In a small, sleepy New England town, the Ferals, a group of young misfits, meet in their treehouse on the edge of the local cemetery. There, they hang out. There, they eat junk food and joke around. There, in their ramshackle sanctuary, they are free to be themselves, for a little while.
Their casual chatter gives way to talk of the recent disappearances of children in town. That’s when one of the Ferals claims to have seen a strange man lurking around the house of one of the missing kids shortly before they vanished. The ominous figure, the boy continues, reminded him of an old story his grandmother used to tell. About Stingy Jack, a mischievous who, after tricking the Devil, was cursed to forever wander the Underworld with just a single ember inside a makeshift lantern to light his way through the darkness.
The rest of the gang think it’s a good story. Eerie and spooky and appropriate for Halloween—but they don’t really believe it. They think it’s all a myth.
But when one of their own is taken, the Ferals realize that Jack of the Lantern is more than just lore, and that they must follow his lonely light down into the dark depths of the Underworld in order to save their friend.
This was a very interesting, very peculiar little story. The basic premise of Brian Serven and Dan Blakeslee’s Lore of the Jack-O’-Lantern may be familiar and conventional, but it’s executed in a wonderful and decidedly unconventional way.
Like many of the things I’ve read this season, it’s a story steeped in folklore and nostalgia. Serven’s writing reinforces that feeling. His prose, apart from a few weirdly worded passages, has a certain folksy and lyrical charm that I found enormously appealing. That musical quality makes sense, since Serven also happens to be a songwriter. Good stuff.
The real highlight for me, however, was Blakeslee’s art, which is unhinged in a most delightful way. Firmly rooted in the underground comix tradition, it’s a rough-hewn, chaotic style I wouldn’t ordinarily find all that appealing—but it works remarkably well in a homespun, lo-fi sort of story like this one. (The fact that the physical edition also happens to look exactly like a coloring book only adds to the offbeat, whimsical vibes.)
“Texture” was the word that kept coming to mind while I was reading this. It’s a book with a lot of texture. It’s not something I seem to come across very often, and it made this small novella feel distinctly novel. I really dug this.