Synopsis
Featuring more than 100 pages of never-before-seen material!
The Harvey Award—nominated sensation that rocked the comics world–and left readers hanging in sheer suspense–is now a full-length graphic novel that finally carries the stunning Elk’s Run saga to its shocking conclusion.
The town of Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia, was built on a dream: The dream of war-scarred Vietnam veterans to live in peace and harmony, in a place untouched by violence, crime, corruption, or greed. A living Norman Rockwell painting, governed by the most basic values and free of all things considered undesirable by its founders. It was supposed to be paradise. And for a while, it was.
Over the years, some in Elk’s Ridge have grown restless. They fear their refuge has become a prison . . . or a tomb. And they yearn to do the forbidden: escape. But when one desperate bid for freedom ends in a tragic accident, a heinous act of mob justice suddenly tears the idyllic mask from this promised land and the evil its residents sought to keep out blooms from within. Now, as a deadly chain reaction of events threatens the future of Elk’s Ridge, its elders gird for battle against the real world. And a group of terrified teens prepare to make their own stand–against the people they once trusted and the only life they’ve ever known. Because there’s nothing left to do but fight or die.
A chillingly lyrical tale, rendered in starkly beautiful, visceral artwork, Elk’s Run is an unforgettable and unrelentingly powerful graphic novel event not to be missed.
With an introduction by Charlie Houston, author of Already Dead
Reviews
Grade 10 Up–The inhabitants of Elk's Ridge, WV, have set themselves apart from the rest of society in order to live in their particular version of paradise, but their dream is shattered in short order. Led by a Vietnam vet with a strongly imbedded hunter mentality, the adults have prepared themselves for an onslaught from without. In an old mine shaft, once the town's reason for being and sole source of income, they have stashed guns, ammo, napalm, and all the provisions and plans for self-protection. The town's inevitable downfall, however, comes not from the authorities on the outside, but from its teenagers. The adults neglected to foresee that their own dream would not necessarily become their children's. When the violence starts, prompted by a tragic accident that leads to an ugly scene of mob justice, the young people immediately begin to question their parents' motives. And when the violence escalates, the questioning turns to rebellion. This is not a particularly new story, but it is precisely and cleverly rendered with believable dialogue, expressive facial and body language, and captivating childhood flashbacks drawn in an innocent cartoon style, in contrast to the main story's angular imagery. While the outcome may appear obvious to some readers, Fialkov provides intriguing twists and turns as he adds to the mounting suspense.–Robert Saunderson, Berkeley Public Library, CA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Originally serialized as a comic book (until its publisher went under), this coming-of-age thriller appears in its entirety for the first time. The young protagonist, John Kohler, is even more bored and frustrated than most teenagers: he's grown up in the tiny town of Elk's Run, whose fanatical survivalist founders have sealed it off from the rest of the world, turning it into a sort of cross between Mayberry and the Branch Davidian compound. When a fatal accident leads to a revenge lynching and a series of murders, John and his friends try to escape; their parents come after them; and the ensuing cat-and-mouse game involves a mine fire, a stockpile of napalm and a stash of terrorist plans. Tuazon's chunky, scribbly brushwork occasionally seems too crude for a story whose heart is in its gritty precision. Still, his characters' facial and body language is remarkably expressive, and he pulls off some clever visual interpretations of the story—flashbacks to the teenagers' childhoods are drawn in a cartoonier, Archie-inspired style. And although the story is sometimes marred by simplistic characterization (the parents go from cruel disciplinarians to murderous psychotics rather quickly), Fialkov builds the suspense incrementally until the cycle of violence becomes a wave of disasters. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Unlike other typical American teenagers, John Kohler has grown up under the watchful eyes of his survivalist father and other local residents who have sealed themselves off from the outside world in a mountainous valley. John and his adolescent pals endure their isolation by riding their bikes and reading the occasional dirty magazine smuggled in by the town's hired truck driver--until a horrific car accident sends the community into a tailspin. In rapid succession, John's Vietnam-vet father is forced to kill two police officers who come nosing around, then hunt down his own son, who, together with his friends, renounces violence and enforced seclusion and provokes the rest of Elk's Run's citizens to leave town. Despite an often sketchy drawing style that doesn't quite do justice to the more powerful narrative, Fialkov's unique and sometimes disturbing coming-of-age adventure is engrossing and ultimately moving. Originally published in 10 separate episodes, the story of Elk's Run is here collected for the first time. Carl Hays
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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