Writer: Tim Seeley
Artist: Emily Stone
Company: Devil’s Due

I’ve reviewed Hack/Slash any number of times in the past, and the series has always been a touch hit and miss with me. It has had a variety of artists, some good, some not so good, a couple very good. It has had some very fun, memorable stories, and others that suffered from the series’ one-shot structure. The Hack/Slash ongoing series is a way for the book to develop its interesting premise and characters, and Seeley has found an excellent artistic collaborator in Emily Stone, who keeps the creep factor up but also delivers the emotional core of the story. The first issue is a classic Hack/Slash tale, riffing a bit on the recent evolution of the slasher subgenre to include Hostel and Saw, providing an origin that both recaps for new readers and expands for long-time readers, conveying the basics of the concept and characters without boring those who already know it and serving up a tantalizing bit of history on Cassie that will definitely play a major role going forward.

The concept of Hack/Slash, for those who are unfamiliar, is that Cassie Hack is a vigilante who hunts down slashers, a subset of serial killers who exist in the Hack/Slash world the way that vampires do in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In fact, Buffy the Vampire Slayer is one of the easiest comparisons to make when it comes to Hack/Slash. Cassie is to slashers what Buffy is to vampires, and Hack/Slash is what Buffy might have been if it had been created by Wes Craven and Rob Zombie instead of Joss Whedon. It’s less with the quippy (although there are smart and occasionally darkly funny bits, ala the Scream series) and more with the physical violence and psychological trauma. There’s a lot of both to go around in this issue, which finds Cassie facing down a murderous psychologist who tortures her physically and mentally while her sidekick Vlad is looking for her.

The woman in jeopardy thing has been done, I’ll admit. Hands up, all who remember the first episode of Alias, where we first meet our heroine tied to a chair being tortured, her only real weapon being fortitude and sarcastic rejoinders? But it works here, for three reasons: One, it’s an effective twist on the slashers Cassie has fought thus far, who tend to be more of the “find them and kick their ass” variety, and it has the benefit of addressing the torture conventions that have infiltrated the genre where Cassie makes her home. Two, it gives a perfectly reasonable story explanation for why the reader would be hearing Cassie’s history, including new tidbits like how she first met Vlad. And three, it gives us some nice tension as we wonder how Cassie is going to survive. I like that despite Vlad’s assistance, Cassie doesn’t come off like a victim. She comes off like a captured heroine who was biding her time, and who gets the last laugh. As always, Cassie is the last survivor of the slasher flick, except she’s survived dozens of them and gotten pretty good at dishing out punishment as a result.

Hack/Slash has had a variety of artists, and I’ve enjoyed a lot of them, but Emily Stone is a real find, and along with the colors by Courtney Via, this may be the best the book has ever looked. These two lay on the gore quite effectively, and they know how to do their action and their comedy. The final smackdown is brutally effective, beginning with a use of Vlad that is a nice reversal of the “he’s behind you!” moment from any good slasher movie. In addition, the bits with Vlad in the coffeehouse are very funny and the showdown between Cassie and her mother is very effective. But more than that, the artists bring the characters to life emotionally. Cassie’s anguish as she faces her demons, the betrayal her mother feels when she’s caught, the rare vulnerability Cassie shows at the end, these are all brought to life very well on the page. And Via’s colors give the whole thing a look reminiscent of Christina Strain’s work on Runaways, an almost animated sheen that is particularly effective on the flashback scenes to Cassie being harassed on the playground.

Hack/Slash has never been a property aimed at younger readers, but it’s clear with this particular series that Seeley is embracing the R-rating that his horror movie influences so often earn. The language here is filthier than anything you’ll see outside of a Garth Ennis book (albeit used much more sparingly than Ennis does), the gore and torture very visceral and affecting and the heroine not so much a noble creature as a damaged, but functioning, vigilante. There’s moral and psychological complexity available, especially with the revelation on the last page, and I’m glad that Hack/Slash is now an ongoing, as it means Seeley will have more room to explore that kind of thing along with the slasher/action plots he’s been doing so well for years now.

Hack/Slash Ongoing #1 is due for release on May 9. This is an advance review.