When we last left off in Part I, we were looking at the beginnings of Broodhollow: at its possible horror and comic influences and how its aesthetics is centred around the exploration and fear of its protagonist. In Part II, we are going to look at the foundation of horror that Straub built for his comic before it even existed …

It can’t be reiterated enough that Kris Straub’s Broodhollow has been influenced by the horror genre.

In his “Dear Vanderbeam,” he reveals that the horror elements ofBroodhollow are “unsettling in the style of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Stephen King.”[1] There is even one part in his comic where Wadsworth explains his Pattern, stating that “Terrible things happen when doors aren’t shut. I can sense it. I just … haven’t discovered the larger Pattern yet.”[2] Certainly, aside from potentially and ironically breaking the fourth-narrative wall–or just on the brink of such–this comment is very Lovecraftian: in the sense that it draws upon a few of H.P. Lovecraft’s most popular themes such as knowledge of an inherently non-human universe leading to despair and insanity as well the abjuration in his “Case of Charles Dexter Ward” to never call up that which one cannot put down again.

Yet there is another sort of Pattern to consider here as well: that of Kris Straub’s own horror stories. In addition to being a cartoonist and comics artist, Straub is also a horror writer. In 2008, or so his displayed copyright seems to indicate, Straub created the site Ichor Falls: to serve both as a setting for his stories and as a place to post his own collection of horror prose and those of others. According to the “Visitors Center,” Ichor Falls “is a city” or town, this section alternates between both terms “in Mason County, West Virginia, United States, at the confluence of the Ohio and Erytheia Rivers.” The area’s violent waterfalls and constant fog inspired one of its settlers to name the early colony after the word ichor: an ancient Greek term for the blood of gods and monsters.[3]

And while, this seems neither here nor there, it becomes apparent in Kris Straub’s new web strip that Broodhollow–while a different town–is part of a shared horror universe.[4]

Straub even states that “Broodhollow is a sister city of Ichor Falls, the haunted town setting of my horror fiction”: thus placing either cities or towns (he alternates using either terminology for both of these places as well) into the same geographical region:[5] though Ichor Falls itself was founded first around 1804.[6] They are different places too. In an excerpt from “Appendix H: American Cities and Towns. Broodhollow-Brookston” in one very familiarEncyclopedia Atlantica entry that’s posted on Ichor Falls, it’s stated that “Broodhollow is a small American city” founded in 1811[7] that celebrates, among other events, the holiday of “Totenkinder” featured in Ichor Falls’ “Local Legends.”[8] Straub also explains that while Ichor Falls was created to look and feel oppressive, Broodhollow is designed to look “very bright and inviting at first glance.”[9] However, aside from these differences there are elements from Ichor Falls that definitely find their way and come into play in Broodhollow proper.

It’s fascinating to consider these creative translations from Ichor Falls to Broodhollow as a creative experiment in the cross-pollination of storytelling and mythos construction. It’s only Kris Straub’s short stories that become the basis for some of the more … stranger denizens of Broodhollow. The almost identical parallels between Ichor Falls’ short story “Curious Little Thing” with the neurotic practices of its haunted narrator[10] and Wadsworth’s encounters with Young Maddy and her story–and even the title of the Broodhollow “Chapter” itself are quite clear.[11]

Ichor Falls also has other “Local Legends”: including that of the master-tailor William Harker.[12] Straub then proceeds to slowly reveal that the legend of Harker actually began in Broodhollow–where his old estate is–first through the interjection of another character claiming that Harker would be “turning in his grave,”[13]then in a conversation that Wadsworth has with the Mayor[14] and finally, and most chillingly of all, in an account that Wadsworth’s friend Iris Bellwater reads in Regional Legends of Mason County: where Harker is named as “a stitched man:” a master-tailor who began to stitch his own wounds and find “replacement parts” to “repair” himself and “replace” his lost family from the great fire of 1840.[15]

Straub even seems to refer to a territory near Ichor Falls called the Stillwood Forest through his “Local Legends”[16] and his short story “The Stillwood King”[17] respectively when he creates a form of prohibited beverage perhaps not unlike alcohol or absinthe distilled from switchwood bark in the Stillwood Forest.[18] This may obliquely refer to the legend of how people needed to close their eyes to neutralize and attempt to get around the figure of the Stillwood King who, in turn, is kind of a reverse of the BroodhollowStitched Man’s method of operation.

