The Webcomics Weekly is back in your life and ready to curse some eels! Wait. That doesn’t seem right? Oh shit is that the “Spencer and Locke” artist?!
Curse of the Eel
Chapters 1-3
Updates Saturdays
Created by Jorge Santiago Jr
Reviewed by Mel Lake
Listen, if you take an angry goth girl and stick her with a sidekick that’s a gigantic cursed eel creature, I’m going to be interested in what happens next. “Curse of the Eel” is just that—a goth girl summons an eel, then has to live with the consequences. I’m a simple gal/person who loves a good giant horrific eel creature. So let’s dig in.
The first pages of “Curse of the Eel” drop you right in the action without wasting any time on character backstory or exposition. This doesn’t always work well, but here, since the story isn’t very concerned with the specifics of how its protagonist conjures an eel or what the setting is, action is the way to go. Connie is being ruthlessly bullied by her classmate Rachel, who threatens to bleach her hair. Two dudes, Jason and Frank, stand by and watch. This is a simple enough premise that readers don’t need pages and pages of setup. We’ve all seen Carrie, we get what’s happening. (Disclaimer: I actually haven’t seen Carrie and really should remedy that. Regardless, I grokked the setup just fine.)
Things really get strange when the eel shows up. Hungry. And giant. With a freakishly human face. Is it bloodthirsty? Does Connie have to bargain with it for its release from the spooky haunted house where it was trapped? Nope. It wants Chinese. (Food.) A giant eel flying around with semi-human facial expressions craving General Tso’s chicken is just such a chef’s kiss of a premise. I love it. The eel is hilarious and the most well-adjusted character in the bunch. He helps Connie stand up to her bullies by liquefying (?) one of them. She’s fine, though. After that, he follows Connie around like a strange puppy who can fly and turn people to goo. Connie’s woes aren’t over, though, because she has to deal with the terribly tragic issues of “going to college” and “making friends.” Here is where the comic shows what it’s really about—the horrors of high school, with or without a giant eel.
The artwork of “Curse of the Eel” has a very pulp horror vibe, with strong uses of black space and uneven panel borders. The eel itself is sometimes gross, sometimes cute, but never veers too far into cartoon territory. I also love that it’s in black-and-white because it fits the story and also gives the strip a horror manga feel. The only pop of color comes on the covers, with vivid red-and-green contrast artwork that is super cool. I’ve taken a peek ahead at more current pages of this comic and it looks like the artwork levels up considerably. I enjoy the sketchy, lo-fi feel of the beginning chapters, but by chapter 17, this looks like a professional comic you’d see on the shelves at a bookstore. There’s all kinds of halftone shading and the composition is much more clean. I don’t recognize all the characters but their facial expressions have certainly matured since the beginning pages, which were released in 2015. That’s one of the awesome things about writing this column—it’s like seeing characters and artists grow and improve right before your eyes.
Despite the title and, well, the fact that there’s a giant eel floating around, most of the chapters I read are ultimately about Connie’s maladaptive coping mechanisms and trauma from being bullied. The lessons learned aren’t saccharine, though, Connie is still a deeply cynical goth who wishes she could be in a horror film. Personally, I could use a bit more gore and a bit less high school drama, but it is is tagged with “high school” and “slice of life” on Tapas, so readers should understand that they’re not going into straight-up horror.
With over 400 pages released so far, if you like a spot of horror eel in your slice of life comic (and who doesn’t?), “Curse of the Eel” might be your thing. The eel’s eerie human face does grow on you after a while.
