The horror (comics)! The horror (comics)! #3
Back like the proverbial bad penny, we have returned from the horror comic badlands with a new trophy, a severed head to show off to the awestruck masses.
In the last two editions of this delve into horror comics we've talked about Killadelphia and Red Mother. This time we've gone a bit further down the road and the morsel we've brought back with us is no less tasty– Farm Hand.
Farm Hand has been going long enough that I was able to lend Ed my first eight issues as a homework to try and get him as hooked as I am (Ed: Spoiler alert for the Pontypool podcast...Farm Hand is amazing!). I’m writing this before I find out what he thinks (Ed: and reading what he thinks before recording later today), but as a man that likes creature features, if a story of a family farm where they grow organs rather than fruit and veg isn’t up his Elm Street…see what I did there…then I’ll be amazed.
Now you might see that Farm Hand is already 14 issues deep and be put off, please don’t be. Another way that comics are brilliant is that they have the long form story down in a way that most major TV series don’t and coming from the artist (Rob Guillory) behind Chew (which ran to 60 comics) I’d like to think you’ve still got plenty of time to jump on in and see what’s going down on the Jenkins farm.
Like all great stories the fact that the farm can grow replacement limbs and organs is almost secondary to the more sinister underlying mystery of the creation of the Jedidiah Seed; the human story behind its creators and the impacts upon them and their families lives. Jedidiah Jenkins is a fascinating character that makes you need to understand his motivations, but every other character has a back story equally as intriguing and whilst it’s not hard to pin point the sinister evil of the story, the depth given to the characters make it all the more engaging. Apparently it is being developed by AMC into a TV series and if they can get it right in the way that Netflix nailed the adaptation of Locke and Key we’re in for a golden age of original Horror TV.
Talking of which, next week we'll be taking a look at:
Locke and Key/Dying is Easy
Our message, as ever, is simple: support your local comic book store (like our own Chaos City Comics- who now have an online store!) and that these picks came to us as pearls of wisdom from the wickedly talented illustrator Luke Ridge.
