Rob Clough has written a review of my last comic 'The Woodsman'. It's up on his patreon site here but I'll paste it in below in case people aren't a patron. (I asked and he said that was ok). Please sign up to Rob Clough's Patreon if you can for lots more exclusive reviews, lots of interesting stuff on there! Thanks Rob!
The Woodsman
For
over fifteen years, the UK's Rob Jackson has been delivering a dizzying
array of bizarre and hilarious comics that skirt the line between
genres like horror and fantasy with the most mundane of elements. His
simple but grotesque
art is easy to parse, because he goes to great lengths to make his
layouts clear. No matter how silly the premise of his strip, Jackson
always follows it to its logical end and beyond.
The Woodsman
is particularly demented, as it follows a wunderkind novelist named
Bill Greasom who is desperately trying to write his second novel. He
travels to a cabin in a remote location, but he still struggles to come
up with any ideas. When he meets a bizarre "woodsman," he's offered a
chance to write something specifically for him, as it might help his
writer's block. After the woodsman offers him a mushroom dish and
moonshine, Greasom blacks out and wakes up with the
inspiration to write and finish his new novel.
Obviously,
this was going to be some kind of deal with the devil, right? Well, it
did turn out to be a horror story, only it hinged on the most ridiculous
detail possible. The Woodsman claimed that he liked very specific kinds
of stories,
and it turned out that he made a string of famous novelists write him
porn. "The Old Man And The Sex Party" by "E.H.", "Catcher In Her Pants"
by "J.S.", etc. Greasom discovered this and was horrified that he had
been used in this way, and tried to find ways
to get out from under his deal.
The rest of the comic explores a series of
horrific scenarios where Bill tries to escape, recruits other writers to
work against the Woodsman, and repeatedly finds himself back at the
cabin. The caped Woodsman, wearing a stovepipe
hat, cuts a ridiculous figure until the moments where Jackson unleashes
completely unexpected horror.
That's
the secret to Jackson's success. He has such a firm understanding and
appreciation of genre comics that the backbone of his stories is always
cleverly ensconced in those worlds. His art has such a gloriously shabby
approach
that the worlds his characters live in all seem vaguely but permanently
soiled. His characters look like ordinary schlubs with bad posture and
spotty skin. Whatever absurd element Jackson introduces into his
narrative somehow always makes sense within the context
of the plot and doesn't take the reader out of it. Indeed, his service
to the plot of whatever he's writing is unshakable. However, his
eccentricities as an artist and his willingness to tweak genre
conventions make each new story a delightfully fresh and strange
experience.
'The Woodsman' is on sale at my website shop here, thanks!