Thus you can see the Broodhollow mythos forming from these early stories and manifesting into clearer plot and world-elements within Straub’s current sequential narrative. It is really interesting to compare and contrast his prose with his comics work. First of all, the prose stories mainly feature the ghosts or the monsters. The task of Broodhollow is to have Wadsworth and other characters engage with these creatures and thereby have us as the reader-audience engage with them somewhat more directly and viscerally as well. As such, Straub greatly expands upon the supernatural creatures in his new narrative: with the Stitched Man—most notably– benefitting the most from his treatment in Broodhollow: for he is just literally a blurb in Ichor Falls’ “Local Legends”: a thread that Straub adds to considerably from his own material in the comic strip long after it.

The short stories and legends of Ichor Falls themselves have a very “folktale” feel to them: as though Straub essentially created some fictional urban legends. They are, as Straub himself described when he compares his two works, very oppressive and, at the same time, possessing a deliberate pacing from normal to creepy to terrifying–”that slow burn” Straub refers to in a “Meta” Blog entry on hisIchor Falls site: that’s indicative of his preferred ideal of horror.[19]This ideal also exists and proves central to Broodhollow’s sense of paneling and narrative. In fact, it can be argued that it’s Straub’s very sense of the comedic in his previous works–the ability to tell and pace a joke through pauses and a punch line–that informs the idea of horror that he looks for in other works and his own.

This last consideration also has more common with one of Straub’s comics influences than might be believed upon initial glance. In addition its aesthetics, the Bardin the Surrealist comic strips may have also affected Broodhollow’s content. Rob Clough, in his article “Sequart Reprints: Percy Gloom, Bardin The Superrealist, Things Just Get Away From You,” explains that Bardin is an interrelated series of comic strips ranging from “a frantic to languid pace” dealing with the main protagonist–Bardin–”who has suddenly been given insights and abilities relating to the “superreal” world–a plane that’s above our world.” Clough also mentions that “In this book, a punch line and a Great Truth are often the same thing.”[20]

It’s a thought that, aside from being a nice parallel to Straub’s background in comedy, also possesses sympathy with Straub’s own statement that the horror he prefers is a Lovecraftian “cosmicism”: the kind where “characters are shaken not by a threat of violence, but with the sudden confrontation of truth … the unwanted exploration of the unknowable: things that dance on the periphery of what humanity as a species is unable to perceive” or the idea that it’s not so much the ghost that attacks you directly that should be scary but rather the mere fact that the ghost exists at all within your house.[21] In this case, humor and horror can have a very surprising relationship with one another.

It seems as though Broodhollow is the answer to Kris Straub’s search for that “slow burn” horror story back in 2011[22] and a masterwork for himself– his “baby” that he can focus all of his heart into.[23] But getting to this point was not just a question of unifying his prose stories. Ichor Falls itself started off as a core concept from a three-strip comic called “Terminus”: whose aesthetics are reminiscent of the Expressionist style in Bill Sienkiewicz’s work in Alan Moore’s Big Numbers and even Dave McKean’s drawing style in Neil Gaiman’s Violent Cases: a washed-out, faded and almost photographic look.[24] However, even Straub admits that this strip is more “more tongue-in-cheek than scary.”[25] This is a narrative whose tone has not quite formed itself, from an artist that hasn’t honed his focus yet: though it’s intriguing to wonder what would have happened if Straub continued to develop this concept in the comics form that he had chosen here: ifIchor Falls continued as a story in the comics medium.

In any case it should be noted that Kris Straub has expressed some concerns with regards to the correlation between Ichor Falls and Broodhollow. After Straub states that Broodhollow “expands greatly on a few of the ideas” in Ichor Falls, he also says that it’s neither required nor recommended reading. In fact, in addition to stating that some of the content on the latter can arguably be considered “minor spoilers,” Straub further claims that “if I make a body of work that requires you to hunt down and absorb a separatebody of work — one which I’ve barely even mentioned here — in order to understand what’s happening, then I’ve failed as a storyteller.” [26] However, you can also argue that Straub shouldn’t be too concerned about this. Ichor Falls only adds to Broodhollowas another body of work: as stories told in a different medium that complements and supplements his sequential narrative.

