By Luke Melia & Bobby Peñafiel
ISBN: 978-1-50581-207-7
At the luxury end of the self-publishing spectrum is this superbly high-end production number: a proper full-colour graphic novel in everything but page count.
Luke Melia and his collaborative artistic cohorts have been making superbly engaging contemporary genre stories for a while now (see Occulus and The White Room of the Asylum) and this light-hearted paranormal lark is the first chapter of their next graphic novel foray.
Complete in one issue, The Snake Job introduces young entrepreneurs Alex, Katelyn and Tony who have found a unique niche market for their services: so unique, in fact, that there’s no money in it and precious few customers.
The newly launched Strange Investigators – that’s a job description not a character assessment – aren’t having the best time getting the business on an even footing. Investigating “anything unusual or unexplained†hasn’t been the cash-cow they expected and they really need to make some money to pay for all the really expensive paranormal detection kit they’re using.
That’s why, after a long period of prevarication, Alex finally agrees to accept “the Snake Job†Katelyn’s had on her desk for weeks.
Alex claims there’s no mystery to how a big serpent got on to a tropical island beach, but Tony and Katelyn think his strident reluctance to take the case is simply because their CEO is afraid of wasps…
With the lights cut off and no other choice, three days later Alex and Tony are on an all-expenses-included jaunt paid for by a company eager to build an hotel on some nice unspoiled beaches.
The afflicted isle is pretty much as imagined, and the lads aren’t expecting much more than sand, sunburn and poking an adder with a high-tech stick. They couldn’t be more wrong…
This sucker is big, it’s proper supernatural and the natives aren’t especially keen to see some outsiders trying to kill it with flamethrowers and explosives…
Ranging from wryly trenchant to outright hilarious, this funny foray into fantastic worlds and humdrum zero-hours Contretemps of the Unknown promises to be another superb and unmissable treat.
© 2015 Luke Melia.
Self published and available to buy on Amazon in print and also as a PDF version to buy on Luke’s gumroad page ( https://gumroad.com/lukemelia) at “pay whatever you want – even freeâ€.