By Eric Hobbs & Noel Tuazon (NBM/ComicsLit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-590-0 (TPB)
When you read that as many as one million Americans were fooled into hysterical panic by Orson Welles’ now-legendary Halloween radio broadcast of the War of the Worlds, it’s hard not to think “how dumb are you?” or “don’t you people read books?” but the sad fact remains that a vast proportion of the population back then heard only a little piece of the innovative updating of the H.G. Wells classic on October 30th 1930 and some genuinely thought the end of humanity had come.
…Or it never happened at all and the media perpetrated one more lie upon for inexplicable reasons…
This superbly understated, low-key monochromatic tale takes a canny peek at human nature in a time of sustained privation (the Great Depression had just hit the USA a damned sight harder than any Martian death-ray could) and urgent – if only imagined – emergency as a small community in rural Indiana endures a couple of unhappy coincidences that result in a horrific but very human confrontation…
At the height of a brutal storm, a small band of farmers and families huddle in a barn. It’s been a bad day all around. Young Gavin Baker has finally asked wealthy Thomas Shrader if he could marry his daughter Kim, but that meeting didn’t go well. Nevertheless, the lovers still plan to escape to New York where Kim can become a writer…
Shrader has made a killing bailing out and buying up failing farms over the past year and isn’t well liked by newly-destitute townsfolk such as widower Jacob Lee or cropper Eli Dawson, but he’s the only employer left, so they make do…
A severely beaten, wandering Negro named Martin Steinbeck stumbles into the Baker place later that day. He’s clearly had a brutally rough encounter and is astonished when the family offer him help and sustenance rather than hatred and further violence. Later, throughout the community townsfolk tune in their radios and catch what they believe to be newscasts reporting Martian invaders blasting New York and New Jersey. Suddenly, a storm hits and the Indiana town loses power…
With phones and lights out, panicked, terrified citizens all head towards the Shrader place with its solid storm cellar, but, when Kim discovers a truck with dead bodies it in, the only conclusion is that the aliens have already reached the Heartland…
As the families arrive, Shrader delivers an ultimatum: only five people will be allowed refuge: him, his wife and three others – and only if rebellious Kim is one of them…
With imminent doom lurking in the growing darkness, friendship, civility and human empathy start to break down, and a very human atrocity appears inevitable…
This is an enchantingly subtle and impressive tale, deftly avoiding histrionics and bombast, and is ultimately uplifting and positive. Eric Hobbs (The Librarian, Nightcrawler Tales, Awakenings) focused on the communal heroism of the common man, with the misty, raw line-&-wash illustration of Noel Tuazon (Elk’s Run, Kismet, Man of Fate, Tumor) marrying dreamy introspection with painful sufferance to bestow the ensemble cast with a look far removed from the general run of modern comics.
The book also offers a photo-&-clippings gallery displaying the media’s response to that original radio broadcast; deleted scenes; character sketches and a brief commentary on the creator’s working process. Tense, ironic and deeply moving, this is a lost gem of our art form, long overdue for some popular attention and absolutely ripe for a modern digital rerelease.
© 2010 Eric Hobbs.