Comic Book Mini-Reviews: My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf and I'm Not Okay with This by Charles Forsman

 * My Friend Dahmer by Derf Backderf

We know Jeffrey Dahmer as a notorious cannibalistic serial killer, but Derf Backderf knew him as a weird kid in high school. Backderf drew on his own memories of high school as well as interviewed others he knew and researched Dahmer's own accounts of the time. He puts together a timeline of Dahmer's escalating behavior (from drinking more and more to killing animals and finally killing people), what was happening at home, and how it appeared to people at school.

The first thing that struck me about the novel was how different it was to go to school in the 70's. Boundaries weren't established like they are now. The administrators were a lot more permissive and students had a huge amount of freedom. It seems like a perfect storm of permissive teachers, warring parents, and not connecting with other students left Dahmer to descend into his sick fantasies. The only way he got attention was with his offensive imitation of a man with cerebral palsy (or his own mother's seizures) or with antics like inserting himself into every yearbook club photo. His home life was messy and tragic as his parents' marriage dissolved and left Dahmer essentially abandoned. Throughout the novel, Dahmer hid himself behind binge drinking and that ableist imitation. While his crimes are abhorrent, we can still have sympathy for the teen who was failed by every person in his life who saw something wrong and ignored it.

My Friend Dahmer is even better than the film version and delves into piecing together Dahmer's own accounts of his behavior. It's agonizing to think how many times Dahmer was almost caught only to be let off by police, even after his first murder.  I recommend this as a fascinating look into the formative years of a serial killer.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

* I'm Not Okay with This by Charles Forsman

Sydney is a normal 15 year old girl who lacks direction, fights with her family, listens to music with her best friend, and writes in a diary about her secrets. She struggles with her feelings for her best friend, her father's death, and her telekinesis that reveals itself at the worst moments. Her mother wants to help, but ends up pushing her away more often than not. As her support systems fall away, she doesn't know what will be there in the end.

I heard of I'm Not Okay with This because it's now a Netflix show that is apparently very different than the graphic novel. Sydney's story starts off like most coming of age fiction with pushing boundaries, skipping school, smoking pot, discovering her sexuality, and trying to find her own way. What makes this narrative different is the telekinesis. After her father's death who also had powers, no one is there to help her try to control her powers or decide when to use them and the results are tragic.

The only flaw is in the shallow relationships. The most significant one is with her friend Dina, who Syd has feelings for and wants to save from an abusive relationship. The others are paper thin. Stanley gets her pot, which helps with her telekinesis headaches. Ryan, an adult grocery clerk, has sex with her and then confronts her about not calling. Syd feels bad, but doesn't seem to realize how inappropriate their brief relationship was. Even her relationship with her mother doesn't go much beyond typical teen rebelliousness and the one with her father is seen very briefly, but the grief for his death affects each page.

I'm Not Okay with This is a pretty straight forward story drawn in a simple, cartoonish style. I expected it to be more lighthearted because of the art, but Sydney's journey is heartbreaking and dark. The narrative felt like a struggling teenage girl, but I wish some of the relationships could have been a bit more developed. However, the ending absolutely gutted me. I'm planning to watch the show, but I realize there seem to be a lot of differences.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

Nocturne (2020)

Vivian and Juliet are twins, both working hard to become concert pianists. Both go to the same prestigious art high school, but Vivian has made it into Julliard while Juliet didn't and refused to apply anywhere else. An excellent violinist who also attends the school killed herself and left a notebook, detailing rituals on how she became so skilled. Juliet finds it and dismisses it at first, but delves into it when her sister outperforms her at every turn. 

Nocturne melds the world of esoteric rituals with the high pressure world of classical music performance. Juliet is the underdog in every respect and remembers that she prompted her and her sister to start piano lessons even though she's viewed as the inferior musician. Vivian, on the other hand, is a lauded pianist, has a loving boyfriend, an amazing piano teacher, and the high opinion of everyone in the school. Once the rituals come into play, Juliet shows herself to be very petty, copying her sister's audition piece and exposing jealousy for her sister's prestige.  

As someone coming from music schools, I appreciate the realism in how people treated musicians, the politics of the school, and the paths set out for students. I kind of wish it was a college instead of a high school because of the age of the actresses and the fact that few are this serious about a performance career that early. Family members around them criticize a career in the arts and question how secure it is. The politics of the school place Vivian above Juliet, even when Juliet outplays her sister because they want to go with the more reliable choice. Even in college or at the professional level, certain players are favored in auditions even if they didn't play well that day because of their reputation or who they study with or know. It's a cutthroat world that I decided not to be part of and I opted to teach and play for enjoyment. Juliet's teacher tried to show her such attainable paths and she refused to see them. 

