jason, to figure out how he regenerates. The military and medical applications of this type of bio-tech would be worth trillions. Jason is nothing more than a trillion dollar lab rat to these corporate ass-clowns.
All in all, for a true die-hard fan of the Jason mythology, this was a great read. Wolfer does a great job keeping true to the Jason mythology. And while he went to far in explaining what most of us know about Jason, like the fact that he hunts down anyone who "survives a night with him", the story was entertaining. But the story was short. At 22 pages, it felt rushed and a little incomplete.
The artwork was fantastic for the most part. There was one page, a montage of bloody images surrounding Jason's face (dead center) in which I had a hard time understanding what Fiumara was trying to communicate as nothing prior or after that page lead up to or was derived from that page. But for the most part I enjoyed the hell out of whole book.
This book gets a solid B grade from me. The one issue with the art and the compressed nature of the story left me wanting some more, but it is still enjoyable.
So there you have it folks. Have a happy and safe Halloween.
Until next time... give out comics for Halloween instead of candy. The kids and the parents will thank you.
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