In fact, it goes even further than that. What you are seeing when you look at both Ichor prose and Broodhollow comic strips is “divine creative blood” being pumped into the forming veins of a whole new monster or, essentially, spools of thread from the former being stitched into the expanding fabric of the latter. In fact, it can’t be emphasized enough that Broodhollow is a mythos that is still growing. As such, it should be made very clear that Kris Straub is no stranger to the slow creeping expansion of a story become a viral mythos.

And in Part III of this article, we will get to explore the process of this mythos’ expansion …

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[1] Straub, Kris. “Dear Vanderbeam.” Weblog. Kris Straub | humor scientist. N.p. 3 October 2012. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://krisstraub.com/2012/10/03/dear-vanderbeam/>

[2] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Comic strip. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/03/20/obsessions/panel 2>

[3] Straub, Kris. “History.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. Web. 29 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/history/>

[4] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Comic strip. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2012/10/29/next-stop/panel 1>

[5] Straub, Kris. “Dear Vanderbeam.” Weblog. Kris Straub | humor scientist. N.p. 3 October 2012. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://krisstraub.com/2012/10/03/dear-vanderbeam/>

[6] Straub, Kris. “History.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. Web. 31 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/history/>

[7] Straub, Kris. “Next Stop: Broodhollow.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. 4 October 2012. 31 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/2012/10/04/next-stop-broodhollow/>

[8] Straub, Kris. “Local Legends.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. Web. 31 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/local-legends/>

[9] Straub, Kris. “Dear Vanderbeam.” Weblog. Kris Straub | humor scientist. N.p. 3 October 2012. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://krisstraub.com/2012/10/03/dear-vanderbeam/>

[10] Straub, Kris. “Curious Little Thing.” Ichor Falls. N.p. 31 October 2008. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/2008/10/31/curious-little-thing/>

[11] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Comic strip. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/01/02/curious-little-thing/ panels 3-5>

[12] Straub, Kris. “Local Legends.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. Web. 29 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/local-legends/>

[13] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Comic strip. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/05/13/high-society/panel 2>

[14] Ibid. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/05/20/the-rules/ panel 4>

[15] Ibid. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/06/17/regional-legends/ panel 6>

[16] Straub, Kris. “Local Legends.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. Web. 29 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/local-legends/>

[17] Straub, Kris. “The Stillwood King.”  Ichor Falls. N.p. 3 November 2008. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/2008/11/03/the-stillwood-king/>

[18] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Article. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/04/22/what-was-switchwater-like/>

[19] Straub, Kris. “October 2011.” Weblog.  Ichor Falls. N.p. 16 October 2011. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/2011/10/16/october-2011/>

[20] Clough, Rob. “Sequart Reprints: Percy Gloom, Bardin The Superrealist, Things Just Get Away From You.” Weblog. High-Low. N.p. 5 Mar. 2013. Web. 28 July 2013.

<http://highlowcomics.blogspot.ca/2013/03/sequart-reprints-percy-gloom-bardin.html>

[21] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Article. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2012/10/08/welcome-to-broodhollow/>

[22] Straub, Kris. “October 2011.” Weblog. Ichor Falls. N.p. 16 October 2011. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/2011/10/16/october-2011/>

[23] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Article. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/07/15/broodhollow-book-1-kickstarter/>

[24] Straub, Kris. “Terminus.” comic strip. Ichor Falls. N.p. Web. 29 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/terminus/>

[25] Straub, Kris. “New Stuff Added to Visitors Center.” Meta. Ichor Falls. N.p. 5 November 2008. Web. 28 July 2013. <http://www.ichorfalls.com/2008/11/05/new-stuff-added-to-visitors-center/>

[26] Straub, Kris. “Broodhollow Chapter One: Curious Little Thing.” Article. Broodhollow. N.p., 8 Oct.2012. Web. 20 July 2013. <http://broodhollow.chainsawsuit.com/2013/06/14/broodhollow-and-ichor-falls/>