#hack slash my first manaic

[gregellner]

Cover by Jenny Frison.

Today I’ll be reviewing the complete four-issue limited series “Year One” style story for Cassandra “Cassie” Hack, the protagonist of “Hack/Slash,” titled “Hack/Slash: My First Maniac.” It is written by Tim Seeley, with artwork by Daniel Leister, colors by Mark Englert, and letters by Crank!, all published by Image Comics (@imagecomics) as the first of the “Hack/Slash” properties to be published there before they took up the second ongoing series.

As a warning, this review is also an analysis, and so will include spoilers regarding this arc and major developments therein.

Throughout “My First Maniac,” Tim Seeley’s word choice rules the day, showcasing changing scenarios through repetition of common lines that have small, significant variations. Particularly in the first issue, there are intense parallels during the last two days that Cassie spent in her Wisconsin hometown, with her survivor’s guilt and vulnerability contrasting against her utter viciousness on her last day, figuring out how to use her “otherness” to make others afraid of her. On a similar note, the repeated use of certain phrases such as “come home” and similar words helps to add on to how alone Ms. Hack really feels and how she does, deep down, wish she could be at home again, but can’t seem to allow that for herself, a recurring struggle for her throughout her slasher slayer career.

Repetition also continues through events, such as the aforementioned last two days and her feelings about firearms. While Hack was at first upset and in shock over shooting her mother after she had become a slasher, noting that the gun felt heavy in her hands, her almost casual execution of the slasher she set out to hunt in this arc and intentional use of the gun she had actually demanded from someone else gives a look at how far she has delved into her killer lifestyle.

Religion, in particular Christianity, gets some mention, and acts as a contrast to the slashers themselves. Seeing as Cassie doesn’t know much about them (and won’t know much at all beyond the basics for years), she equates their ability to rise from the dead by sheer hatred as a kind of opposite number to Jesus of Nazareth, albeit not an actual antichrist. “The Bible says Jesus Christ died for our sins and returned to show his love. What about those who died for their own sins and returned to show their hate?” While this connection isn’t really all that important, it helps to tie readers in to the story, given a common perspective that many are at least familiar with on a cursory level.

Tim Seeley has long proposed that all of the famous slasher film franchises (and a few horror comic series) take place within the same world and share that world with “Hack/Slash,” with crossovers including “Hack/Slash vs. Chucky” (Child’s Play after Seed of Chucky), “Cassie and Vlad meet the Re-Animator” (Re-Animator), and “Hatchet/Slash” (Hatchet) alongside other more subdued connections or offhand references. In this limited series, Cassie’s original research into slashers includes direct mentions of the actions of Freddy Kreuger of A Nightmare on Elm Street (“a man who kills in dreams in Ohio”), Michael Myers of Halloween (“a masked maniac who terrorizes a small town on Halloween”), and Jason Voorhees of Friday the 13th (“a camp plagued for thirty years by a psycho who won’t die”) who, though already mentioned to exist within the world by Charles Lee “Chucky” Ray in his one-shot story, are still a nice treat for readers.

As a fun little note, Delilah Hack’s year of death is mentioned on her tombstone as 2004, the same year that the original “Hack/Slash” story, “Euthanized,” was published, and therefore probably the same year that this story takes place.

“My First Maniac” is, at its core, a tragedy. Cassie Hack wants a normal life, and by right, probably would have had one, albeit one filled with bullying, in most other circumstances. But with her life’s path and her survivor’s guilt, any hope for a happy life is mercilessly, repeatedly dashed, and she isn’t the only one to whom this genre applies.

First, let’s look to the case of Cassie herself. From the outset, re-killing her undead mother has irrevocably changed her life, leading her down a dark path that results in running away from the loving foster care of Shannon and Karen Moore. As she starts to develop a new, real life for herself in Buffalo Center, Iowa, over the course of her first intentional slasher hunt, she actually seems to be happy, or at least give the idea of possibly becoming happier with time. She develops friends, and seems on the road to becoming better again after her violent turn in Wisconsin. Then, of course, things go horribly wrong, as becomes a pattern for her life from then on.

