Review time! with ‘Forbidden Surgeries of the Hideous Dr. Divinus’

“Letting loose with a scream in the dead of night as he’s breaking new ground”

I didn’t know who S. Craig Zahler was before I ordered this, but I see he’s quite the Renaissance man of the arts, most notably as a movie writer/director. I haven’t seen any of his movies, but after reading this comic (which he wrote and drew and which is published by Floating World Comics), I’ll probably give them a miss. This comic does not fill me with much confidence about his other artistic endeavors.

The story takes place in New Bastion, a “coastal American city,” where homeless people are being carved up and their pieces left in dumpsters. Meanwhile, a strange man is lurking in a hospital, which catches the security guard’s attention, much to his later chagrin. Meanwhile, in the same hospital, a woman is in a coma and her two brothers are visiting her. They are Leo and Tommy, the first a grizzled cop, the second a slick gangster. One night Tommy stops the weird lurker from kidnapping his sister, which leads both he and Leo to investigate what’s going on. Of course the dead homeless people are connected to it, and things get even weirder as the book goes along.

I don’t want to spoil too much – the title actually gives some of what happens away – but I will say the revelations about what’s going on aren’t worth it. Despite the sensationalistic aspects of the story, it’s fairly dull, with stereotypical characters going through stereotypical motions, and no real reason for any of what happens to happen. I know that stories don’t have to have reasons – stories just need to be told, man! – but if you’re not going to have a reason to tell a story, then the story you’re telling ought to be good. Zahler seems to want to just do a lot of violence porn – it’s not really torture porn, although there’s a little of that – and have people die in horrible ways to show that … the world is horrible? It’s unclear. If your story isn’t going to do it, your characters ought to be really good, but none of them are. Leo and Tommy are walking clichés, as are the people in the flashback to “more than one hundred years ago in the English countryside,” where we get a dull and stereotypical “origin story” for our villain. The only interesting character gets killed on page 15, so that’s about where the good part of the book ends. The weirdness of the lurking man and the main villain isn’t that compelling, because they’re not really characters, just bizarre things doing bizarre things. “Dr. Divinus” (who is never named in the book) has a clichéd motivation for doing what he’s doing, but there’s no real thought behind what he’s doing – it’s just him being creepy and taking it to an extreme. The entire book seems to be about Zahler trying to come up with gross things, which is something a child would do. Other than that, the story doesn’t do much of anything.

Zahler’s art might make the book worthwhile, because art is so important to a comic, but it’s not very good, either. I’m not too bothered by the figure work, because showing humans doing things is hard, and stiffness seeps in when even experienced artists are doing it. So while his characters don’t “move” particularly well, that’s not awful. They’re fairly interesting-looking, too, so that’s all right. Leo and Tommy are nice opposites, and the weird lurker is almost a blank slate, so when he does anything, it’s somewhat surprising. Other than that, the art doesn’t work very well. Zahler doesn’t use perspective terribly well, so occasionally objects in the “back” of the panel look too big or objects in the “front” of the panel too small, so the proportions between them are wonky and upset the eye. His bodies often don’t work like human bodies, so even when a character is doing a normal thing, the way Zahler draws them seems unnatural. He does anger on faces fairly well, but other than that, the expressions aren’t great, so often the people look like they’re not reacting to things around them. There are a few prurient panels that seem to be there just because Zahler wants to draw genitalia, which doesn’t seem like a good reason. The art is fine from a storytelling aspect – it’s not confusing at all – but it adds very little to the story, unfortunately.

I will link to the book below, because perhaps you see something in it that I didn’t, but I can’t really recommend getting it. It’s a bland story dressed up like a creepy horror one, but there’s not a lot of creepiness and not a lot of horror. The characters are clichés, the story makes no sense, and the villain is dull. Zahler might be a talented filmmaker, but he’s 0-for-1 with his comics.

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