Published in two volumes by Saldapress, Tim Seeley’s work is a horror that makes social criticism by rejecting the feelings of hatred and exclusion as a response to fear
Monsters walk alongside us, in our lives, trampling our own land. They are not confined to a fantasy world, to our nightmares, to our innermost fears. Monsters are generated from the sleep of reason, of course, but also from the abandonment of the peripheries to themselves, from those spirals of poverty and despair that generate hatred and anger. The American countryside has proved in recent years particularly fertile ground for these monsters, and Tim Seeley, who comes from that rural context, has been able to intercept these feelings and this theme in his own way. With a comic, of course, beautifully drawn by Corin Howell, Deep Red (Saldapress, two volumes, € 19.90 each), a story of vampires and werewolves that winks at the imaginary of the series as True Blood to become an instrument of social criticism, as in the tradition of the best horror.
Deep Redthe plot
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Deep Red tells the story of Chip, a young attendant of a small 24-hour convenience store in Fall’s End, North Dakota. Chip works at night and sleeps during the day. His is not a choice but an obligation. In fact, if he doesn’t come home before dawn, his body starts to burn. Chip is a vampire, but he is a vampire in his own way, he doesn’t like hunting and killing and has found an ethical way to survive. To feed him is a volunteer, Evie, a young Native American suffering from polycythemia vera, a tumor that causes her body to produce excess red blood cells. To survive, Evie would have to periodically go for bloodletting, so meeting Chip creates a perfect symbiotic relationship that first makes friends and then seems to be able to transform into something more.
Nazi vampires
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Chip seems to have found the perfect balance at Fall’s End, despite the annoyances that Cam, the city bully, prototype and stereotype of the ultra-right American conservative, a follower of QAnon conspiracy theories, causes him. But it gets worse, an association of Nazi and Supremacist vampires who intend to take control of Fall’s End by convincing Chip to join them. The trouble, however, is that Chip fought the Nazis during World War II, and he has no intention of giving up now.
Between present and past
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Seeley writes a story that follows two temporal planes: the present and a past in which, through flashbacks and nightmares, we discover the story of Chip, born Charles Ipswich, an American soldier who fell ill with diphtheria on the way to Paris, abandoned by his platoon and saved. from the Cambiona half human, half demon girl, a young vampire, who casts the curse of eternal life on Chip.
the message
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And it is through the comparison between the war of the past and that of the present, one more evident and in the light of the sun, the other less evident, hidden by shadows and darkness, that Seeley launches his message which is at the same time a cry of help for rural America and the affirmation of the principle that one can fight for one’s dignity without being overwhelmed by hatred, resentment, racism.
Designs and colors
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The graphic behavior entrusted to Corin Howell’s pencils and Mark Englert’s colors is captivating, with an American comics style that enhances the sensuality of faces and bodies of almost always beautiful characters and a rendering of the animal version of the shapeshifters that winks to the Disney tradition. As expected, the red color of blood dominates, with explicit but never disturbing splatter scenes. Frequent use of large cartoons and splash pages to enhance Corin Howell’s talent.
The model on which Chip is based
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Deep Red it is certainly a comic of an interesting genre, which entertains and at times moves, which betrays its social intent right from the preface entrusted to Seeley himself, making it explicit immediately. It is the author who tells us that Chip’s character is modeled on the figure of his grandfather, the son of immigrant peasants from Czechoslovakia, soldier of the Second World War, founder of a brick factory, capable of fighting fears without being overwhelmed and without them they fed in any way feelings of hatred, exclusion and prevarication. These days, not at all trivial.
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