48 pgs. B&W | $9.99 softcover | W / A: Ashley Robin Franklin
It’s easy to do gruesome horror in comics form. But the methodical, slow-burning-dread kind of horror? That’s a much tougher nut to crack, especially in a short story where space to build up that creepy atmosphere is at a premium. But with her latest one-shot Fruiting Bodies, Ashley Robin Franklin successfully sparks that slow burn by using classic horror tropes to play with our expectations.
Fruiting Bodies follows three people on a road trip through the Pacific Northwest: Frances, on her way to Portland to move in with a new romantic partner, as well as Charlie (her chummy older brother) and Trent (Charlie’s obnoxious best friend), who are on their way to a “bro’s” camping trip. During a storm, Charlie takes a wrong turn and the group ends up stranded in the woods, out of gas. As they set up their tents, a beautiful stranger suddenly wanders out of the trees. She says her name is Frances too, and she’s been separated from her companions, so horndog Trent enthusiastically invites her to stay, drink their beer, enjoy their fire, and hunker down for the night.
These opening sequences, which take up almost exactly half of the comic’s 48 pages, serve two purposes. First, they are super chatty, packed with dialogue that establishes the characters’ personalities, connections, and goals in a way that feels natural, not forced or awkward. (It helps that Franklin’s dialogue sings with specificity in a way that makes the friendships seem real.) Second, it slows down the pace at which you read the book—the early pages take a longer time to read simply because there are a lot of words on the page. As you get closer to the staple in the middle of the book, though, Franklin keeps the dialogue coming, but interjects brief scenes where for a few panels, things go silent. Because you’re already reading at a slowed pace, and because of the horror tropes Franklin has introduced (the bickering cast, the serendipitous stranding of said cast in a way that they’re unable to get help, the beautiful stranger that seems too good to be true), you linger over these silent passages, looking for hints at what’s to come. It’s a neat trick, and it ramps up the tension and creepiness at just the right pace. It also proves the perfect juxtaposition with the book’s back half, where the gradual build finally boils over into pure craziness. The dialogue-heavy front half trained you to read slow; when the true horror appears and the art switches to silent scares and characters left screaming, you start to blaze through the pages, and as the story careens from revelation to revelation, you start to feel as off-kilter as the characters. It’s an excellent use of real estate to establish just the right atmosphere each scene needs, with impressive economy.
Franklin draws her characters with a manga-inspired cutesiness (with their wide, round, expressive faces and squatter-than-usual bodies, her work brings to mind American manga pioneer Lea Seidman Hernandez) that would seem at odds with the genre, but it works primarily because of the backgrounds. Franklin’s art does a great job of setting the scene, black and white art with dark gray washes that really sell that patented waterlogged nature of the Pacific Northwest—everything just feels damp, all the time. The visual storytelling serves the plot well, with layouts that are clear and generally easy-to-read; there are a few instances using aspect-to-aspect transitions where it’s not exactly clear what you’re looking at, but those amount to little hiccups in the reading pace, not showstoppers. In general, the art serves the story, the cute character artwork belying the book’s true nature yet still nailing the more gruesome tone of the later scenes.
It all builds to a reveal as to the source of the horror that is foreshadowed well enough that it’s not exactly a surprise twist, but it’s an interesting turn nonetheless. In all, Fruiting Bodies offers up creeping dread and a satisfying ending that will leave you suitably squicked out, as intended. | Jason Green
Click here to order Fruiting Bodies or to check out a 5-page preview, courtesy of Silver Sprocket.
