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The spider in the corner of the ceiling. The monster under the bed. The dark and the great unknown. These are the things we fear—both as children and as adults.
Over 11 terrifying, provoking and entertaining comics about monsters, Karen Beilharz and some of Australia’s best independent creators explore our deepest fears and anxieties through the medium of comics.
Conceived in the spirit of the Jim Henson’s The Storyteller graphic novel series, Monsters was created for families to share and read together. “I wanted to open up a conversation between children and adults about fear,” says writer Karen Beilharz and Sydney mother of two. “Often adults are mystified by the things that scare children. I think it’s important for parents to be able to grasp and see things from a child’s point of view, because it helps your child deal with their fears and strengthens the relationship between you.”
About the creators
Monsters was written by Karen Beilharz (Kinds of Blue, Eternal Life) and illustrated by a range of exciting talent from the Australian comics community: Mike Barry, EmmJ, Peter Fairfax (Valentine’s Dei), Kathleen Jennings (Ditmar award-winner and World Fantasy Award nominee), Greg Lamrock, René Pfitzner (former animator at Walt Disney), Nathan Seabolt, Belinda Stead, Jordan Taia and Jemima Trappel (Wonderfully Madison, Fearfully Madison, Same). Karen Beilharz’s long-time collaborator on Eternal Life, Paul Wong-Pan, provided cover art.
About the anthology
Monsters was written for preschool-aged children and up. It consists of 11 short comics told over 76 pages, and it is being self-published through the power of crowdfunding.
At time of writing, the project has raised almost $4000—virtually half of its goal of $9,900. Rewards for supporting the campaign include: the book in digital and paper format, colouring books featuring original art by the creators, a one-of-a-kind poster featuring art from the book, knitted monster softies, and custom sketches. The campaign ends on Friday 29 April 2016. Find out more at http://pozible.com/monsterscomic.
Kek-W will always hold a spot as one of my favorite writers in the Progs after his initial run on The Order hit so many high notes. The latest run wasn't as tight, and the initial Deadworld story was a little too stilted to flow well as a comic, despite the promise the story had in that it was outlining the origins of the four Dark Judges. Tainted is much more brisk than the previous Deadworld story, and Kendall's minimal but muddy inks create a drab world that is too depressing to even resemble ours. Showing new, unfamiliar things happening in a story for the first time is difficult in the Progs since there are only so many pages these creators have to work with. This team, however, is making quick work of showing us the problems that Deadworld faced and the factions that were on either end of its downfall.
Food Wars and Academia were slow this week, with the former wrapping up the results of the first Central shokugeki defeat and the latter preparing us for the attempted rescue of Bakugo to come soon. Black Clover, however, is still reeling from the latest insurrection of the Eye of the Midnight Sun, and we've found out which captain was, allegedly, spying for them. Tabata wrote it so that this captain would have a particularly impressive ability with only one exploitable weakness. And guess who can exploit it? Yup, Asta. Sometimes Black Clover seems a little too easy when it pulls stuff like this, but when the main protagonist's ability is literally anti-magic, it does constantly make sense that he'd be able to counter things that other magic users do. For yet another chapter in this arc we get a hint of the full might of all of the captains in concert, and as the intrigue continues to get ratcheted up, this series is about to get a lot more interesting overall. I'd bet anything that if Tabata can come out of this arc strong, we'll hear a Black Clover anime announcement some time in the next year.
It kind of blows my mind that people like the other characters of this manga. In thinking about, I guess it’s a bit like liking Vegeta on DBZ. Even though that didn’t happen until after Goku had beaten him, but whatever. I’m just a huge fan of Soma and his supporting cast.
I feel like there was a deeper meaning to the story that either didn’t quite present itself or that I missed. It’s not a bad story and I do really get the point and like the ending. There’s just some scenes in between all that, that were lost on me. I couldn’t quite see their importance to the narrative, but they didn’t make me enjoy the story less.
Later, after more of the S rank characters are introduced we see that there’s a full on alien invasion going on and that city A has been destroyed in one attack. The S rank heroes scramble to take on the invasion, but while most of them tangle with just one dude, Saitama goes inside the ship and beats the living piss out of everyone he runs into until coming face to face with the leader of the ship.
In the aftermath of a battle Conan and the witch Nai look down upon the Wolf Tribe’s standing chieftain, Bril’s limp corpse. Casting spells upon him to keep him among the living they discuss what to do next. The heir to the tribe has been captured by the villainous Kwarada and action must be taken. Luckily for them (and for us) Bril recovers quickly and it’s off to battle once more. Meanwhile Brune is tossed into a sacrificial pit by Kwarada in order to summon some type of ancient darkness upon the land. Yeah, it’s all 
There’s also a segment with the Dove’s and that kid with the stitches is introduced. I like his character even less here. He’s one of the few elements of this story that seems completely out of place and it’s no different here. If anything he feels more out of place in the manga.
