The Butcher’s Boy #1: Teeth and Blood

Terror, gore, and death greet readers on the opening pages of The Butcher’s Boy #1. This new horror series starts with a shocking bang before settling into a slower developing, tension building first issue.

Six friends plan a trip to a tourist trap ghost town previously called Silverfalls in The Butcher’s Boy #1 (though a few wish they were going to a lake as usual instead). Once upon a time there was a nearby silver mine. An old legend tells of a butcher who accidentally wandered into a mine and got lost. Weeks after the butcher should have died, he emerged–what he had eaten to stay alive no one knew. Though one person in today’s group, Emma, is very interested in old legends and horror stories, the rest of the group is anxious to leave, doing nothing but bickering in the meantime. But it’s possible that their fate has already been determined.

The Butcher’s Boy #1’s first five pages are nearly identical in style and for all intents and purposes are the first number in a countdown. One quick panel introduces the reader to a main character in an ordinary moment sometime between Monday and Thursday. Each character is planning a trip for the weekend. The rest of the page jumps forward to Saturday when that same character is in a frightening, bloody, or outright grotesque situation in an unidentified location. Pages six and seven tick the countdown further along as all six characters arrive at their ghost town destination on Friday. At this point the reader knows that danger and death are only a day away. The opening creates a sense of urgency that’s palpable. But rather than rush forward quickly, the issue subverts the sense of urgency with a deliberately slow pace and an utter lack of true horror. If successful, the reader will be eager to the point of impatience to get to Saturday’s events.

The Butcher’s Boy #1’s opening pages promise gore and horror, but the issue is most amusing thanks to the six friends who apparently can’t stand each other. The characters are all stereotypes in a way. Little is learned beyond surface level characteristics. There’s a girl obsessed with social media, the boyfriend whose personality is letting his girlfriend tell him what to do, the guy no one seems to like but is the one with the car, and so forth. In a way this very basic character development creates universality. Everyone will know at least one of these people in their real life, and that certainly pays off as their trip grows more and more dysfunctional. It’s an easy dynamic to understand and a good source of humor. And ultimately it provides just enough information on the characters to invest in what readers already know will be a gruesome story.

The horror imagery in The Butcher’s Boy #1 is confined almost entirely to the first five pages, and it is very effective. There is some dialogue in these sequences, but the horror story atmosphere is generated primarily through visuals. There are knives, teeth, decapitations, and a grotesque side of meat that has eyes in unnerving locations.

Following the first five pages’ heavy horror imagery, the ghost town sequence is very mundane. The contrast is very effective. It underscores the ordinariness of the groups’ interaction. These are six very regular people spending time at a very regular ghost town. And the plain setting adds tension to the countdown already set in motion.

The horror imagery is further enhanced by a blend of red and purple coloring. The use of red for horror scenes isn’t an unusual choice, but the purple applied for the background of some panels adds an almost otherworldly feeling as opposed to one of standard gorey sensation. And like the art where the horror imagery contrasts with the mundane setting afterward, the sandy/beige sky and brown buildings reinforce the extreme change in situation that will befall the characters in the next day.

The butcher boy horror story that Emma relates is told via a long series of caption boxes on one page. That page delivers more red colored horror imagery including a butcher with a cleaver and a dripping, uneven set of teeth. The captions threaten to obscure the art, but they are successfully organized in almost a dual waterfall that works around it.