Good art, crap writing/story, there’s a reason why you’ve not heard of this one - I feel like this is essentially what 90% of my comics reviews boil down to. And it also applies to Freaks of the Heartland!
Set in rural ‘murica, stereotypical hillbillies (“You sassin’ me, boy?” *drinks ‘shine*, hits wife, repeat) keep their mutated offspring in barns until they decide to rid the world of Satan’s spawn one arbitrary day. Except one boy decides to set loose his freak brother and the pair go about the county freeing a disproportionate number of mutated kiddles - on count of the nookulurr testing or some such, see? Honestly, if I was from the South I’d be insulted with Steve Niles’ lazy characterisation.
Greg Ruth’s painted art is genuinely beautiful and is the only thing that attracted me to this book - it certainly wasn’t seeing Steve Niles’ name on the cover! The Southern Gothic style is there visually at least but Niles’ script is as hackneyed and dull as ever. The guy’s spent his entire career writing horror but it’s all surface level crap - he’s never written anything original, memorable or even truly scary, he just rehashes tired tropes over and over.
So yeah, Freaks of the Heartland: good art, crap writing/story, there’s a reason why you’ve not heard of this one!
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