Murky Depths #3

With the third issue of Murky Depths, it appears that the editorial team has hit its stride. The art is great, the pieces resonate better with each other, and the editorial hiccups have vanished.

Issue #3 starts out with a backwoods monster tale, “What’s Yours Is Mine” by Pike Stephenson, that opens with Tarantino flare. The main character, Riley, is a greedy criminal, the survivor of a shootout between his former associates and himself. Riley ignores a fellow thief’s desperation for a cut of their stolen money to pay back a debt, and instead, he leaves behind no survivors as he sets out for the border with the proceeds of his adventure. But something finds him in the woods. “What’s Yours Is Mine” is a decent monster story, with enough differences from the standard fare to keep things interesting.

“Evention” by Mike Webster is a perfect piece for Murky Depth’s hybrid style. Part graphic strip and part poem, it’s dark, disorienting, and moody. A musing tale of reflection, it captures the saddest side of human nature in both pictures and prose.

“The Suicide Bar” by Montilee Stormer is also a mixed genre composition—part horror, part science fiction. It briefly and immediately sets up a depressing future, not unlike our own present, where suicide is not only assisted, it’s contracted and legal. But unlike today, there’s no backing out once you put it in writing. With one of the biggest bites of the issue, this story is one to flip forward to.

The drugs and violence theme continues with “Nine-tenths Of The Law” by Edward Morris, a focus on the common man. A drug addict accidentally uncovers an ancient urn with a demon-like creature of the darkest nature sealed inside. The addict is definitely having a bad day; he releases the demon, which possesses him, and then discovers that the crate of meth he was digging up for some irritated drug pushers is fake. The possessed man is dramatically run down on the stairs of his friend, Nancy’s, home. Nancy, who has just begun trying to quit meth, cold turkey, pushes her detoxing body’s protests aside and tries her best to help her injured friend. A dark story where Nancy’s harsh life ends up preparing her for a face-to-face battle with the demon inside her friend. This one starts in a gloomy, dangerous world which turns out to be the impetus for the characters’ strength of wills, rather than a horrific setup for them to vanish into.

“In This the Era of the Great Wilting” by Jeffrey Archer-Burton is set against a post-apocalyptic backdrop where the world suffers from some mysterious disease that has left most people dead. Melanie refers to it as “The Great Wilting,” and she discovers that just because she didn’t die of the disease, it doesn’t mean that it hasn’t affected her. Depressing desperation and sociopathic intent lead to a crash ending that makes this story.

The third installment of “Death and the Maiden” by Richard Calder offers up a great deal more worldbuilding to Calder’s series, providing interest and understanding to Cat Town. The artwork is delightfully erotic, but the strip suffers from the same problem as most soap operas and long running comics. Ultimately, such a short space allows only enough time to build up some excitement for one (or so) event to occur before time’s up, and readers are left with “tune in next week.” Advertisements in this issue suggest that after this installment, “Death and the Maiden” will be moving to its own comic, which should allow more time to both build up the mood and spin a story.

“Shit New World” by Martin Hayes is a flash piece that introduces readers to a man living in 2096, who, after reading science fiction books from our time period, rants about the lack of actualization of our hypotheses. No sex-bots or moon vacations, he lays out some changes that are tantalizing in their presentation and implications, but the tale itself is little more than a long complaint.

“Maimed” by Hazel Marcus Ong is a surprising aside, eschewing this issue’s gutter-horror style and instead telling a fantasy tale. The art is reminiscent of the ElfQuest graphic novel fantasy series by Wendy and Richard Pini. Although the story has no elves or magic, just a familiar character, a man who can play an intoxicating tune on a pipe—intoxicating enough to lure all manner of creatures from their homes. A peculiar tale, even by its twisted end, it didn’t feel like other twisted fairy tales. Ong’s piper steps out of the realm of mere fantasy to become a very human creature that the reader learns to both fear and pity.

Next up is the last half of Stan Nicholls’s “SPOILS.” Not your average plague story, “SPOILS” tells of a disease that seems to affect only true Christian believers, spinning the world out into even more dramatic layers of “holier than thou.” Not as drawn out as one might expect, being split into two issues, the sections only overlap slightly, showing more of a worldview of the disease’s effects by focusing on an assortment of people, each with different viewpoints and each witnessing different legs of the story’s journey.

The second installment of “The Dark Gospel” by Luke Cooper furthers the story of a man who has discovered the Gospel according to the other half of the good/evil duality. Cooper doesn’t need more than shades of black and white to set a heavy, thick feel, as the main character, Daniel, meets Satan and learns that there is, indeed, a light side to the darkness. The dialog in this installment is better. It would be hard not to look forward to the next installment when an angel with the name “Halo Slipping” is introduced at the end, pressing this reader, at least, to wonder if the moniker is a misnomer or foreshadowing.

“Speak Ill of the Dead” by Ian Faulkner recaptures the theme of the issue, pulling readers into a future world where a sentient zombie cult of terrorists have kidnapped the brother of Blueberry, an ex-anti-terrorism agent. The cult hope to use her brother as leverage to force her to help, even join them. Blueberry has bitten off a bit more than she can chew, but there’s an extra layer here, revealed in the last few paragraphs. A zombie tale that doesn’t feel like a rehash of trodden ground, for all the science fiction aspects. But the horror is quite real.

“Zombie Diva” by Glynn Barrass is the only recognizable poem in this issue. If the purpose of a poem is to evoke a strong image, then this one succeeds well, even without the horrific artwork accompanying it.

Last up in this issue is “The Love Ship Guide to Seduction in Zero Gravity” by Steven Pirie. The push toward harder science fiction cumulates in this tale as a man in a midlife crisis takes a woman who is not his wife to a special motel capable of making the stars move and time stand still…literally. But the room is less spectacular than promised, and the girl is hiding something—all is not paradise is this little adventure in infidelity.

Altogether, this issue is smoother, more thematically consistent, and displays a greater sense of experience than its predecessors. Hopefully, this trend will continue, and the sensory experience of Murky Depths will become a genre staple.