High Crimes

Written by Christopher Sebela
Art by Ibrahim Moustafa

I really didn't know what to expect when I started reading High Crimes, the Dark Horse edition of which collects the original online Monkeybrain series by Christopher Sebela and Ibrahim Moustafa.  My only other exposure to Sebela's work wasn't all that memorable (Welcome Back?  something like that), and I had not heard a whole lot about this book going in.

Well, that's hard to understand, because this was one of the best-written, most suspenseful comics I've read in a long time.  The story is centred around Zan, a former Olympic snowboarder who basically chose to throw her life away, and is now working with a shady associate, Haskell, in the Himalayas, where they recover and repatriate mountain climbers' bodies for money.  When not working at this (or often while), Zan keeps a pretty steady stream of drugs and alcohol, not to mention self-loathing, flowing into her body.

Haskell returns from a trip up Mount Everest with the severed hand (it's too hard to bring the bodies down on spec) of a man Sullivan Mars, who died right beneath the summit of that storied mountain.  When his prints are run, it alerts a secretive US agency, and the plot of the book gets underway.  Zan discovers his journal and some hidden microfilm in Haskell's things, and takes it with her.

When this agency arrives, they force Haskell to take them up the mountain to find the body, while Zan decides that she needs to rescue her friend.

From there, Sebela and Moustafa give us a dense and layered story that explores Zan's character deeply, while making sure that tons of cautious readers will never attempt an expedition up the mountain.  They do an amazing job of capturing the majesty of the setting, and contrasting it with the constraints and difficulties of making a planned climb, let alone the drug-fuelled desperate attempt initiated by Zan.  There is a depth of research on display here that really impressed me, and the images of frozen corpses littering the trail to the summit will stick with me.

I really enjoyed this book, and wish that it had a higher profile.  It's fitting that the foreword to the book is written by Greg Rucka, because the writing here frequently reminded me of his style and intelligence.  I cannot recommend this book enough.

My Friend Dahmer

by Derf Backderf

I'm sure everyone has seen, after someone shoots up a mall or school, the interviews where their neighbours talk about how quiet and normal they were.  My Friend Dahmer is an exploration of cartoonist Derf Backderf's memories of growing up alongside, and sort of being friends with, notorious serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer.

They attended high school together, and Dahmer became a source of obsession and hilarity for Backderf and his friends, who formed a Jeffrey Dahmer Fan Club, mostly out of appreciation for his imitation of his mother's cerebral palsy-suffering interior decorator.

Basically, this book is one part memoir of growing up in a boring little place, a faithful reconstruction based on well-sourced interviews, articles, and books, of the troubled childhood of Dahmer, and a very successful attempt to weave the two together.

Dahmer was not a happy kid.  His parents argued a lot.  His mother suffered from untreated mental health issues, including a tendency to have standing seizures.  Dahmer himself, ashamed of his homosexuality, began to fixate on roadkill, weird animal experiments, and necrophilic fantasies, which later informed his choice of victim and murderous methods.

What this book also reveals is the cluelessness of youth, and the callous ways in which teenagers can use and drop people who they feel do not meet their social standing.

I liked this book (really, I'm a sucker for most books with detailed endnotes), and am glad that Backderf didn't rely too much on obvious tropes or reactions to things.  It's slightly disturbing to find how funny some of this stuff really is, but I think that's human nature, which Backderf explores nicely.