Before we get into our latest featured comic, I feel an apology is overdue, as I’ve been unable to post an OTC since before Hurricane Sandy. As a resident of New Jersey living close to the shore, my area was hit pretty hard. My grandparents live in Sea Bright, and if you want to see what a real disaster looks like, just Google some videos of their town in the aftermath of the storm. My grandparents were the lucky ones: they only lost their pool shed, generator, garage door, two of three cars, and have to strip and rebuild the ground floor. After all this happened, and just when I finally got my power back, we received the second blow, Winter Storm Athena hit, and our power went right back down again. Obviously, that made it difficult to contribute to the website, but everything is now back to normal for those of us lucky enough not to catch the full brunt of the storms. Barring another freak “Storm of the Century,” I should be able to stay as consistently inconsistent as I was before.
I’m a big fan of Evan Dorkin and his particular brand of self-depricating dark humor comics, such as “Dork” and “Milk and Cheese” (not to mention his work on “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast”), but his best work, in my opinion, has to be “Beasts of Burden,” illustrated by Jill Thompson (“Sandman,” “Scary Godmother”). It was an honor to meet him at the first Asbury Park Comic Con, where I acquired a sketched and signed copy of the first hardcover collection, “Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites.” It’s a story about a team of five dogs and a cat who find their once-quiet neighborhood, Burden Hill, suddenly attracting a plethora of supernatural events: a witch’s coven attempting to summon a goddess of destruction, the ghosts of murdered animals, a pack of zombie dogs, a horde of rats bent on world domination, and much more. They call for help from a shamanistic order known as the Wise Dogs, and soon find themselves deputized into the order–even the cat.
“Beasts of Burden” is a bit of a stretch for Dorkin, as he’s primarily a humor writer/cartoonist. “Beasts” is a much more serious work, although Dorkin’s brand of dark humor translates well into the world of Burden Hill, serving to break the tension, or in some cases, even to build up the suspense. The characters are personified in a very thorough way, but they are not anthropomorphized: dogs and cats have no special powers, no opposable thumbs, and walk on all fours like any other dog, except for being smart enough to be self-aware, talk to each other and other animals, and of course the whole spell-casting thing. Where the series really shines is in juggling a fairly large cast: our six heroes and many of the supporting characters are all fully-realized and compelling, and the credit for that is shared equally by Dorkin’s script and Thompson’s amazing talent to elicit an emotional response from a single expression from a single panel.
The subject matter is not a stretch for Jill Thompson, with her experience with the fantastic, the horrifying, and her talent at painting sequential art with a storybook feeling. She has a talent for drawing very human emotion on inhuman faces, combining them seamlessly with the animals’ natural expressions and mannerisms. It’s that storybook feeling you’d get from the Brothers Grimm and other young-adult fiction of the fantasy/horror genres. One series it recalls to my mind is the “Bunnicula” novels by James Howe, including such classics as “Bunnicula,” “Howliday Inn,” and “The Celery Stalks At Midnight,” about a family getting a new rabbit and their dog and cat suspecting that the new member of the family is actually a vampire (incidentally, although this column is specifically about comics, I’d recommend those books to anyone).
Despite its horror-first focus, “Beasts” has a cute underbelly: the characters start off with an endearing, almost innocence to the characters. It’s almost as much a coming-of-age story as it is horror, as the characters grow into Wise Dogs and learn how to work effectively as a team. As they work together, they are each growing in their own way. Orphan, the stray cat, starts off as an aloof outsider, constantly mocking and teasing the dogs, but soon becomes a welcomed and accepted member of the group. Rex, the token Doberman in the gang, begins by acting like a badass but running away at any sudden fright, until Orphan’s life is on the line and he jumps in to save the cat from damnation. Dymphna, a cat and witch’s familiar, is initially a sworn enemy of the others, until she ends up saving their lives and working with the group (although she hasn’t received their full acceptance yet, beyond an awkward crush from Orphan). Don’t be fooled by this paragraph, though: this “cute underbelly” lies beneath a layer of sometimes shocking and grotesque horror that few comics today can match.
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It’s the kind of story that appeals to many different kinds of readers: older children and teens growing out of children’s storybooks and ready for something a little more mature; animal lovers of all ages; fans of the horror and fantasy genres; fans of the creators other works; and, of course, any true fan of the comics medium itself.
The best way to collect all of the “Beasts of Burden” stories without collecting a bunch of anthologies and all of the first miniseries is to get the beautiful hardcover edition published in 2010 by Dark Horse and the one-shot anthology “Beasts of Burden: Neighborhood Watch” that came out earlier and collects the three short stories published this year in the reboot of “Dark Horse Presents.” To complete the collection, you’ll also need the “Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice” one-shot. If you want to go the full Monty and get all of the stories in their original format, you’ll need “The Dark Horse Book of …” anthologies: “Hauntings,” “Witchcraft,” “The Dead,” and “Monsters,” as well as the four-issue “Beats of Burden” miniseries, “Dark Horse Presents (Vol. 2)” #4, 6 & 8, as well as the Hellboy crossover.
“Beasts of Burden” is easily one of the best comics series out there these days, but you don’t have to take just my word for it. It’s won an Eisner or Harvey Award six out of the past eight years, as well as a National Cartoonist Society award for Best Comic Book Artist and three more nominations. As we reported back in October, there is a new four-issue miniseries coming out next year, so be sure to watch for it in an upcoming installment of Soliciting Multiversity: Dark Horse” and add it to your pull lists!
