Broken Frontier

A killer cuts a bloody swath through a small town in this graphic novel inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

The town of Good Fortune fails spectacularly to live up to its name as a string of serial murders leave its citizens living in fear. Each victim has been sliced clean in half, their bodies meticulously preserved and arranged for the authorities to find. It falls to the young daydreaming cop, Mason, to solve the mystery. As he gathers clues, Mason begins to fear that the Red Death, the grisly phantom that haunted his childhood dreams, could in fact be real. Is it all in his head? What is Good Fortune’s sinister secret that only the ravens know?

Although not directly inspired by any of Poe’s stories, Ravenous draws from many of his themes and ideas and even cleverly works a few passages from the original tales into the dialogue and narration. The result is a thoroughly impressive graphic novel with an engrossing story and a slowly building sense of horror. I found myself drawn in by the book’s central mystery and truly shocked by a number of suitably sickening turns taken by the plot. Mason remains a fascinating and unusual narrator throughout. His frequent flights of fancy and melodramatic way of viewing the world make him at the same time naïvely amusing and borderline freaky. Like a modern day Don Quixote, Mason sees himself as a kind of knight errant struggling against evil and injustice and interprets his surroundings through a veil of fantasy scenarios and flowery prose. His eternal nemesis, the Red Death, was the book’s most intriguing component. I was reminded of the Red Knight in the film, The Fisher King, an apparition forever pursuing the lead character, hounding him more and more the closer he comes to an important truth.

In addition to crafting a solid story, Dawn Brown also renders the tale in a unique and effective art style. The images have a very open, airy feel to them with many expanded or full page panels that immerse you in the world of Brown’s imagination. She transitions well between realism and the fantasies of Mason’s mind, often convincingly merging the two. The coloring is grim and moody and the images of the murder victims and of the gruesome Red Death are often horrifying. And everywhere, there are ravens—hungry, knowing, and mocking harbingers of something horrible.

As an extra treat, Ravenous reprints several Edgar Allan Poe short stories that were an influence on the graphic novel. These are accompanied with illustrations by Brown, allowing new readers and old to experience Poe’s twisted visions. Ravenous is recommended reading for any fan of Poe or of psychological horror and crime fiction.