Double Walker

[cornerofmadness]

Double Walker by Michael W. Conrad

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


This horror tried to delve into the original intent of stories about the faeries: they were terrifying. Cully and his pregnant wife, Gemma are in Scotland to get in one last child-free trip. They stop in a small town and decide to trail-walk up a mountain (with associations to faerie lore). Cully is a giant jerk about it when Gemma can't go any further and leaves his pregnant wife there to wait on him because 'they'll never be here again and he's not missing out.'

This fateful, selfish decision pulls the trigger on the rest of the story. He returns to find her prostrate on the ground speaking in what might be Gaelic and she loses the baby. The rest of the story becomes is she grieving this immense loss or did the fey folk switch her out for a changeling?

And then the gruesome murders begin to happen. Cully and Gemma mostly drink and pull further and further apart and the narrative drive is handed over to two detectives, an older local man and a young city hotshot who can't understand why they're doing nothing. The older guy basically says this happens from time to time and if you interfere with the fey, it'll only get worse. It'll run its course and be over with.

The story runs on those rails to the end. It was good and the art served the story. On the the other hand, it was very hard to connect to these characters.



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Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 1

[cornerofmadness]

Blood on the Tracks, Vol. 1 by Shuzo Oshimi

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This is going to be a slow burn psychological horror and the art really carries it. That should be true of most sequential art stories but in this case it takes something potentially innocent and imbues it with subtle fear and it does it masterfully.

Seiichi has a pretty routine life for a young teen. He does well in school, has friends, even has a girl interested in him. It's at home that things are a bit mundane and yet lurking in the background is something you can't quite put your finger on.

Seiichi's mother is very overprotective and doesn't really let Seiichi hang out with his friends much. She frames it as various duties he should be doing for the family or something the family wants to do together so she'd prefer he'd be there.

She's the laughingstock of some of the family members too, noticeably the mother of Seiichi's cousin, who is the one person Seiichi's mom lets him hang around with so much so his other friends comment on it.

Then, as the blurb says, something huge happens. I'm not spoiling that but it is horrific and something you can see happening (or at least know has happened in real life) There is also this weird thing about a dead cat they had found when Seiichi was a toddler that seems to have some importance.

Can't wait to see where this goes but you know it's going to a very dark place.



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