What’s on our Chopping Block? Why it’s the opportunity to review for one of webcomics’ pioneers Keenspot! So what do we Gutternauts choose to show off this little milestone? Why am I bothering; you clicked on the link!
Now what’s something the Crypt Keeper would say?
Ow! Alright imagination, no need to get mid-evil!
Chopping Block: Origins
This series is a lot older than people think. Since US webcomics golden age in the 2000s even; just in time for the internet to outgrow its innocence. Like all touchstones, this series starts off in the style of rejected newspaper comics. In this case, Lee Adam Herold and Ryan Hohne’s parody of slashers especially Friday the 13th’s Jason Voorhees.
The main character Butch R. Mann is pretty much when you combine Jason and Psycho’s Norman Bates. He’s driven to please his verbally abusive half-dead mother. She’s not just old and nasty, she’s got magic to keep Butch “immortal” while her body is basically dead. But going through the webcomic’s archives, readers find themselves laughing with Butch as he does what slashers do. Between all of the stabbing, killing, and mutilating, Butch has the neurotic thoughts that just about everybody has. Like feeling uncomfortable in an empty house or being on electric company hold while the freezer thaws.
But at the end of the day, he really captures the feeling of being a kid in the 2000s. From the disillusioning reality, to just being plain lonely. So when the time comes to make a physical comic book in the 2020s; where does Chopping Block go?
Building A Bigger World
A good way to do that is by building the setting as its own character. Harmony… wait what did one image search come up with?
You know what; that doesn’t matter.
Butch’s town of Harmony seemed too lenient with having a slasher around. But the maker’s pulled it off with effective world-building. They recycled some of their cartoons and make a bigger interconnected story out of them. Like how Butch’s heart got replaced by some eldritch abomination and how it connects to Butch’s only friend Delora. It turns out the occult and other dreary things are quite common in Harmony.
But if that’s not enough, the balance on subversion and metacommentary makes some interesting comedy. Because what’s scarier than urban life? Not even the hard to pronounce Cthulhu abominations can hold a finger to Peg A. Mann’s infrastructural domination.
Characters On The Chopping Block
But now let’s focus on what makes Chopping Block worth reading.
Butch is without a doubt our POV character and for a mute in a hockey mask, he’s quite expressive. It helps that his backgrounds speak for him part of the time. At heart, Butch is a sensitive kid who treasures what little “me time” he can get. Honestly, he’d be a lot happier if Peg weren’t around to make him to kill people to keep her undead. Not that Butch doesn’t like what he does. He’s quite proud of killing NSYNC and making it look like autoerotic asphyxiation. Sounds like someone didn’t have the best new millennium.
Apparently neither did Delora who is a fan of Butch. She might seem like the resident Goth Girl with a bad boy infatuation, but she’s just a product of her environment. To her, all of Harmony’s spooks and specters are a part of everyday life. She’s pretty much the closest thing anybody can be to normal in town. Normal enough for Butch to interact with to help relieve his loneliness.
But now let’s focus on who drives this series: Peg and Butch’s new heart Hexagvultus. The latter is supposed to be some herald of Nyarlathotep; that is if he could say his name right! Besides he’s a grandstanding blowhard in a town full of acquired suffering. Any Outer God would lose their sense of selves in Harmony. Frankly that’s Peg’s plan with her cult, to enslave the Eldritch Gods like she did Butch.
Style Of The Macabre
Chopped Block as a whole has a pretty impressive direction. To make myself sound smart it confronts the fears behind slashers and cosmic horrors. Their fears come from the unknown in form of strangers and the things that would be alien to us. But instead of the reader empathizing with regular people, they watch everything from a safe distance. Readers get to know these characters and setting without needing to root for them. The more readers know about something, the less scary it seems. But it’s never enough to be normalized, otherwise they’d become indifferent to things they should be afraid of.
How does the art show this? In pretty simple ways actually. Anything with a logo or branding look uncomfortably lifeless with not a soul in sight. Compare that to the pages with simple shapes and contrasting colors that look like they have layers of cardboard cutouts. Each panel is full of some kind of specific activity that reflects a general vibe. All in juxtaposition with easy-to-follow captions and word balloons that characters infuse with their personalities.
With the second issue coming out on February 15th to comic stores, Chopping Block gets 8.5/10.