The medium of comic books has always had an interest in highlighting fundamentally human relationships against a remarkable backdrop of spandex, super strength, and sinister villains. And over time, characters like Peter Parker, Clark Kent, and the very mortal cast of ‘The Walking Dead’ have served as the comic book conduits to define, explore, and challenge readers’ understanding of people and their relationships.
But some creators are uprooting the subject so completely by planting within their narratives stylistic and genre-defying tropes of horror, and the results can be astoundingly brutal to the senses. One of Image Comics’ latest ongoing series ‘Family Tree’ — collected in a volume of the first four issues, entitled, “Sapling,” perfectly weds elements of body and ecological horror to explore the terror faced by a family challenged by an unexplainable apocalyptic scenario of life and death. Read more