The rest of the issue shows Rebecca in her new life that she stole from this dimension’s Rebecca. Grant in a fit of vengeance goes about ruining that stolen life. He places the blame on Rebecca for seducing him, for pushing him towards overwork, and pretty much every other negative thing that happened to him thus far. It’s a bit extreme, but then again Grant isn’t really that logical of a guy. Rebecca’s brother and husband reject her, and soon after she breaks down she sees Grant. Realizing what he did she begs him to take her with him, but Grant simply blasts off into another dimension leaving her with the cops closing in.
What doesn’t particularly work for the story is that it becomes predictable from the get-go. Which isn’t always a bad thing since it’s the journey, but the journey has a lot of bumps. The one-shot jumps forward in time to show the history of the abuse and how it’s affected Rafe. The problem I have is that I don’t think it does a very good job of showing it affecting Rafe. He’s pretty much angry and upset the entire time we see him so when that anger boils over it’s not really character development paying off, but rather the natural conclusion to everything that we’ve seen.
Despite what the primary cover art leads you to assume, Pizzazz only appears for a handful of panels. She looks ever so sad. And then the book moves on. It is perhaps a smart choice to avoid dwelling on her continued suffering. That could get really gross and mean. However, as her role in her band diminishes and her visibility in the book lessens, I'd like to see more of how she's coping. Her livelihood and support system are shifting beneath her feet. And all we’ve seen is Pizzazz shuffling around her house, mouth down-turned. It’s a pretty accurate portrayal of depression. But I have to wonder where the book is going with regard to her sub-plot.
Since there’s only six stories and they’re not very long I will only talk about two of them that I enjoyed so that I don’t spoil the one-shot. The first to talk about is a story about two men on a hot air balloon trying to illegally immigrate out of the country. Immigration is illegal due to the poisonous gas and all, but these two gents are giving it their best show. It doesn’t have any dialogue, but we see that the balloon is dropping and each time they’re forced to get rid of more and more of their supplies. The ending is amusing. The art does all the heavy lifting obviously and it’s an interesting style. It’s a little cartoonish, but there’s something charming about the artwork.
The pacing in this issue takes two different approaches. One is from Dredd’s point of view who is diving into the bottoms of the block, and the other one is from the girls who are trying to figure out what they will do next while outside. The contrast in the pacing works to raise the tension onto what’s happening to the feral girls in Dredd’s absence.
My counterpoint to this is that if you’re going to change a long running franchise… this is the blueprint. I could never be mad at this new Ultraman because it is handling the entire history of the franchise with intense care. The change it’s made has also been handled with intelligence and a lot of thought. It’s not just, “we don’t need that gimmick” there’s an actual explanation for why and it’s that the power set has changed. The actual Ultraman power is gone and what remains is a fraction of that. It also leaves some possibilities for the future of course, but I personally really like this new direction it’s going in.
There’s some questionable and inconsistent art. For the most part it’s passable. There is one problem that sticks out for me. Maybe it’ll seem petty to you. But we're supposed to believe Will, an extremely fit man, seemingly carved from godly stone, is subsisting solely on pizza and cereal? His figure is that of your typical superhero comic lead. And it just doesn't fit. It's as if Marco Lorenzana is illustrating by rote memorization of how a comic character looks, rather that drawing Will as he should appear in this particular book.
Doorman presents an interesting concept on its front page:
You’re not supposed to take this story too seriously. Henry is the straight man while everyone else is pretty much over the top versions of their character architypes. The story has an interesting concept, but it’s a little predictable with its set up and the “woe is me” last day on the job routine from Henry. The fairly obvious guess is that everything will wrap up with a tight bow around it and Henry will train the next generations of Porters or at the very least we’ll have the door’s origins revealed to us or both.
With the other two characters we follow Rock the least. We see him become more and more concerned about being hit in the head because he is trying to get a scholarship. He gets a rematch with boxer that beat him before and the boxer actually tries to help him. The match is interesting because it’s actually for the mob boss that Scissors works for. Her side of the story has a lot going on. Her former flame is her new co-worker and they’re given a job to take out the guy that fucked with TJ in the first volume.
There’s not a lot I can say about what actually lurks within the lake but whatever it is it leaves behind body pieces of its victims. Bill is met with other odd encounters like hostile neighbors and chilling nightmares. I think any young person whose lacking direction in their life can relate to Bill. He’s isolated, depressed and desperate. As a first issue this book works because it lays out the pieces of a mystery. Violence is often suggested but not explicitly shown which leaves a lot of horror to the imagination. These days it takes a lot to disturb a comic book reader. This book achieves that for me successfully.