Meanwhile, in Boston

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Meanwhile, in Boston, a group of cartoonists meet up weekly to discuss, critique and create comics. The Boston Comics Roundtable has created many an anthology from their Massachusetts (maybe we should say New England) talent base for the Inbound series based on subjects like Boston history and the ever-popular food.

Cover image by Jesse Lonergan

Recently, the Schulz Library received the artist edition of Hellbound 2, a horror anthology, created by Roho and BCR members. The group returns to its zine roots for this collection, complete with beautifully handmade paper, rubber stamps and hand-bound box for the two books. The stories are short and sweet, the filler illustrations make you beg for a full story. Often the failing of a horror anthology is that you read WITH the intention of being scared and thus, thumb through the pages bravely. A well-written comic is not necessarily terrifying until at night, it twists itself in the dark of your room, and you can suddenly recall images.

A particular story that follows that logic is RobMeBlind.com, which is about thieves who utilize location-based smart phone apps to figure out when people are gone from their homes. The clever crafting by J.L. Bell and Andy Wong left me awake blinking at my ceiling (possibly at the easy ability people have of giving away information for temporary celebrity). And the dark woodcut panels of E.J. Barnes in Patrick Flaherty’s story The Plague exemplify a great use of comics to set the mood for the story. Hellbound 2 is perfect for the horror fan or lover of hand-made objects, especially if those objects are a skin suit made from their victims.

-Jen Vaughn
Schulz Librarian
via Zine Scene & the Pony Express