Calling all scary movie fans! Scotland, 1994. Eighteen-year-old Thumper Connell still has an imaginary friend: the masked killer from his favorite slasher film. Thumper is obsessed with horror and always has been. He fills his time with scary VHS rentals and hanging out with his fellow fans, The Murder Club. Things begin to get weird when the club gets ahold of a notorious film that no one has seen and causes bad things to happen. The Nasty #1 is a fun start that feels like a nice spin on the horror genre.
Written by John Lees, The Nasty #1 spends most of its time introducing us to Thumper and his friends. It’s not about the kill count or creative ways to kill people. The Nasty #1 is very much a boy and his imaginary friend. Thumper seems like a nice person, but he’s a bit of a loser, not super popular, gets picked on, and his safety is his small group of friends. We also get a lot of focus and hints at his life at home, one that comes off as unhappy with a father that’s who knows where and a mother who is overworked and underappreciated. An imaginary friend like this spinning out of an unhappy home life is an essay unto itself.
And things are generally interesting building towards the end when things begin to get rolling. It’s a debut and start that’s not what I expected at all and the rather slow, and somewhat uneventful, nature of it all is a surprise from the blood and guts I was expecting.
The art by George Kambadais and Adam Cahoon is good. There’s an interesting style that I don’t normally associate with horror comics and the duo have a lot of fun with Thumper’s imaginary friend. There’s moments that got me to laugh as they play off of horror tropes. Some of the pages themselves are silent, lacking dialogue, which puts all of the focus on the art to drive the entertainment.
The Nasty #1 is a solid debut with an interesting take on the horror genre. It should be interesting to see where it all goes and overall, the debut issue shows off a lot of potential replacing what we’d expect is a horror story with something that resembles more of The Goonies.
Story: John Lees Art: George Kambadais, Adam Cahoon Letterer: Jim Campbell
Story: 8.15 Art: 8.25 Overall: 8.2 Recommendation: Buy
Vault Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Purchase: Zeus Comics – comiXology/Kindle
Source: Graphic Policy
