By KARRIE FRANSMAN (Square Peg; 2012)]

A graphic novel whose weirdness quotient is confirmed by an enthusiastic back cover blurb from filmmaker Nicolas Roeg (a man who, you can be sure, knew his way around strange media). THE HOUSE THAT GROANED is indeed plenty weird, with artwork that’s a far cry from photorealistic and a narrative that leans into the perverse and psychosexual.

THE HOUSE THAT GROANED Promo

The house of the title is a London based “Victorian conversion” tenement that may be haunted, afflicted as it is by loud banging emanating from seemingly nowhere, frequent power outages and ever-creeping moisture that threatens to waterlog the entire building.  It’s into this place that Barbara, a seemingly normal young woman who sells beauty products, has just moved.

Her fellow tenants include Janet, who runs a weight loss seminar.  She’s tormented by late night phone calls from the morbidly obese Marion, whose self-created “Midnight Feast Front,” dedicated to gluttony and hedonism, is located in her apartment.  There’s also Matt, a “Freelance retoucher” who becomes Barbara’s designated mate, as well as Brian, who has an overpowering fetish for disfigured women, and the elderly Demi, who has literally become part of the scenery.

Flashbacks fill us in on these characters’ respective backstories.  All, you can be sure, are quite freaky, involving abuse, disillusionment, perversion and gender confusion (that last point obviously seemed far more outrageous in 2012 than it does now).  Those elements prove extremely impactful on present events, which begin with this collection of painfully isolated individuals attempting to assuage their collective loneliness and conclude with twisted sex, death and mass destruction.

These characters are depicted as bulky and mis-proportioned creatures bearing slits for eyes and prominent circles on each cheek.  Other illustrative quirks include imposingly rendered sound effects presented in all caps (“GLUG GLUG,” “CRUNCH,” “KABOOM!,” etc.), a scent depicted as a literal winding trail, distinctly vaginal wounds, copious male and female nudity and people on the toilet.  Gross, bizarre and adult-oriented this book is, but fascinating and bleakly insightful it also is.