By SCOTT HAMPTON (Kitchen Sink Press; 1993)
This graphic novella, hailing from the early 1990s Heavy Metal-Kitchen Sink album line, is a horrific coming of age tale with stunning artwork by Scott Hampton, one of the foremost draftsmen in the comics field. Hampton was also the scripter of THE UPTURNED STONE, and in that category it’s considerably less impressive.
The tale is related from the point of view of one of four horror obsessed pre-teen boys living in a small North Carolina town in 1969. Ghosts lurk in the area, one of which makes itself apparent in a cemetery on Halloween night, when the boys unearth the “world’s biggest pumpkin,” a monstrosity “the size of a washing machine.” Fully aware that this will be their last Halloween spent together (as they’re getting too old for trick-or-treating), the boys steal the pumpkin, intending to make “the coolest jack-o-lantern of all time.” They later eat a pie made from the thing, which leads to disquieting dreams that impart the last minutes of a murdered boy, and it seems the latter’s ghost is now afoot, and expecting the protagonists to avenge his killing.
There’s far more to Hampton’s expansive narrative, which contains nostalgic detours involving a garage band and the protagonists’ budding sexuality, all in service of a theme that’s aptly conveyed by the climactic line “we rounded childhood’s corner to pass among the broad ways and shadowy side streets beyond.” I think the tale would have benefited from a longer, more leisurely framework a la Graham Joyce’s similarly themed novel THE TOOTH FAIRY (1996). As it is, THE UPTURNED STONE is too short, with an overabundance of information crammed into a too-compact 64 pages.
The ending is also a bit of a disappointment, tying the whole thing up with an overly pat STAND BY ME-like flourish. But from a purely visual standpoint this book is a masterpiece of macabre invention. Light and shadow are unforgettably intermingled in Hampton’s evocative paintings, with the stand-out artwork occurring in an unforgettable ghostly encounter on pages 45-57, a flawlessly rendered, wordless evocation of apprehension, desperation and sheer terror.