Broken Frontier

Twelve year old Lindsay Buckner’s soul is in peril as horrible monsters stalk her. As if that weren’t enough, she’s also trying to figure out who murdered her and why.

Something occurred to me when I got Brian’s personalized envelope (very cool, by the way) in the mail the other day. I have a six year old son, and part of being a father to a kindergartner is having to read a lot of children’s books. And from cover quality (sturdy card stock) to overall comic size (8" x 8") to a cursory glance at Brian’s peculiar artwork (kids with oversized heads, angular features and skinny bodies), this has all the marks of an uncolored children’s book. But unless you want your kids to run into your room in the middle of the night and hop into bed with you, you might want to steer clear of making this your choice of bedtime story.

Defferding’s funky horror/mystery sacrifices some story progression in favor of a strange and oddly graphic chase scene over the first half or so of this issue. And though "sacrifice" may sound like it holds a negative connotation, that isn’t exactly true here. Previous issues of School: A Ghost Story have been rather heavy on exposition, at times to the detriment of the story. However, Defferding takes more of a "show-don’t-tell" approach to Lindsay’s frightening situation, and the silence benefits the scene’s progress; the lack of sound causes the reader to quickly, frantically--much like Lindsay--move forward.

True to form, however, once the chase sequence has been wrapped, School turns back to its central mystery of what happened to Lindsay. Who killed her, and why? Perhaps it was her boyfriend, the only living character that does not have his eyes sewn shut? Or was it the perverted janitor with all the sickening clippings and pictures posted in his closet? Maybe it’s someone sweet and unexpected. Whoever it is, I get the feeling both Lindsay and we are on the verge of discovery.

It is often both strange and wonderful to turn the pages of this book. As I already mentioned, Defferding makes his characters appear almost like bobble-head dolls. This, along with the lack of a color palette, is probably a good thing as it lightens the very graphic nature of the tale being told. The way he plays with the panel setup is also quite brilliant. The panels are often displayed disproportionately like shards of glass, which goes along nicely with the lead character’s shattered sense of things. This book probably won’t be winning any awards for art, but if style was rewarded over flash it would be in the running.

If you’d like to be in on the secret, go to www.deftoons.com and start ordering some of these books. Just don’t let your young kids read them.