The esoteric rituals in the film take everything from Vivian and give them to Juliet. At first, Juliet doesn't put much stock into the notebook until horrible things start happening that end up benefiting her. She goes from sympathetic and hard working to obnoxious and egotistical over the course of the film. Her dreams seem to be slipping away from her, so she goes all in on this Faustian deal in a desperate attempt to preserve it. I feel for her, but she goes too far. The most tragic thing is that she's still quite young and could have achieved her goals eventually with a different setting, different teachers, and a different outlook. 

While much of the film is light on horror elements, the anxiety and psychological tension surrounding Juliet sustained me until the end, where it steers fully into horror. I enjoyed the focus on music, the obsession with unattainable perfection, and the realities of being part of the music world. The ending is predictable if you pay attention, but I enjoyed it in all its glory. I would recommend this if you liked The Devil's Candy, Bliss, or Starry Eyes, all about risking everything to succeed in some form of art.

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

Blood on the Tracks 1 and 2 by Shuzo Oshimi

* Blood on the Tracks ! by Shuzo Oshimi

Seiichi is a normal young man with a very protective mother, Seiko. He doesn't have many friends and his cousins frequently come over to spend time with him. They call to his attention his mother's history of being overbearing and he also has errant memories of finding a dead kitten in the road with his mother. Everything seems fairly normal until a family trip goes horribly wrong.

Blood on the Tracks is horror, but a more quiet, domestic type of horror than I'm used to reading in manga. For much of the book, nothing seems overtly wrong. There is an sinister undercurrent to the whole thing, but it's hard to point to something wrong. On the surface, Seiko is just a concerned mom who is a little clingy for her son's age. Looking closer, there are some things that could be a coincidence or could be something wrong: Seiko going to Seiichi's classes every day to keep an eye on him and constantly inviting his cousins over so he can't invite any friends. Maybe she's just worried or values family, but it also looks like she can't be away from him for long and wants to prevent him from making any true friends. The ending of the story culminates in a devastating event. The art around it plays with time, elongating the sequence unnatural and focusing tightly on expressions. Once the devastating event happens, Seiko's true nature becomes clear. 

I'm so excited to read more of this series. Horror manga are usually involve ghosts, conspiracies, or large world changing events. This small scale horror is done so well and feels earth shattering. The casual fanservice panels of women's bodies are absent here, which is incredibly refreshing. I see it so often, it seems to be a convention of the genre and it's nice to have the focus on the story instead of titillating the audience. The art style is much more delicate style than usual. The first pages in color are absolutely beautiful, done in a watercolor style with muted colors. Even the black and white panels have a keen attention to detail. 

My rating: 4.5/5

* Blood on the Tracks 2 by Shuzo Oshimi 

* spoilers for book 1* 

After Seiko pushes Seiichi's cousin off a cliff, Seiichi is completely in shock. Seiko acts like it was a tragic accident and Seiichi is too traumatized to say otherwise. They are questioned by police and follow the cousin to the hospital, all the while acting as concerned family and Seiko lying through her teeth. Then, Seiichi's crush shows up at their house, leading to another bombshell from Seiko.

Blood on the Tracks impressed with the first volume and surpassed that with the second volume. It's all about Seiichi's emotional journey trying to understand his mother's horrific actions, struggling with his own role in her lies, and coping with her new bombshell. This whole volume is about Seiichi holding it together as best he can. The close ups and elongation of scenes do a wonderful job of showing his internal struggle and true feelings he tries to keep inside to save his mother. After a girl who has a crush on him leaves a letter stating she'd like to be his girlfriend, his mother reveals a deeper level of obsession and control. 

I'm eager for the next volume to see how far the horror goes. The art is exquisite and as detailed and beautiful as the first volume. I feel so much for Seiichi under the thumb of his abusive, suffocating mother. This volume truly focuses on the psychological horror and effects on Seiichi which Seiko manipulates and pretends like everything is ok. I'm very interested in the story's developments.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

Possessor (2020)

Tasya Vos appears to have a normal life with an adorable son and an ex-husband who still loves her. In reality, she is a highly paid assassin with access to advanced technology that can insert her mind into another's and overtake it to kill her target. Over time, this practice has changed her mind, causing her to have intrusive violent thoughts in her own body and lose control over the host mind. Her latest job has her eventually trapped in a man's mind, unable to return to her own body.

