One Bloody Thing After Another by Joey Comeau

One Bloody Thing After Another
by Joey Comeau, ECW Press
ISBN:9781550229165
9/10 Dropps

Originally available as a serialized horror story online in 2008, this amazing, bizarre,
and compulsively readable tale from online comics heavy hitter Joey Comeau has now
been compiled into book form by ECW Press, can be read straight through in about an
hour, and is sure to keep your attention peaked throughout. In it, three stories intertwine
to form a disturbingly funny and surprisingly moving portrait of love, death, old age,
family tragedy, and the bloody ties that bind us all together.

In the opening, a young girl named Ann finds her mother has turned into a zombie
(smack in the middle of a job interview, no less), and realizes that it’ll be up to her and
her younger sister Margaret to keep their mom locked up—and more importantly, keep
her fed—until they can figure out what to do next.

Meanwhile, Ann’s best friend Jackie is agonizing over a decision to admit to Ann that
she’s in love with her—all the while discovering a disturbing disappearance of trees she
has marked on a map on her bedroom wall that turns her violent. Jackie’s also plagued
by frequent encounters with the vomiting ghost of her deceased mother who freakishly
appears to her in bathroom stalls through methods Jackie is rapidly losing the power to
control.

Threading in and out of the stories of these two young girls is Charlie and his
incredibly stupid canine, Mitchie. Mitchie runs into walls, falls over sideways in
the middle of busy intersections, and—without fail—always seems to lead Charlie
smack dab into the bloody, butchered, headless ghost wandering the hallways of their
retirement home when they return from their afternoon walk. But what does she want?

As haunting as it is wonderful, this short novella is written with great humor and a
powerful amount of insight into the minds of those he’s writing about. Though the
circumstances in the book are anything but ordinary, Comeau captures the human
condition perfectly with unique and fully realized characters interacting purposefully
before a bizarro backdrop of carnage, chaos, bloodshed, and the supernatural. You’ll be
simultaneously amused and horrified by each character’s actions—and as the workings of
the inner psyche fueling each action are revealed, you’ll be hard pressed to deny that you
wouldn’t act the exact same way were you in the situation yourself (stealing baby kittens
to feed your zombie mother and all).

-Nicole Marie Rea