1 out of 5

1. A nice, oversized slim HC from Titan, with good binding, nice page thickness, and excellent colors
2. Great translation from the French by Ivanka Hahnenberger, naturalizing jokes and sarcasm that must’ve been difficult to ‘Americanize’
3. Notable comic timing from Silas: little character nuances – responses, expressions – add a lot to the pacing
4. Unfunny
5. Uninteresting
6. Blazingly unaware for being published originally in 2011

The quote on the front cover pretty much says it all: “I am eight years old and I kill people.”  It says it all because Silas gives us no context otherwise: the story opens with Norman, Jason mask on, killing someone.  The attempted humor will be apparent from the casualness with which this event is treated, as well as the cartoonish spray of blood that occurs as a result.  It’s not a bad start, and to Stan’s credit he doesn’t take the obvious obvious route of complete overkill – the bulk of the story is Norman’s bungling attempts to hide his murders – but by offering us zero context on the characters at any point, the “plot” can’t amount to much more than a one-note gag, which is emphasized by the very web-comicy pacing of the book (each line of the comic grid generally ends in a joke).  This would be acceptable as a time passer if that one-note gag was particularly original, but besides setting the killings amongst young kids, we’ve seen this before.  It’s dragged down even further by an odd ignorance in dealing with homosexuality and the poor.  In my own ignorance, I’ll make the comment that Silas’ treatment of these topics feels “innocent” – it’s not mean-spirited when the gay kid also wears dresses – but it just feels like a joke from outside of the modern world, like our parents who are ‘casually’ racist.  I realize that there’s an aspect of the book that is purposefully ignorant, as there’s a little rich kid clique which collectively picks on the other kids, but it’s just one drop in the bucket of a whole cast of narcissists who, again, are presented to us with zero context.  It feels like we’re arrived in the middle of the show, but there aren’t even any dangling plotlines to confuse us.

And pet peeve that I’ve mentioned elsewhere: I loathe horror back-patting.  Name-checking a flick or winking at a scene from a classic movie doesn’t mean shit nowadays.  If you like horror, just make horror.  The whole world has access to The Shining and Jason at this point, so there’s no longer a horror elite who dares to rent the bloody VHSes.

I get the gist of Norman, and there are good elements to the presentation, but it’s otherwise tragically boring and gives the reader no entrypoint of interest except that quote on the front cover, which promises little kids killing people.  If that’s enough to make you happy, then woop de woop.