LDCOMICS ONLINE COMICS FAIR 2025! After reading through a batch of LDComics Fair offerings dealing with some fairly heavy themes Deadly Knitshade’s The Mice that Live in My Walls was a most welcome change of pace and tone. Told in rhyme, it’s the story of a household disrupted by strange nocturnal noises that imply someone else is also resident within the flat. At first believing this to be mice in the walls our protagonist is suitably disconcerted when they discover that it is actually an infestation of rats. With no choice but to bring in a pest control expert to tackle the situation things soon take an almost… existential… twist.
The Mice that Live in My Walls feels almost like a children’s picture book story but retooled for adults. It’s jaunty and witty in delivery but it also takes some dark and rather morbid turns as it progresses. Comics featuring anthropomorphised characters ironically often work so well because that detachment from strict humanity actually emphasises it all the more fiercely. Here Deadly Knitshade takes that narrative conceit to unashamedly bizarre levels – a humanised cat who owns a cat as a pet for example – giving an added layer of the weird that serves the offbeat nature of the comic well.
Visually The Mice that Live in My Walls has an uncomplicated but appealing style of art that is enhanced by occasional fantasy cutaways and some nice comedic set pieces (the passage of time as a pile of rat poison is gradually consumed is an especially neat use of between-the-panels comics reading comprehension). Vibrant colour set against some quiet and oddly poignant contemplation at story’s end also emphasises that mix of playful humour and bleak comedy that is such a crucial part the story.
A final photo montage implies an autobiographical foundation to this story. A fun yet strangely sad read.
Deadly Knitshade (W/A) • LDComics Online Fair, £5.00
Review by Andy Oliver
The LDComics Online Comics Fair runs across the month of July. Read all our coverage of the comics on offer here at BF.