I had no expectation going in beyond the eerie and beautiful imagery shown in the trailer and Possessor blew me away. The world building is immersive and different than many other science fiction films. Besides the tech industry and the secret assassin organization, the world feels the same as the present. Both companies we see feel like stepping into another world compared to Tasya's mundane, familiar home life. The visual style is so dreamlike, abstract, and colorful. The controversial sex scene with Tasya in a man's body and his girlfriend visually conveys gender dysphoria in a way I haven't seen before. 

Tasya is an exceptional assassin that shows a perfect façade to the world. It's as beautiful as it is fake, shown by her practicing mundane phrases to sound suitably interested and normal to her family. She carries this same practice into her job, learning how her future hosts speak to the people around them, their inflections and tone, to keep living their lives undetected until she kills. Her sense of self unravels while her mundane life seems to feel empty, only holding her back.

Only two of her assassinations are shown, but they are memorable. The first has her living in the body of a Black woman, brutally stabbing her target to death (not according to plan), and being killed by police. This sci-fi blackface and portraying death so like those we see in the news frequently is a poor choice especially when the scene is only used for attention-getting shock value and no other deeper commentary. This is my only real problem with the film. 

The second assassination is even more brutal as the mediocre white man she inhabits is fighting her control over him and making the target (his girlfriend's admittedly horrible dad) suffer as much as possible on top of killing his girlfriend. While this reflects intimate partner violence that happens frequently, these characters and their story are the focus of a good section of the film. The deep rage over feeling inferior to his girlfriend and her wealthy father was enough to overtake Tasya's control to destroy them. It says volumes about toxic masculinity and misogyny.

Possessor takes a futuristic concept and jumps right in. The rituals and regulations around the assassination method feels well developed, like we're only seeing a piece of a greater whole. I was hooked on each twist and turn of the film and the ending truly surprised me. Possessor is a huge step forward from Antiviral (despite the flaw) and I look forward to more films from Brandon Cronenberg. 

My rating: 4.5/5 fishmuffins

The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor La Valle

* major spoilers for The Horror at Red Hook and The Ballad of Black Tom*

Charles Thomas Tester lives in Harlem with his disabled father in the 1920's. While he could destroy his body doing honest construction like his father, the racist standards of pay and hiring practices simply don't appeal to him. He opts to do more covert, esoteric work in the hidden industry of magic that offers more risk and more reward. One day, he delivers a tome to an old woman for a large amount of money, but tears out the last page, rendering the whole thing useless. This simple act of sabotage doesn't technically violate any rules or agreements, but it exposes him to the scrutiny of both corrupt law enforcement and an even more ambitious sorcerer.

The Ballad of Black Tom is a retelling of Lovecraft's most appallingly racist short story, The Horror at Red Hook. In the original story, Malone investigates the sorcerer Suydam and witnessed unknowable horrors, human sacrifices, and the man's corpse reanimate. This is placed alongside the most dehumanizing, monstrous descriptions of people of color you will ever read. The Ballad of Black Tom, on the other hand, places a Black man at the center of the story instead of a cop and views this same population more as it was. This story is better than the original in every possible way from prose and characters to plot developments and conclusion.

Charles Thomas Tester navigates his world deftly, knowing when to look unaware or foolish to be underestimated and when to show his true intelligence. The strategy doesn't always work and he's often at the mercy whatever mood white men around him are in. Police are corrupt and only serve to protect the tender feelings of white people at the expense of black and brown lives. When Charles is forced to stay in Suydam's house overnight, the police kill his father over the complaint of the old woman with the missing page. They describe the murder so nonchalantly and then mock him for not being more upset. At every turn, Charles is at the mercy of the white men around him who can change their mind whenever they want and expect him to comply. If he doesn't, his life is expendable to them. 

The second section of the book is narrated by Malone, the original protagonist. He is not as virtuous here and shows the casual racism of the time (and of the present) on full display. The most egregious moment is when a white woman complains about a nearby tenement populated by people of color. She hysterically describes them as threatening and calls on him to protect her daughter (who cried over hurting herself). He soothes her and invades the tenement, where the climax of the story occurs. Malone also has a minor supernatural sight that shows him things ignored by others. He's been obsessed with the occult for years, which ultimately leads to his downfall. His ending is deserved.

Previously, he had posed as a street musician with a limited repertoire and a subpar singing voice to obtain jobs. His father taught him a powerful song before he died that he sang many times throughout the course of the novel, most notably for hours and hours after his father's death to absorb the loss in an uncaring world. The song comes back when he seems to be a mindless servant to Suydam, but turns around and murders him with the weapon his father gave him. In addition, he opens the portal for Cthulhu and becomes the monster white people see him as. The book ends with eyelidless Malone seeing the monstrosity looking down at him from the sky, unable to ever work as a cop again and with no hope of anyone sharing his knowledge, and Charles questioning his decision to unleash the monster on the world. Malone's fate is deserved and Charles was able to wield power in way he was never able to in the nonmagical world to get revenge for himself and his father. I don't blame him at all and find his actions justified.

