Goobers
Writer: Cody Ziglar
Artist: Ryan Lee
Colorist: Kurt Michael Russell
Letterer: Andworld Design
Publication Date: Currently available to pre-order
There are two major things for sale with Goobers, the new tentacle-heavy smalltown horror book from writer Cody Ziglar, artist Ryan Lee, colorist Kurt Michael Russell, and letterer Andworld Design. And they are wall-to-wall horror monster action, and some of the best teen banter I’ve read in a comic book in ages. Those things are layered atop a story about the awkwardness of going home again after you have started a life somewhere else, and that’s the theme that ties the book together.
That’s a nice theme, one that I think many readers will find relatable, especially millennials who grew up in small towns or suburbs before going away to school and ending up in bigger cities. I don’t want to spoil any of the small touches, but there’s a common phrase repeated by people who fall under the thrall of the titular Goober monsters that should resonate. There’s also an interesting cultural dynamic at work in this comic, wherein the protagonist and his friends are Black and they are returning to his rural, mostly white-southern smalltown. That’s an interesting dynamic, and it serves the book well.
The headliner to all of this — as it is in 99 percent of horror comics — is the art. For my money, Ryan Lee draws some the best weirdo monsters in all of comics (do yourself a favor and checkout Mountainhead for a taste of more smalltown horror illustrated by Lee), and he’s also a skilled action storyteller. What that amounts to in this book is so many great fight and chase sequences, with humans swinging makeshift weapons, tentacles flying, and weird monster fangs gnashing. Kurt Michael Russell’s colors compliment it all so well, expertly enhancing everything from the smalltown setting to the monsters to the blood and gore that inevitably splash around in these panels.
The book also has a playful sense of delivery to some of its key moments, played out well by the lettering. There are splash pages that reveal some increasingly large monsters in this comic, and the lettering makes clear who and what they are in playful ways that make it almost feel like a freeze frame inside the rapid pace of the events of the comic.
So that’s all great, but it might not land nearly as well if Ziglar didn’t write such excellent banter between his characters. There’s a familiarity to the friend group at the center of Goobers that I absolutely loved, complete with different personalities (not all of them good), an evident shared history, and things that have lain dormant coming to the surface now that they’re under life-threatening stress. It’s a horror book, so you know the entire cast is not coming out of this alive, and when you do start losing them, it really hurts. This is such a credit to the way the script endears the characters as a group to readers.
Overall, I thought Goobers is an absolute blast of a comic, a horror-action weirdo monster thriller that packs in some subtle poignancy among the blood splatters and laughs. Currently available for pre-order wherever comics are sold, make sure to snag your copy of this one.
Goobers is currently available for pre-order wherever comics are sold.
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