The Slasher’s Apprentice #1: Just Enough There, There

Some comics are practically prose books with pictures. Others are text light, driven by vivid artwork. The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 is neither of those, somehow landing in a troubled middle ground. And yet, in landing in that middle ground, it stumbles into the territory of a functional comic.

The sole survivor from an attack on her family is older and has a true crime podcast in The Slasher’s Apprentice #1. In The Knife Life she discusses killers and their behaviors. She is most interested in the Hopton Valley Killer, who she is determined to find.

The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 is a narratively thin comic, both with text and art. Perhaps nothing is more emblematic of this than the issue’s protagonist going unnamed. Visually, significant empty white space is a quality shared by most pages. Panel grids often don’t get near the edges of pages. Horizontal panels many times extend across only ? to ¾ of the page. These layouts do prove distracting at times, especially as the issue goes on and little story advancement is made. Somehow, though, this narrative brevity ultimately works to the issue’s advantage. Indeed, it is almost a necessity lest too much information undercut the issue’s potentially surprise ending. Nevertheless, it can leave a reader wanting more content while reading.

A true crime podcast foundation is a good entry into the story that The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 is setting up. It’s an easy to understand idea. And the fact that it is such a familiar concept makes the peculiarities about this particular podcast stand out all the more. Richards isn’t really setting up any kind of misdirection. Rather, there is merely a “this is a little odd” undercurrent throughout the issue. The potential for a reader’s curiosity to be piqued is perhaps the only reason the issue could be called a page turner.

It’s Richards’ use of slasher tropes that carries the issue, though. And those are very successful. Regardless of where the story itself goes, The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 wears its genre on its sleeve, and there’s no questioning that the series will stay loyal to it throughout. It’s hard not to smile when someone gets stabbed through the back of their head while drinking in front of the refrigerator or when the young couple about to have sex meet a grizzly end.

Art and coloring in The Slasher’s Apprentice #1 is minimalist in some ways. Shading transitions are mostly abrupt. In some cases, Nalty’s colors will react to different implied light sources with two or perhaps three different tones. In others, a colored area will butt up against a pure black one without transition. Overall this lets colors pop off the page, especially the brightest expression of them.

Halverson’s linework is fairly conservative. Most characters are light in facial detail except when making more extreme expressions. In most cases Halverson relies on eyes and mouths to communicate feelings. The style works as a whole with the issue’s overall minimalist construction.

In like fashion to the overall story, the best art is in the grizzly murder sequences. Halverson expertly captures a slasher aesthetic. The levels of gore work well, and while the art might be almost comically over the top were it a sequence in a movie, it works well as still images.

Beaudoin’s color choice for the caption boxes is striking compared to the art that surrounds it. The shade of yellow, almost a mustard, provides a high contrast to both panel interiors and any surrounding white space. Most of the time Beaudoin places caption boxes in, or at least partly in, the panels. Sometimes they are completely outside them, though–often with horizontal panels that don’t extend the full length of the page. The captions look strangely divorced from the ongoing action in those instances, highlighting the emptiness that figures into many of the issue’s pages.