Review time! with ‘Hound’

“There ain’t gonna be heroes, there ain’t gonna be anything”

Mad Cave brings us Hound, which is written by Sam Freeman and Sam Romesburg, drawn by Rodrigo Vázquez, lettered by Justin Birch, and edited by James B. Emmett. Let’s have a look at it!

This is a pretty decent horror comic, but it doesn’t really rise above its (admittedly, pretty interesting) roots, which is too bad. It’s set in France in 1917, and our main character is a private, Barrow, who arrives at the trenches and is immediately assigned to a unit – called the “Hounds” – that works in a section where poison gas is far more prevalent, thanks to his experience working in London’s sewers (which an officer condescendingly thinks will make him suitable for it). Barrow is, naturally, very unready for the horrors of war that await him. The big problem with reviewing this story is that Freeman and Romesburg get right to what’s going on, and to discuss it and what happens afterward is just spoilers, and I don’t really want to do that (the blurb on the back of the book gives some of it away, but I don’t even want to do that). Needless to say, Barrow finds out pretty quickly that war is horrific for all sides, and nobody comes out of it unchanged. Barrow discovers that both his own unit and the Germans are not exactly what they seem, and he has to survive in a village and forest that has been ravaged by war. Sucks to be him!

Freeman and Romesburg do a nice job with the actual writing – it’s nothing too special, but it’s nicely done. They create a journal for Barrow and quote him writing about the war, so we get his thoughts on how terrible it is while we’re watching what’s happening. There’s nothing unique about this, of course, but it’s not a bad device. At one point, Barrow needs to do something that shows him that the war is worming its way into his mind and even he is not immune, and the creators do a good job with it – Vázquez makes it a disturbingly intimate, and the writers eschew the journal so that we don’t get Barrow’s thoughts on it, just the animalistic urges of instinct. But when he comes down from the adrenaline surge, we get his thoughts in the journal, and it works pretty well. Freeman and Romesburg make the ending of the book just a bit on the nose, which is too bad, but they do earn it a bit with how they set it up. The book isn’t long, so we don’t know too much about Barrow or the other soldiers (honestly, his snooty superior officer, who appears on five total pages, gets more character development than pretty much every other character, simply by the way he speaks to Barrow), but the writers take their time making sure that we feel every horror that Barrow has to experience, so while the ending is one of these “the thing we thought is wrong!!!!” that is a bit obvious, it still works pretty well. It’s not a great story, but it’s fairly compelling.

Vázquez does a nice job with the art, which is important because it has to hit hard due to the subject matter. Barrow has to experience the horror with a typical English stiff upper lip, so while the journal entries reveal some of his mindset, he’s still not going to talk too much about it. Vázquez does a very good job with the way he shows Barrow’s physical degradation, as the war slowly breaks him down. The monsters in the story – and we can call them monsters, I think – are done well, as Vázquez uses ragged brush strokes and nice shading (he colors it as well) to show how the monsters have fallen into depravity. Early on, Vázquez uses gas masks as a metaphor – as with the story, not unique, but still effective – to break down the identity of the men, including Barrow, foreshadowing nicely the creepiness that Barrow experiences at the front. The village is ruined, and Vázquez does an excellent job showing that, and the writers do well to let him reveal how futile war is, as Barrow (and the Hounds) and the Germans are still fighting over the wreckage, and the art conveys that nicely. He does well when Barrow is in the forest, as he makes the foliage almost primeval, with twisted trees and moss hanging from branches reclaiming machines and bodies and making it clear how much nature is resisting the machinations of man. It’s a good-looking book, as Vázquez helps the horror of the story quite well.

Hound is a decent enough war story, and Freeman and Romesburg don’t do anything terribly wrong with it, which is nice. They have a pretty good idea about what happens to people in war and they move their way through the idea pretty well, even if the theme itself isn’t too spectacular. The art is pretty good and helps the writing quite nicely, which is always good. It’s just a solid horror story, and if that’s what you like, here you go!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