What to read this weekend: Moonflow and Everything Dead & Dying
Psychedelic queer horror and a heartbreaking zombie apocalypse story.
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These are some recently released titles we think are worth adding to your reading list. Get lost in Bitter Karella's splatterpunk, cosmic fever dream, Moonflow, and the new zombie apocalypse comic, Everything Dead & Dying.
I am so glad the shockingly bright, fuzzy-blacklight-poster-style cover of this book grabbed my attention while I was doing work at a local cafe/bookstore the other day, because I otherwise might not have heard about Moonflow, and what a trip it turned out to be. Easily one of my favorite reads this year.
Moonflow is, as author Bitter Karella described it in a recent interview, "Psychedelic trans cosmic fungal splatterpunk." It follows Sarah, a trans woman who grows and sells trippy mushrooms, on a desperate search for a mushroom known as the King's Breakfast. It's the type of excursion that seems doomed from the start, as the King's Breakfast is only found in a forest best known for being a place people do not return from, and predictably, things start going off the rails almost immediately. The forest is haunted and seemingly in a constant state of change, there's a TERFy lesbian off-grid cult that's engaged in some deeply bizarre activities and poor Sarah is... just doing her best (she is painfully relatable).
This book horrified me, made me laugh and made me gag, often all at once. It's queer as hell, impressively creepy, packed with extremely on-the-nose satire and an absolutely wild ride all around.
Everything Dead & Dying just might be the heartfelt rural zombie apocalypse story I never knew I needed. The protagonist, Jack, is a farmer who is immune to a virus that's turned everyone around him, including his family, into the walking dead. He coexists alongside the undead people of his community as they reenact their final days in perpetuity. Cut off from the rest of the world as communications have gone dark, Jack is seemingly all alone — until a group of strangers shows up.
I was not ready for how good this first issue is. The series gets off to a heavy start as we're confronted with Jack's grief and loneliness, tagging along on the morbid routine of a guy who is surrounded by reminders of the life he no longer has, and just has to keep on keepin' on. It is beautiful, in a heartbreaking and ghastly kind of way.