More Hallowe'en Fun: "His Face All Red" by Emily Carroll

[nezchan]

Well, it's Hallowe'en, and since all the other cool kids are jumping off a cliff, I might as well do the same and post something.

Go here for the full story.



I just happened across this gem today, and thought some of the folks here might like it as much as I did. It's a wonderfully subtle story, with a bit of an open ending that my mind finds it all too easy to fill in the blanks of. I won't post the whole thing, since it's only a few pages long and I think the mood would only be fully appreciated if you read the whole thing. But here's about the first half-page, enough to hook you and take a look.












As an aside, I'm certain I'm Not The Only One who sees a stylistic similarity to Kate Beaton here.

You should also check out the artist's blog (which I have also only just discovered), given it is full to the brim with wonderful and awesome.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Comments

[icon_uk]

I love the whole thing, the art, the use of colours, the creepy undertones building up. Awesome!

[nezchan]

Isn't it a treasure? The subtlety really appeals to me.

Thank you

[roguefankc]

Oh my goodness, is this a treasure! =)

And that last panel when the corpse turned to look at the younger brother in the pit, I blinked. I wasn't expecting that.

Seriously, you find the best comics, nezchan! =)

Re: Thank you

[nezchan]

It's a gift. =D

[mad]

I caught that off of Twitter too, love the art. And yeah, Not Just You, there's definitely a Beaton vibe to it.

Good stuff.

[glimmung]

Wow!

That comic has to be one of the best examples of how to lay out a comic for the web. The page where he descends into the hole was great.

[nezchan]

Ah, this sort of comment really makes me glad I share like a good child should.

[meatwhichdreams]

Share and Enjoy! :D

[blackruzsa]

So
So
pretty.

[althechi]

Great comic! Thanks for sharing it. =)

[pyrotwilight]

I'm lost.

Is the ending mean he had killed a monster in the form of his brother when he thought he killed his brother?

[nezchan]

It's a little open-ended, so you have to fill in your interpretation. I read it more for the mood it generates than the actual narrative, so I take a bit on faith.

I do believe he killed his brother, but the involvement of the monster allowed for a Tell Tale Heart sort of revenge, where he's made to come back to the scene of the crime. Can't quite explain the coat, though.

[clemon]

Wow. That was really intense.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Wow - that's pretty good stuff, all right. I'm not sure I understand just what actually HAPPENED to the brother - besides being killed, I mean - but the evocation of mood is great. Also, the protagonist is very well fleshed out - just the design of him compared to his brother makes it very clear that he has lived all his life in his brother's shadow, and makes the events that follow at least somewhat understandable.

[nezchan]

The difference in their houses really underlines the point, when he says "I have no animals". No doubt at all to the motives, and it's quite possible the brother isn't intentionally laughing at him the way he thinks right before the murder. I love the feel of this.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Exactly - it's not quite clear whether his brother's casual superiority over him is real or just a result of his jealousy, but we know that he FEELS it's real.

[nezchan]

There's also that interesting passage where, Quixote-like, the lesser brother fantasizes terrible aspects of streams and trees, while the other just casually dismisses them as normal. He's already passing into a dark place, where strange things live.

[psychopathicus_rex]

And the brother's dismissal of them in itself heralds no good, because it's a continuation, whether real or imagined, of the stuff the protagonist has been putting up with his whole life. The tree is just an oak, the stream is just a stream, the terrible monster that HE volunteered to go kill - and got laughed at for doing so - is just a regular old wolf that his brother casually dispatches. One imagines that things might have gone better for the brother if he'd been a tad less blase about things, and just said something sympathetic like 'yeah, it's spooky out here, huh?'

[nezchan]

The hole-digging is an interesting element, though. Clearly it's a duplication of the lilac-scented hole that he dumps the body in, which leaves the open question of whether he's now become a monster and is digging his own "den", or whether it's a psychological thing to bring him back to where his brother was killed.

[psychopathicus_rex]

Or whether he is, in fact, the wolf. Note that neither brother admits to the townsfolk that it WAS just a wolf - they both go the 'monster' route. The wolf is left behind - and if the brother's corpse still has enough juice in it to give the protagonist the stink-eye at the end, perhaps whatever mysterious force is behind THAT has also made the wolf into a duplicate of the brother.

[baihu]

I was thinking since he was hiding behind the tree the moment the wolf makes its presence known, then we only see a picture of the brother and the supposedly dead wolf AFTER the fact.

Who's to say the wolf and the brother hadn't already switched places?

Then again, doesn't explain the hole digging much.

[psychopathicus_rex]

But... why would the BROTHER switch places with the WOLF? The wolf has a reason - to avoid being killed - but the brother doesn't. And if the wolf DID switch places with the brother, then why hasn't it continued its raids on the farms?

[baihu]

I didn't think the brother wanted to switch places, but I felt it was possibly an element of the wolf to take over the bodies of others. Or maybe the wolf managed to make the brother unconscious and switched on the spot.

That possibility leads to the wolf being dumped into the hole initially, then the person coming out of the woods could possibly be the brother who in wolf form and unconscious, woke up and returned to his original form because the wolf is indisposed.

But since that detracts a lot from the meaning behind the comic, I don't like this interpretation myself. Right now, it's got a good Cain and Abel thing going, and in my opinion, the doppelganger is a manifestation of the younger brother's guilt combined with the magical aspects of the strange wood.

[psychopathicus_rex]

That's a possibility, all right - the guy's guilty conscience come to life would answer a number of questions.

[pyrotwilight]

This is now haunting me.

Damn you to the hole.

[meatwhichdreams]

Emily Carroll is so incredibly talented - thank you so much for sharing this story with us! It slipped me by completely. I've read an earlier, similarly creepy Grimms fairy-tale she'd done called "The Hare's Bride" that I would definitely recommend as well. She only gets better! I aspire to make comics with such a perfect balance between lushness and simplicity.

http://sockefeller.livejournal.com/39403.html