3 out of 5

I’m not sure exactly what Rich Tommaso was aiming for with Horror of Collier County.  As compared to the other works of his I’ve read – the bulk of which were admittedly created chronologically after this miniseries – Collier is lacking a clear genre to which it adheres, and though that’s not a requirement, Tommaso’s wandering way of structuring a narrative seems to benefit from having an idea of the overall vibe it intends to portend.  Collier vaguely has an 80s movie sensibility, particularly – if you’ll pardon the association I may just be making due to gothy characters – Edward Scissorhands; while not so much in the Burton fairytale aspect of things, the blend of horror and comedy amidst the suburbs is there, transplanted to the rich, Floridian (I think) neighborhood in which a recently singled mum and her daughter are staying with her own mother.  Mum keeps experiencing / seeing encroaching oddities in the neighborhood, seeming signs of people and the place not wanting her there, and when local weirdo Frankenstein lookalike Mel pops up and the duo form a loose friendship, the Scissorhands thing becomes more prevalent, even if the characters we’re focusing on have been all shuffled.  And like a lot of 80s flicks, in which harmless, youthful humor and heavy adult themes were often welded together in PG fare, Collier, beneath its Gilbert Hernandez-esque artwork and quirky characters, hints at some pretty dark stuff: abandonment, addiction, isolation.  But, again, that lack of genre doesn’t make it clear if Rich wanted us to be affected by those themes, or if they’re just accidents of the narration.  Piling up with this confusion is a perplexing approach to the way the character Mel is drawn, appearing in almost drastically different proportions panel to panel at points. Is it purposeful?  Am I missing the deeper meaning?  Unfortunately, I really can’t say.

It’s not an uninteresting series by any means, and the collected book is in an appreciably contact size that makes the reading experience pretty seamless, but it’s not the Tommaso project that would necessarily leave a lasting mark on me as a reader.