Review by Booklist Review
In an homage to the '80s slasher trope, friends Daniel, Ralph, and Pola live in a small but not entirely idyllic seaside town. What starts as the murder of two fellow high-school students quickly spirals into a more wide-ranging slaughter by a person dressed in a baseball jacket and cap, wielding a baseball bat. French cartoonist Maillard's debut title moves beyond the creepiness of the serial killer--drugs are running rampant throughout the town, involving Pola, while Daniel is dealing with an overprotective mother, reminiscent of Mrs. Bates from Psycho or Margaret White, Carrie's mom from the Stephen King novel. The characters are well developed, with some background into their lives hinting at their motivations. The minimal text is very clearly lettered dialogue, and the lush and inviting illustrations are done in a gray-scale pencil; while this may seem at odds with the tone of the story, it only adds to the overall filmlike quality. With no supernatural component to the plot, fans of crime fiction as well as horror may enjoy this.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A remorseless killer stalks a beach town in Maillard's spectacular debut. The story opens in dramatic fashion when a man with obscured eyes bludgeons two girls to death with a baseball bat, but what follows amplifies the sense of dread not with increasing violence but the steady accrual of mundane yet sinister detail. Like many of the 1980s horror films whose template Maillard draws from, the anxieties of this insular, seemingly idyllic community are refracted through its teenagers' reactions to the danger. Quiet, bespectacled Dan indulges in dark secrets of his own. Tomboyish Pola vacillates between anger, fear, and her feelings for Dan, bonded to her through their outsider statuses and mother issues (his cloying and domineering, hers a drinker). Familiar tropes crop up, like the accompanying media frenzy (in which the killer is dubbed "the Bloody Batter") and mounting body count and disappearances. But Maillard is focused on subverting slasher tropes with supernatural suggestions, familial trauma, sexual violence, and reimagining the "final girl" scenario as a fiery ritual. The town's eeriness is compounded by Maillard's suspiciously serene charcoal-style drawings, which combine Chris Van Allsburg mystery with tight close-ups. This will enrapture fans of elevated horror. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT Cartoonist Maillard fuses elements of noir and 1980s slasher films in this chilling, emotionally complex thriller. Residents of a seemingly idyllic seaside town are shaken when a brutal serial killer begins preying upon the populace, starting with a pair of girls who are found bludgeoned to death outside the high school. A teenager named Daniel seems morbidly excited that something so profoundly awful has happened in his hometown. He's soon drawn into a tentative romance with a classmate, Pola, whose plan to make enough money selling drugs to escape her awful home life is threatened by the increased police presence and media furor created by the killer, who comes to be known as The Bloody Batter. Maillard's greyscale pencil illustration emphasizes shadow and texture to convey his teenage cast's fragility and a sense of impending doom that heightens to stark terror whenever the Bloody Batter appears. VERDICT Maillard's debut arrives in English having already won the 2022 Best Crime Graphic Novel award at the prestigious Angouleme International Comics Festival. A skillfully crafted, uncommonly insightful, and genuinely disturbing horror story.
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