Lake Yellowwood Slaughter
Writer: Alejandro Arbona
Artist: Gavin Guidry
Colorist: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Goats Flying Press
Publication Date: Late 2025
The storytelling language of Lake Yellowwood Slaughter is one you probably speak. There’s a summer camp, a group of old friends, some hooking up, unbridled greed, a mystery, and plenty of gory slasher set pieces. It’s a language that screams ’80s horror flick, and so the creative team behind the book — released late last year by Goats Flying Press — decided to make that the stated premise. In fact, announces it right there on Suspira Vilchez’s excellent movie poster-evoking cover: “The Official Comic Book Adaptation!”
This book is a graphic novel adaptation of an ’80s horror movie that never was but is so well-formed, it feels familiar, like something you caught glimpses of on cable at a sleepover in a basement as a kid with your buddies.
It’s a clever conceit that makes sense given the aforementioned subject matter, but it also speaks to what I think is one of this book’s biggest strengths. Lake Yellowwood Slaughter is a confident comic that knows exactly the story it wants to tell, the reaction it wants to elicit, and how it wants to entertain its readers. I don’t know at what point writer Alejandro Arbona and artist Gavin Guidry decided on the movie adaptation concept, but I’d wager it wasn’t always there at the start. It feels like something that lined up just right for these thoughtful storytellers as the work progressed.
And, to be sure, this thoughtfulness is present on every page of this excellent book.
For the most part, this is a story that hits some easy to predict beats. There’s a slasher from the start. The slasher becomes progressively more violent. It starts to feel like we know who the slasher is (but we also more there’s more to it than that), and eventually the narrative unfolds in full, spilling plenty of blood along the way.
Arbona’s scripting is spot-on, as strong with its character banter as it is with pacing the revelations of what’s happening and why. The book also deals with themes of greed and overdevelopment and environmentalism that never quite go out of relevance, but they do feel especially prevalent today as well as back in the 80s.
And Guidry’s art is pristine, colored to perfection here by the great Chris O’Halloran, with Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s always-excellent lettering lending support. The art in this book does have a cinematic feel to it, bouncing from sunny, not-quite-sepia-toned daylight camp scenes to rain-soaked horror in the books climax, all of which O’Halloran separates well with the perfect color choices.
I want to tread carefully while talking about the ending, because there’s a surprise to it that I found to be an absolute delight. But I’ll just say that if you’re a movie buff, this one ends with an absolutely hilarious bit that made me chuckle aloud.
Overall, Lake Yellowwood Slaughter is a really great, boutique press comic. It’s in a nice oversized, hardcover format, clocking in at just over 100 pages. I had a great time reading it, and it’s also such a good-looking book, that I’ve carved a space for it on my shelf. If you’re a fan of slasher horror with some added cheeky movie-lover send-ups, this one is a must-buy.
Lake Yellowwood Slaughter is available now via Goats Flying Press
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