On the other hand, we have the supporting cast and even the villains. The Moores just wanted to help Cassie, but her self-given mission had consumed her to such a degree that any happiness would be impossible. Sarah Bunn and her boyfriend Kelsey each have a tragic tale, each a victim of the slasher of the story in their own way. Cassie even identifies them as a “free-spirited girl with a dark secret” and a “genuine good guy” respectively, acknowledging that they also were suffering from tragedy much as she was in their own ways. Even the slasher was in his own way a victim, though not as sympathetic. He was murdered in a rage, but his actions in life were not kind either, so there is less sympathy afforded to him.

A major part of “My First Maniac” is not just the case itself, but how Cassie Hack evolves from a relatively innocent girl into… well, kind of a sociopathic girl with intense post-traumatic stress disorder. By the end of the arc, she even claims that “Cassie Hack, teenage girl” is dead.

The majority of the symptoms of her disorder do not come into play during the limited series (having apparently been developed gradually in the months since), but her increased aggression is definitely important. Over the course of a single day, perhaps two, Cassie Hack goes from reluctantly shooting her mother to death in order to save someone’s life, to experiencing such severe survivor’s guilt that she feels she deserves the beating that a trio of bullies led by group alpha Rhianna Stegman are giving her, to beating Stegman to within an inch of her life with her bare hands the next day and threatening to murder her if she ever tried again. Even more, that very night she threatened her foster father’s life with a knife in his bed to keep him from following her as she ran away, further showing that she is seriously unwell. The speed with which she shifts from a shy, bullied girl to making death threats and physical assault demonstrate a thoroughly fractured mind, one that will only get worse as years of hunting take their toll.

On another note, it is important to be aware that while Cassie is a huntress of monsters, she is not a good person on her own. When she witnesses Jay and Ludo beating up a homosexual student outside of Club Fuzz after work, she almost doesn’t help at all on account of them not being her prey and her not being a hero, only actually getting involved when the odds are obviously in her favor once Kelsey and Sarah jumped in. Part of this relates to how she feels she can’t have anyone to care about, seeing any attachments as collateral in her hunt that she cannot afford (something that takes years for her to grasp is not necessarily the case, and never really leaves her mindset altogether), but another is the fact that she is so obsessed with her mission that she has faith in nothing else at all and makes attempts to refuse any other ways to help.

Even with her increasingly hardened exterior, there is still a sheltered, hidden part of Cassie Hack that is still that flustered, shy, teenage girl who ran away from home. Being the center of attention and attracting compliments leaves her very shy, with her new goth wardrobe breaking her out of her intense focus when people bring up how good she looks. Furthermore, when someone actually tells her she is a cool girl, she is overjoyed, actually writing it down in her diary with her feet up and crossed like a guy she likes noticed her.

Daniel Leister’s artwork is amazingly done, and in two different, but similar styles. On the one hand, we have the present day storyline, with realistic, well-detailed faces and scenes, the emotion clear on everyone’s faces (especially important for this particular slasher). Blood and guts are in horrific, terrifying detail through which Leister considers the amount of time that has passed since the blood has spilled, ranging from a general stain to caked on gore or bruises to a smear to a bloody, oozing wound. Water is shown in detail as well, with sweat and splashes helping to showcase effort in a way that many other artists might overlook.

On the other hand, the tellings of the tale of the slasher threat are somewhat more simplistic in nature, with flatter artwork that somehow works very well regardless, playing off in a way that is not unlike the works of Jack Kirby. In fact, the artwork even utilizes his famous “Kirby dot” technique!

On the whole, it is very well put together in some of the best art on “Hack/Slash” in general (not to put down any of the other phenomenal artists either).

The issue would be incomplete without Mark Englert’s coloring. Darkness and light, across different times of day, different ages of bruising, or even different styles of artwork help to make the entire story feel like a classic slasher movie, even as it is clearly something different.

The coloring of blood and gore is particularly well handled, as each of these elements has a weight to them, with light and shadow playing across them to showcase the amount of blood spilled or the fact that a blood stain may just be a single layer, whether a minor smear on clothing or skin. By using that kind of detail, readers are made aware of how fresh, how wet, a wound really is at any particular moment.

Together, this four-issue series is put together wonderfully, with the masterful writing, excellent illustrations, and disturbingly realistic coloring working together to make yet another piece of the amazing “Hack/Slash” epic.