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Graphic Novel Review: Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil, illustrations by George Williams

cover art for Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil

 

Let Me Out by Emmett Nahil, illustrations by George Williams

Oni Press, 2023

ISBN: 9781637152362

Available: Paperback, KIndle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

It’s 1979. Mitch wakes up after a terrible assault near the local Y. His friends scold him for going there alone and take him home to recuperate. There’s also been a murder in the quiet suburb of Columbiana, New Jersey. The body of Pastor Holley’s wife, Kelly, has been found with demonic sigils carved into her body.

 

New Jersey Sheriff Mullen and FBI Agent Garrett partner up to investigate the case. At least, that’s how it appears to the locals. Behind the scenes, they are devising a Satanic Panic cover to conceal their own crimes. They set their sights on a group of queer punks; Mitch, Lupe, Terri, and Jackson.

 

Sheriff Mullen hears a rumor that Pastor Holley records extra sermons for himself, and confronts the priest about them. It takes a little convincing, but Father Holley turns over some of the tapes to be played on the local radio station. A federal agent issues a warning, announcing the lurid details of satanic rituals, and asks teenagers to keep an eye out for anyone different. After a violent altercation between Lupe and the manager on duty at the local grocery store, the authorities quickly pin Kelly’s murder on the teens. When the friends flee to a cabin in the woods, they find the building gone and a bloodstained pentacle embedded in the ground. Mitch knows they aren’t alone out there.

 

I love a good Satanic Panic plot. With a diverse cast of characters, each with a unique personality and story, Let Me Out has a unique angle on the “devil in the details”. There is good LGBTQ+ representation, as well as people of color. There are parents and adults who are not accepting of their children, which is difficult to stomach, but is a painful reality some LGBTQ+ teens face. As hard as it was to confront on the page, I am glad that Nahil didn’t shy away from that. The character designs were really good and well rendered, as were the backgrounds and sweeping landscapes.

 

Nahil and Williams opted to include trigger warnings at the beginning of the book. I know there have been conversations in the horror community about the idea of including these warnings in general. My view is that if it makes someone’s enjoyment of a book better to have a warning, I have no problem with that. For those of us who are library workers, we are probably familiar with Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science. Content warnings align well with three of the five laws: every reader their book; every book its reader; and save the time of the reader. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

 

Posted on March 11, 2024 by , Reply

Book Review: Jedi Summer by John Boden

Cover art for Jedi Summer by John Boden

Jedi Summer by John Boden

Cemetery Dance Publications, 2022

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1587678356

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

 

Jedi Summer is a fictionalized coming-of-age memoir by John Boden, taking place in 1983, the summer Return of the Jedi came out, when Boden was 12 and his brother Roscoe was 7. It meanders through a summer filled with the brothers playing, fighting, and just living through their days. Boden’s mother worked several jobs and he was both responsible for and unpleasant to Roscoe in the way siblings can be. Boden reflects on how his perspective has changed since then. Stylistically he uses italicized text in brackets for digressions. This would work in oral storytelling (it reminded me a bit of Donald Davis) but disrupts the flow on the page.

 

There are three additional stories. “Possessed by a Broken Window” is a powerful piece on grief and guilt.”Trick” is relatable to anyone who has meant to call someone important but never quite does. “The One Who Closes the Door”, a story about caretaking for the adults of your childhood, will stick with me for a long time.

 

The fictionalized darker and supernatural events that take place during the story range from gentle (Boden’s brother can see and interact with the ghosts of dead pets) to believable (a Ferris wheel that crashes to the ground) to the gruesome (a dead man hanging from a tree whose body has been turned into a birdhouse). Even without these, the story of these boys on summer vacation with plenty of time and imagination, and the pieces at the end, are worth reading.

 

Posted on March 18, 2023 by , Reply

Book Review: Attack From the ’80s edited by Eugene Johnson

cover art for Attack from the '80s edited by Eugene Johnson

Attack From the ’80s edited by Eugene Johnson

Raw Dog Screaming Press, 2021

ISBN-13: 978-1735664446

Available: Hardcover  ( Bookshop.org  |  Amazon.com )

 

Eugene Johnson brings together 22 incredible short stories and poems as a fitting tribute to the horror of the 1980s. There is something for everyone in this collection. “Top Guns of the Frontier” by Weston Ochse, a strong open to this anthology, tells the story of friends coming face to face with an ancient evil. In “Snapshot” by Joe R. Lansdale and Kasey Lansdale, Gracie and Trevor, the famous Snapshot Burglars, rob the wrong house. Jess Landry’s “Catastrophe Queens” takes place on the movie set of an ’80s SS werewolf horror film. Pink fake blood starts to take over people…and anything it touches. In “Your Picture Here” by John Skipp, a couple decides to take in a double feature of horror movies only to discover one of the films is closer to the truth. Lee Murray’s “Permanent Damage” invites us to a bridal party at a salon that turns into a bloodbath. “Munchies” by Lucy A. Snyder is a great story about a group of drag queens and the terror that was Nancy Reagan who has come to deliver a check to the local high school’s antidrug drive.

 

No ’80s horror anthology would be complete without the topic of D&D. In “Demonic Denizens” by Cullen Bunn, friends at summer camp discover a new game to play after the counselors forbid them to play any more of that “satanic” Dungeons & Dragons. “Ghetto Blaster”, by Jeff Strand, presents Clyde, who is cursed to carry a rather heavy ghetto blaster until he learns his lesson about loud music in public spaces. Everyone, check your candy before reading “Stranger Danger” by Grady Hendrix. A group of boys, hell-bent on taking revenge on the Judge, discover an army of Yoda-costumed children who have their own havoc to create, with apples containing razor blades the treat of the night. In Lisa Morton’s “The Garden of Dr. Moreau”, a biology experiment on corn plants is a success, but it could be at a deadly cost for life on Earth.

 

Other authors in the anthology include Ben Monroe, Linda Addison, Thomas F. Monteleone, Tim Waggoner, Stephen Graham Jones, Vince A. Liaguno, Rena Mason, Cindy O’Quinn, F. Paul Wilson, Christina Sng, Mort Castle, and Stephanie M. Wytovich. Pick this up if you need a good dose of 80s horror reading. Highly recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on November 28, 2021 by , Reply
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