I scanned the full cover of this "pocket manga" because I wanted you to be able to read the back cover copy, but I didn't feel like typing it out myself. Anyway, click for the biggie, read it, then look at the front cover. Now, on that basis, what are your expectations? They're wrong! This is not a slasher. And even though the first couple pages give detailed profiles of four potential "final girls," the "story" is not about them, it's about this lot:
Who are they? Fuck if I know. They start off that faceless, and never get fleshed in. There's starting in medias res, and then there's just never establishing anyone or anything ever. What are they up against? Fuck if I know. There's a lot of stuff here that looks weird and certainly threatening, but it's so random and unexplained, it's more surrealistic than scary.Flipping through this before I bought it convinced me to buy it, because if there's one thing I can say in this thing's favor, it's that the art is really quite pretty. Seriously, this looks absolutely amazing cover-to-cover.
The problem is that Hutchison doesn't seem to know how to tell a story with pictures, or at least gives no evidence of knowing how to do so here. I can barely ever tell what's happening from one panel to the next. I mean that literally. The transition between panels, which should be figure-out-able if not transparent, almost always loses me. I honestly couldn't say if the story here is any good, because the art (gorgeous as it is to look at) just doesn't tell it.
How frustrating. Not recommended.
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