Broken Frontier

A young girl struggles to survive the hereafter while also solving the mystery of her death.

Lindsay Buckner is stuck in her school where she was presumably murdered over a year ago. She has no recollection of the events that led to her death or of the person/people responsible. Lindsay has discovered that by touching the living she can get a glimpse of that individual’s life as it relates to her own. In her world there are also malevolent beings that wish to devour her soul, and her only protection is a mystic staff that she must constantly wield in order to fend off the attackers. When Lindsay misplaces her staff after touching the school’s janitor, thereby getting a disturbing vision of the man’s private lifestyle, she is forced to run for her (after)life.

At first glance, there isn’t a lot about School: A Ghost Story that I should like. It’s black and white, the dialogue is sometimes ridiculously simple, and the art is about as non-contemporary as you’ll find in any comic book around. However, Lindsay is a likable protagonist and the plot carries enough ingenuity to keep me hooked.

School is a blend of several genres of fiction. The most prominent of these are horror and fantasy. Lindsay walks around always bleeding profusely from the midsection and down her arm, the living characters are shown with their eyes sewn shut (presumably to show that they are blind in respect to the afterlife) and a mystically powered staff grants her protection from the bogeymen. These are mixed together with a fairly interesting mystery that leaps forward this issue to deliver an all-around enjoyable story.

Brian Defferding’s distorted and heavily inked artwork and unconventional page layouts lend fantastic ambiance to the story he is telling. It probably won’t ever win any awards, but the marriage of script and art for School is among the best I’ve seen for a small press or creator-published book.

It is unlikely that many people have discovered School: A Ghost Story. There are some disturbing images and harsh language, but any horror fan probably won’t have a problem with those things. If you have a few extra dollars handy and you are looking for a bit of off-beat horror, I recommend visiting www.deftoons.com and at the very least checking out the free preview pages Defferding has posted there.