Written By: Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen
Art By: Ryan Kelly, Eva de la Cruz, Clem Robins
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 2, 2015
I Get By With a Little
Help From My Demons
*Non-Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
We return to Vertigo’s
twisted version of Scooby Doo, Where Are
You?, except instead of a tight-knit crew investigating a mystery, we’ve
got a bunch of traumatized people pursuing three distinct stories, and instead
of Scooby Doo we’ve got the hectoring, invisible Mr. Empty plus the creepy
ghost monster Kiri hangs out with, and instead of the Mystery Machine van,
we’ve got the arcane, secret pasts of every member of the Survivors’ Club
hanging over them perpetually. Otherwise, it’s pretty much the same, so we can
figure that all of the crazy things happening in this story will be the result
of the crazy old caretaker who hates meddling kids. Right? Right?? Oh no, this is going to be the further exploration of
humanity’s seedy underbelly and the psychological torture we put one another
through, isn’t it? Well, I’m prepared to have my blackened heart torn from my
ribcage and shoved in my face as proof of my basest nature, how about you? Read
on!
Explain It!
After a cold opener
featuring Kiri unleashing her ghost-monster-aunt-thing on a philandering
douchebag to whom she was supposed to serve a summons, the issue begins with a
great page that brings the reader back up to speed using five
horizontally-arranged panels which briefly explain where each character is at
that point in the story. It was so well-done, and I wish other comics would
take this lead—no big wall of text preceded by IN THE LAST ISSUE…, no
meandering exposition to explain the ins and outs of comic book multiverse
theory, just a quick snapshot of where everyone is at this moment to bring the
reader rapidly up to speed. Great work, Survivors’
Club team, it really helped me to jump right back to the action and remind
me of all the gross, disturbing things that happened last issue. To that end,
Harvey is with his mother at a nursing home confessing to the murders he thinks
he’s committed—he’s not sure, you see, because he’s had a break with reality.
That’s something he shares with his elderly mom who doesn’t seem to fathom that
her son is a brutal murderer. Scenes of Harvey talking to his mom are woven
with panels depicting Sexy Alice sewing her twin Polite Alice back together,
Harvey having dismembered her in the last issue. As Harvey’s mean invisible
friend Mr. Empty appears to remind him of a previous engagement to murder
someone, Sexy Alice gives Polite Alice’s reformed, scarred face a smooch, which
would be sort of sweet if it wasn’t so goddamned awful spooky.
Elsewhere in Los Angeles,
Chenzira and Kiri and going to Grant “Geeforce” Fuchs’ house to see if they can
find the video game that caused him to rip out his own throat. Kiri is able to
gain access to the house because her ghost-monster-aunt is an expert at picking
locks, which I suppose is a useful skill to have if feeding on the mortal souls
of evil people stops paying the bills. Chenzira and Kiri root around the
cluttered environment of the crazed gamer, and Chenzira explains how the game
board from Akheron, the video game which destroyed her South African village in
1987, might have made it to Oregon to screw with Geeforce—indeed, she thinks
the motherboard may have been seeking Chenzira all this time. They find his
laptop, which is what they were looking for, and leave.
Finally we are at Simon Wickman’s
loft apartment where he is hanging out with Sexy Alice, showing her files he’s
compiled on every member of the Survivors’ Club. I guess they’re at that point
in their relationship where they can reveal felonious acts to one another.
Simon then tells all about his childhood at the Muskagee House, which is
totally not anything like the story of the Amityville
Horror and why would you ever say such a thing, and confesses that he made
it all up. He was coached by huckster exorcists and given fake blood capsules
in order to capitalize on the 1980s Satanic panic and make a quick buck. Just
as he is finished confessing, Harvey shows up with Mr. Empty in tow, ready to
commit murder, but as he approaches the apartment, Simon begins having seizures
and artifacts from the Muskagee House start morphing and mutating exactly as
described in the faked events from his youth. Sexy Alice opens the door to a
surprised Harvey, and then the floor opens up and swallows Mr. Empty, which is
probably the closest thing to a happy ending that you could expect in this
book.
I’m still pretty much as
lost now as I was at the end of the last issue, and I don’t mind a bit. This
story is unraveling very slowly and very thoroughly, showing parts to a whole
that have yet to fully congeal but which are fascinating in and of themselves.
I don’t really get why Simon Wickman went all possessed-guy right after
revealing having faked the whole thing as a child, it’s just another conundrum
wrapped up in a larger mystery that is folded into a riddle that has yet to be
devised. The art serves the creepy vibe of the story perfectly and the whole
thing is highly readable. I wouldn’t expect anyone to jump on at issue number
three, but I’d say you could follow along pretty well, thanks to the easy recap
page that really delighted me. I would like to get some sense of the story by
issue number four, however. At this point, I’ve spent twelve bucks, and for
another four I could have just bought a creepy novel in trade paperback.
Bits and Pieces:
There’s not a lot of core
story progress in this book, and I’m not even sure what the core story is, but
I really enjoyed this issue. The eerie moments were well-spaced and the whole
thing seem to roll along a lot smoother than issue number two, though perhaps
having learned more about several characters instead of a lot about one
character had something to do with it. This book is definitely a slow burn, so
if you’re looking for high-paced action and easily-solvable mysteries you
should probably watch Scooby Doo, Where
Are You? and leave the demonic wallpaper and lock picking ghost monsters to
the adults.
7.5/10
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