The Ballad of Black Tom improves upon The Horror at Red Hook exponentially. It shows New York in the 20's closer to as it was with immigrants forced into slums and attacked just for existing instead of through an idealized, white lens as we usually see it. This very short book packs a punch and transforms a damaging piece of literature into one that portrays the injustice and pain people of color still experience today alongside amazing cosmic horror.

My rating: 5/5 fishmuffins

The Stylist (2020)

Claire, a lonely hair stylist, works day after day in her salon. Once in a while, she will choose a customer whose life compels her (and the circumstances are right) to kill and take their scalp for her collection. When Olivia, a long time client, asks her to do her hair for her wedding after her original stylist abruptly canceled, something snaps within her and her deadly urges spin out of control.

I absolutely loved The Stylist short film and I was super excited to hear about it being lengthened into a feature film. Najarra Townshend reprises her role as Claire and infuses the character with sympathy. Claire is incredibly lonely. She has no friends or family, only acquaintances at work and at the coffee shop she frequents. The scalpings and murders seem to be driven by her need to pretend to be other people, those who have secret affairs, husbands, children, and the lengthy list of things she doesn't have. Anxiety and self loathing follows every social interaction over every word she says or outfit she wears. The self loathing in particular tracks with her ritual around pretending to be others in their scalps. These feelings also contribute to obsession with Olivia who is everything she isn't, social and bubbly. It's refreshing to see that Olivia doesn't have the perfect life yet Claire wants it anyway because it's different. 

One person pays attention to her, the barista she sees every day, but Claire doesn't acknowledge her or seem to realize the potential for some sort of relationship is right in front of her. She has to chase things that aren't hers, as is repeated throughout the film. When she spend more time with the bride to be and her family and friends, Claire starts to kill with greater frequency and much more recklessly. Then she tries to stop killing all together and finally throws herself into it once again. It was interesting to see such an emotional, relatable portrayal of a lonely person with anxiety alongside the typical behavior of a serial killer.

The Stylist expands upon the short film pretty well. It lost me a little bit in the third act before the ending. I felt it dragged  and could have benefited from editing out some sequences. For instance, there were several repetitions of her waking up days in a row that simply wasn't needed. Also if a director is going to insert themselves obviously into the film, it usually comes off a bit cheesy as it did here. Other than that, this film does a wonderful job crawling into the psyche of deranged yet familiar character.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins

The Drifting Classroom Vol. 1 by Kazuo Umezu

Sixth grader Sho Takamatsu fights with his mother over being more responsible and growing up a but only to go to a school that suddenly transports to a barren wasteland. He finds himself in a role of authority after stepping up to protect the younger students and making hard decisions to further their survival. These students are faced with harsh realities and incredible dangers from humans and creatures alike while trying to figure out what happened and if it's even possible to return home.

The Drifting Classroom first came out in the 70's and was recently re-released in a beautiful hardcover last year. The story is a balance of bleak reality and wild science fiction centered around children. The children are forced to change quickly, especially the middle school aged kids, to lead where the adults fail and work toward the survival of as many as possible. He's almost unrecognizable even halfway through the story compared to the lazy kid at the start. Although he has everyone's best interests at heart, the others start to suspect him when inexplicable things happen and of course give over to mob rule when bullies lead and dissenters are punished. Overall, the kids shockingly work together well until fear and suspicious tear them apart.

The children are threatened by more than just the wasteland around them. The adults are doing nothing helpful at all. After the initial attempt to keep order, they kill themselves, kill kids they've taught and protected previously, or hoard all the resources for themselves. Simply put, they can't handle the extreme change and hopelessness while the children are resilient enough to hold on to hope and keep moving forward. The creatures who live in the wasteland are the other major danger, giant insect-like monstrosities that consume people like popcorn. Their existence was in doubt for a while when only a few witnessed it's first few meals until the school is faced with a fullfledged attack. 

The Drifting Classroom is a foundational work that influenced current horror writers such as Junji Ito (explicitly stated in his latest release, Venus in the Blindspot). It delves into deep, dark territory with an art style more indicative of lighter tone. The revelations discovered are devastating and went places I could never have predicted. The edition is beautiful, high quality, and well worth the price. I can't wait to see what else this series has in store.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins