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Elk's Run #1-8
Elk's Run
Featuring more than 100 pages of never-before-seen material!
The Harvey Award—nominated sensation that rocked the comics world–and left readers hanging in sheer suspense–is now a full-length graphic novel that finally carries the stunning Elk’s Run saga to its shocking conclusion.
The town of Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia, was built on a The dream of war-scarred Vietnam veterans to live in peace and harmony, in a place untouched by violence, crime, corruption, or greed. A living Norman Rockwell painting, governed by the most basic values and free of all things considered undesirable by its founders. It was supposed to be paradise. And for a while, it was.
Over the years, some in Elk’s Ridge have grown restless. They fear their refuge has become a prison . . . or a tomb. And they yearn to do the escape. But when one desperate bid for freedom ends in a tragic accident, a heinous act of mob justice suddenly tears the idyllic mask from this promised land and the evil its residents sought to keep out blooms from within. Now, as a deadly chain reaction of events threatens the future of Elk’s Ridge, its elders gird for battle against the real world. And a group of terrified teens prepare to make their own stand–against the people they once trusted and the only life they’ve ever known. Because there’s nothing left to do but fight or die.
A chillingly lyrical tale, rendered in starkly beautiful, visceral artwork, Elk’s Run is an unforgettable and unrelentingly powerful graphic novel event not to be missed.
With an introduction by Charlie Houston, author of Already Dead
The Harvey Award—nominated sensation that rocked the comics world–and left readers hanging in sheer suspense–is now a full-length graphic novel that finally carries the stunning Elk’s Run saga to its shocking conclusion.
The town of Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia, was built on a The dream of war-scarred Vietnam veterans to live in peace and harmony, in a place untouched by violence, crime, corruption, or greed. A living Norman Rockwell painting, governed by the most basic values and free of all things considered undesirable by its founders. It was supposed to be paradise. And for a while, it was.
Over the years, some in Elk’s Ridge have grown restless. They fear their refuge has become a prison . . . or a tomb. And they yearn to do the escape. But when one desperate bid for freedom ends in a tragic accident, a heinous act of mob justice suddenly tears the idyllic mask from this promised land and the evil its residents sought to keep out blooms from within. Now, as a deadly chain reaction of events threatens the future of Elk’s Ridge, its elders gird for battle against the real world. And a group of terrified teens prepare to make their own stand–against the people they once trusted and the only life they’ve ever known. Because there’s nothing left to do but fight or die.
A chillingly lyrical tale, rendered in starkly beautiful, visceral artwork, Elk’s Run is an unforgettable and unrelentingly powerful graphic novel event not to be missed.
With an introduction by Charlie Houston, author of Already Dead
224 pages, Paperback
First published March 27, 2007
3 people are currently reading
95 people want to read
About the author
Joshua Hale Fialkov
445 books140 followersJoshua Hale Fialkov is the creator (or co-creator, depending) of graphic novels, including the Harvey Nominated Elk’s Run, the Harvey and Eisner nominated Tumor, Punks the Comic, and the Harvey Nominated Echoes.
He has written Alibi and Cyblade for Top Cow, Superman/Batman for DC Comics, Rampaging Wolverine for Marvel, and Friday the 13th for Wildstorm. He’s writing the DC relaunch of I,Vampire, as well as debuting the new Marvel character The Monkey King. This fall sees the launch of The Last of the Greats from Image Comics with artist Brent Peeples.
He also served as a writer on the Emmy Award Nominated animated film Afro Samurai: Resurrection, and as Executive Producer of the cult hit LG15: The Resistance web series.
Elk’s Run, Tumor, and Alibi are all currently in development as feature films. He has written comics for companies including Marvel, Wildstorm, IDW, Dark Horse, Image, Tor Books, Seven Seas Entertainment, Del Rey, Random House, Dabel Brothers Productions, and St. Martin’s Press. He has done video game work for THQ, Midway Entertainment, and Gore Verbinski’s Blind Wink Productions. He also wrote a Sci-Fi Channel movie starring Isabella Rossellini and Judd Nelson. Unfortunately, at no point in the film does Judd Nelson punch the sky and freeze frame. Joshua grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, went to college in Boston, where he got a BFA in writing and directing for the stage and screen, and then worked in the New England film industry, until finally deciding to move to Los Angeles to do it properly. He lives with his wife, Christina, daughter, Gable, and their cats, Smokey and the Bandit.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/joshfialkov
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joshuahalefia...
Photograph by Heidi Ryder Photography
He has written Alibi and Cyblade for Top Cow, Superman/Batman for DC Comics, Rampaging Wolverine for Marvel, and Friday the 13th for Wildstorm. He’s writing the DC relaunch of I,Vampire, as well as debuting the new Marvel character The Monkey King. This fall sees the launch of The Last of the Greats from Image Comics with artist Brent Peeples.
He also served as a writer on the Emmy Award Nominated animated film Afro Samurai: Resurrection, and as Executive Producer of the cult hit LG15: The Resistance web series.
Elk’s Run, Tumor, and Alibi are all currently in development as feature films. He has written comics for companies including Marvel, Wildstorm, IDW, Dark Horse, Image, Tor Books, Seven Seas Entertainment, Del Rey, Random House, Dabel Brothers Productions, and St. Martin’s Press. He has done video game work for THQ, Midway Entertainment, and Gore Verbinski’s Blind Wink Productions. He also wrote a Sci-Fi Channel movie starring Isabella Rossellini and Judd Nelson. Unfortunately, at no point in the film does Judd Nelson punch the sky and freeze frame. Joshua grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, went to college in Boston, where he got a BFA in writing and directing for the stage and screen, and then worked in the New England film industry, until finally deciding to move to Los Angeles to do it properly. He lives with his wife, Christina, daughter, Gable, and their cats, Smokey and the Bandit.
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/joshfialkov
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/joshuahalefia...
Photograph by Heidi Ryder Photography
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 56 reviews
March 11, 2017
Ach! Who was it recommended this crazy book to me?! More anxiety for anxious times, or an antidote?
The town of Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia is a kind of survivalist utopian dream of a community created by some damaged Vietnam veterans. Well, that doesn’t last long, in this rendering. They are getting paranoid, preparing for some coming war. Some want to get out. Things go badly very quickly. Teens seem to be the only sane people, so suddenly this is a tale about growing up in the face of insanity, but it is brutal and out of control and it is not clear what the point of all the paranoid violence is all about. But at times it felt relevant to today, I suppose. The artwork is sometimes confusing. But I guess it might be a tale about the legacy of violence (Vietnam, any war, any violent trauma).
The town of Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia is a kind of survivalist utopian dream of a community created by some damaged Vietnam veterans. Well, that doesn’t last long, in this rendering. They are getting paranoid, preparing for some coming war. Some want to get out. Things go badly very quickly. Teens seem to be the only sane people, so suddenly this is a tale about growing up in the face of insanity, but it is brutal and out of control and it is not clear what the point of all the paranoid violence is all about. But at times it felt relevant to today, I suppose. The artwork is sometimes confusing. But I guess it might be a tale about the legacy of violence (Vietnam, any war, any violent trauma).
May 12, 2009
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)
Being the middle-aged creative-class Generation X slacker little sh-t that I am, I of course am a believer in the idea of graphic novels being a legitimate form of adult literature when at its best. But there's a wrinkle in this proposition as well, the same one the novel format faced in the late 1800s when it too first started getting taken seriously as a legitimate art form, which is that the medium as a whole just isn't quite there yet; because no matter how many Pulitzers they hand out to Art Spiegelman, the fact is that the majority of work being done in comics these days will still only appeal to overcaffeinated 14-year-old boys, just like 95 percent of all novels being published at the end of the Victorian Age were still fluffy action tales and overwrought love stories, despite the emergence by then of such early masters as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James and others. And that makes critiques of new graphic novels problematic, in that the majority of people reading them are the exact violence-obsessed 14-year-old boys they were designed for (or the middle-aged videogame-playing slacker sh-ts these boys grow up to be), making their praise untrustworthy to those of us who demand that artists be at the absolute top of their form, in order to count us as their fans.
Take for example Joshua Hale Fialkov's Elk's Run, one of those fabled comics that picked up a bigger and bigger following as more and more crappy things kept happening to it, first being self-published until Fialkov ran out of money, then picked up by a small press that a few years later promptly went bankrupt, and still without the entirety of the series' run actually having been published yet. The entire thing was finally put out in book form by Random House in 2007 (or technically Villard Books, an imprint of Random House), and I had heard nothing but good things about it, which was the whole reason I picked it up in the first place; but now that I've read it myself, I've discovered that it is only slightly above mediocre as a general piece of literature, with the comics crowd going so crazy for it mostly because of its mere difference from the usual Wolverine superhero piece of crap that mostly still defines the medium. And that unto itself is not so terribly bad, for reasons I'll get into in a bit, but I have to admit that I detest it when a grown-up publishing company markets such a book as a grown-up title for grown-up audiences, because it does the entire medium a disservice; it's the exact kind of book that a non-fan of comics will pick up precisely for its effusive praise and mainstream connection, then promptly decide that comics people don't know what the hell they're talking about, and that there can't possibly be anything good about graphic novels if this is an example of its shining best.
Because to be clear, this series starts out with a really intriguing premise, which is what got it so much attention to begin with: it's the story of a group of Vietnam vets with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, who get back to the US in the early '70s and decide that they're sick of the liberal-caused moral decay that led to both Vietnam and the counterculture to begin with. That then leads one of them to purchase with inheritance money an entire abandoned mining town in West Virginia called Elk's Run, built literally into the carved side of a mountain and accessible only through a single tunnel, left to ruin when the mine itself went dry in the '60s. It's there that the soldiers and their families create a right-wing utopia closed off from the rest of society, a place with neither liquor nor police nor processed food, a black-and-white refuge in a shades-of-gray world; and thus does the group live relatively trouble-free for around 25 years (if not in a highly spartan and undeniably patriarchal manner). The story in the book itself then opens right around September 11th or so, when one of the abused wives finally gets all uppity and decides to leave, starting a chain of events that eventually leads to a bloody generational civil war between the parents and their liberal teenaged kids.
Yeah, not a bad premise at all, and a concept that instantly makes me want to read more; but unfortunately Fialkov and his creative team (artists Noel Tuazon and Datsun Tran, colorist Scott Keating, letterer Jason Hanley) do almost nothing with this premise in the actual story itself, using it essentially as an excuse to create 216 pages of really kick-ass-looking explosions and gunshot wounds and burning houses and sassy teens screaming 'f-ck' a laughably insane number of times. And damnit, I sighed to myself while making my way through it, this is always where subpar graphic novels go wrong, each and every time I end up being disappointed by one; all of them start out with these really intriguing ideas, then get so obsessed with drawing cool gory scenes of violence that they forget to actually do anything with that intriguing idea. And like I said, unto itself this is not such a terribly bad thing -- there's a reason, after all, that the word 'graphic' makes up half of the term 'graphic novel' -- but it also relegates such projects firmly to the cultural ghetto of 'comic books,' and makes their appeal virtually non-existent to anyone besides the Comic Book Guys of the world. And this is to say nothing of the more nagging problems with this story just from a plotting standpoint, not the least of which is the loose and fast way that Fialkov plays with the time period being discussed; because even though it's technically possible for a bunch of Vietnam vets to all have teenaged children in the early 2000s, one has to really stretch the limits of believability to make such a timeline work out logically. (And by the way, existing comics enthusiasts, also please be aware that this title is drawn in that sketchy, minimalist way that is so controversial among the fan community, which will be yet another small strike against it among some.)
Now, all that said, this is a fine read for smart teens who are emotionally ready for their first adult material, and I don't mean that as snotty faint praise whatsoever; because as Michel Houellebecq so astutely reminded us several years ago in his astounding book-length essay HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, such projects are absolutely necessary in order for an intelligent society to thrive, and are the very projects that turn gullible children into subversive adults in the first place (you know, much like the role Stephen King played in the '80s among so many people my age). No, as mentioned before, my issue in these situations is never with the books themselves; it's with the greedy, lazy marketing assh-les at places like Random House, who figure they can move a few more books by advertising every graphic novel in their catalog as the next Watchmen. And this is harmful to nearly every person involved in the process besides the actual marketing assh-les, from the audience members filled with falsely high expectations to the artists who bear the brunt of that audience's disappointment, to the critics like me who are constantly arguing that there are adult-worthy projects to be found in the world of comics, no seriously there are.
So when all is said and done, I guess today I have mixed feelings about Elk's Run, ultimately recommending it to both teens and existing comics fans but not to anyone else. And here's hoping that with the next project Fialkov takes on, he actually does something with the admittedly smart concepts he's obviously capable of coming up with, and doesn't just use them as an excuse for 200 pages of BOOM and KABLOOEY and F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK. Not only will his fans be better off, but the entire comics world in general.
Out of 10: 6.1, or 8.1 for teens and comics fans
Being the middle-aged creative-class Generation X slacker little sh-t that I am, I of course am a believer in the idea of graphic novels being a legitimate form of adult literature when at its best. But there's a wrinkle in this proposition as well, the same one the novel format faced in the late 1800s when it too first started getting taken seriously as a legitimate art form, which is that the medium as a whole just isn't quite there yet; because no matter how many Pulitzers they hand out to Art Spiegelman, the fact is that the majority of work being done in comics these days will still only appeal to overcaffeinated 14-year-old boys, just like 95 percent of all novels being published at the end of the Victorian Age were still fluffy action tales and overwrought love stories, despite the emergence by then of such early masters as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James and others. And that makes critiques of new graphic novels problematic, in that the majority of people reading them are the exact violence-obsessed 14-year-old boys they were designed for (or the middle-aged videogame-playing slacker sh-ts these boys grow up to be), making their praise untrustworthy to those of us who demand that artists be at the absolute top of their form, in order to count us as their fans.
Take for example Joshua Hale Fialkov's Elk's Run, one of those fabled comics that picked up a bigger and bigger following as more and more crappy things kept happening to it, first being self-published until Fialkov ran out of money, then picked up by a small press that a few years later promptly went bankrupt, and still without the entirety of the series' run actually having been published yet. The entire thing was finally put out in book form by Random House in 2007 (or technically Villard Books, an imprint of Random House), and I had heard nothing but good things about it, which was the whole reason I picked it up in the first place; but now that I've read it myself, I've discovered that it is only slightly above mediocre as a general piece of literature, with the comics crowd going so crazy for it mostly because of its mere difference from the usual Wolverine superhero piece of crap that mostly still defines the medium. And that unto itself is not so terribly bad, for reasons I'll get into in a bit, but I have to admit that I detest it when a grown-up publishing company markets such a book as a grown-up title for grown-up audiences, because it does the entire medium a disservice; it's the exact kind of book that a non-fan of comics will pick up precisely for its effusive praise and mainstream connection, then promptly decide that comics people don't know what the hell they're talking about, and that there can't possibly be anything good about graphic novels if this is an example of its shining best.
Because to be clear, this series starts out with a really intriguing premise, which is what got it so much attention to begin with: it's the story of a group of Vietnam vets with undiagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder, who get back to the US in the early '70s and decide that they're sick of the liberal-caused moral decay that led to both Vietnam and the counterculture to begin with. That then leads one of them to purchase with inheritance money an entire abandoned mining town in West Virginia called Elk's Run, built literally into the carved side of a mountain and accessible only through a single tunnel, left to ruin when the mine itself went dry in the '60s. It's there that the soldiers and their families create a right-wing utopia closed off from the rest of society, a place with neither liquor nor police nor processed food, a black-and-white refuge in a shades-of-gray world; and thus does the group live relatively trouble-free for around 25 years (if not in a highly spartan and undeniably patriarchal manner). The story in the book itself then opens right around September 11th or so, when one of the abused wives finally gets all uppity and decides to leave, starting a chain of events that eventually leads to a bloody generational civil war between the parents and their liberal teenaged kids.
Yeah, not a bad premise at all, and a concept that instantly makes me want to read more; but unfortunately Fialkov and his creative team (artists Noel Tuazon and Datsun Tran, colorist Scott Keating, letterer Jason Hanley) do almost nothing with this premise in the actual story itself, using it essentially as an excuse to create 216 pages of really kick-ass-looking explosions and gunshot wounds and burning houses and sassy teens screaming 'f-ck' a laughably insane number of times. And damnit, I sighed to myself while making my way through it, this is always where subpar graphic novels go wrong, each and every time I end up being disappointed by one; all of them start out with these really intriguing ideas, then get so obsessed with drawing cool gory scenes of violence that they forget to actually do anything with that intriguing idea. And like I said, unto itself this is not such a terribly bad thing -- there's a reason, after all, that the word 'graphic' makes up half of the term 'graphic novel' -- but it also relegates such projects firmly to the cultural ghetto of 'comic books,' and makes their appeal virtually non-existent to anyone besides the Comic Book Guys of the world. And this is to say nothing of the more nagging problems with this story just from a plotting standpoint, not the least of which is the loose and fast way that Fialkov plays with the time period being discussed; because even though it's technically possible for a bunch of Vietnam vets to all have teenaged children in the early 2000s, one has to really stretch the limits of believability to make such a timeline work out logically. (And by the way, existing comics enthusiasts, also please be aware that this title is drawn in that sketchy, minimalist way that is so controversial among the fan community, which will be yet another small strike against it among some.)
Now, all that said, this is a fine read for smart teens who are emotionally ready for their first adult material, and I don't mean that as snotty faint praise whatsoever; because as Michel Houellebecq so astutely reminded us several years ago in his astounding book-length essay HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life, such projects are absolutely necessary in order for an intelligent society to thrive, and are the very projects that turn gullible children into subversive adults in the first place (you know, much like the role Stephen King played in the '80s among so many people my age). No, as mentioned before, my issue in these situations is never with the books themselves; it's with the greedy, lazy marketing assh-les at places like Random House, who figure they can move a few more books by advertising every graphic novel in their catalog as the next Watchmen. And this is harmful to nearly every person involved in the process besides the actual marketing assh-les, from the audience members filled with falsely high expectations to the artists who bear the brunt of that audience's disappointment, to the critics like me who are constantly arguing that there are adult-worthy projects to be found in the world of comics, no seriously there are.
So when all is said and done, I guess today I have mixed feelings about Elk's Run, ultimately recommending it to both teens and existing comics fans but not to anyone else. And here's hoping that with the next project Fialkov takes on, he actually does something with the admittedly smart concepts he's obviously capable of coming up with, and doesn't just use them as an excuse for 200 pages of BOOM and KABLOOEY and F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK F-CK. Not only will his fans be better off, but the entire comics world in general.
Out of 10: 6.1, or 8.1 for teens and comics fans
March 25, 2019
I really wanted to like this one.. but. yeah.. It's ok!
The artwork style I like. The coloring too. It's all great. It's messy and all over the place but I didn't have a major problem with it, except that at times I wouldn't know who was who, simply because of the artwork.
The story was ok. It had premise and it was intriguing enough with the whole "small community cut off from everyone and everything" and the main characters were good enough at the beginning, especially John and his kid.
Of course you know where this is going after a while and at the end you can clearly see the end and what's going to happen. That's the sad part. Also the flashback scenes weren't doing it for me, they were just slowing down the process and didn't add anything to the whole story.
Mainly disappointed with the end of the story. Oh well..
The artwork style I like. The coloring too. It's all great. It's messy and all over the place but I didn't have a major problem with it, except that at times I wouldn't know who was who, simply because of the artwork.
The story was ok. It had premise and it was intriguing enough with the whole "small community cut off from everyone and everything" and the main characters were good enough at the beginning, especially John and his kid.
Of course you know where this is going after a while and at the end you can clearly see the end and what's going to happen. That's the sad part. Also the flashback scenes weren't doing it for me, they were just slowing down the process and didn't add anything to the whole story.
Mainly disappointed with the end of the story. Oh well..
August 8, 2007
This book had a bit of a tumultuous history. We first started working on it late 2004, I believe. Josh Fialkov writing, Noel Tuazon illustrating, Scott Keating coloring, Jason Hanley lettering, and Datsun Tran on covers (and I was editing, of course). We self-published three issues and they were well received. Entertainment Weekly, Variety, Ain't It Cool News...but non-one was buying. We moved over to Speakeasy and they recollected the first three issues and published issue four before going bankrupt. With four issues left to go, Villard Books came along and published this trade paperback featuring the complete story, what would have been eight single issues.
The resulting book is the product of three years of work. It's the story of the small town of Elk's Ridge, cutoff from the rest of the world, where the parents and kids are going to war with each other. It's a little bit of thriller, little bit of romance, and a whole lot of coming-of-age in a militia town.
The resulting book is the product of three years of work. It's the story of the small town of Elk's Ridge, cutoff from the rest of the world, where the parents and kids are going to war with each other. It's a little bit of thriller, little bit of romance, and a whole lot of coming-of-age in a militia town.
May 22, 2020
Elk’s Run is a very interesting piece of work. In the 10th anniversary edition, writer Fialkov talks about how this was his first major work and he understands that the quality isn’t exactly there, but he learned a lot of lessons on how to improve his work and create the comics he does today. It’s not necessarily that Elk’s Run is a bad comic, it’s actually thrilling and a page turner, it’s just that independent comics in the mid aughts were in a transitional period.
Let’s get with the good: Fialkov with art by Tuazon and Keating crafts a story with a simple plot but complex and compelling characters. They are well-defined in writing and art as moderations on archetypes: the rebellious son trying to become his own leader, the militant father, the dutiful wife, the kids who want to escape their parents, etc. Because of this focus on character, I had an idea of what was going to happen the whole time, but I wanted to see how the characters would react and change. It was compelling to watch their interactions.
On the bad, the inks of the art are much too thick and the coloring is much too dark and some of the text boxes are much too blurry. I wish the flashback sequence of art was used more than the muddy and confusing art we get for the majority of the book. The plot is incredibly simple: small, isolated town with cult-like rules as an overzealous leader oversteps his power and the townsfolk children are left to fend for themselves. The book is okay as an introduction to the creators’ early careers, and it’s a good retrospective for where they are today.
Let’s get with the good: Fialkov with art by Tuazon and Keating crafts a story with a simple plot but complex and compelling characters. They are well-defined in writing and art as moderations on archetypes: the rebellious son trying to become his own leader, the militant father, the dutiful wife, the kids who want to escape their parents, etc. Because of this focus on character, I had an idea of what was going to happen the whole time, but I wanted to see how the characters would react and change. It was compelling to watch their interactions.
On the bad, the inks of the art are much too thick and the coloring is much too dark and some of the text boxes are much too blurry. I wish the flashback sequence of art was used more than the muddy and confusing art we get for the majority of the book. The plot is incredibly simple: small, isolated town with cult-like rules as an overzealous leader oversteps his power and the townsfolk children are left to fend for themselves. The book is okay as an introduction to the creators’ early careers, and it’s a good retrospective for where they are today.
August 14, 2013
Coming of age story in a militia type town ... it was okay, but I'd be lying if I weren't hoping for something a little more sinister.
October 8, 2017
A gem of a find. An independent, self-contained horror comic about a small community. The art is great, the writing is great, and I don't have to know 20 years of backstory to read the thing.
March 14, 2018
This is a very disturbing, but engaging story about a cult of people who create an isolated community in a remote West Virginia location.
June 19, 2021
I’ve enjoyed everything I’ve read from Joshua Hale Fialkov. I’d never read Elk’s Run, but knew it was his calling card, so I always knew I was going to read it. Now that I have, I can’t say the thing I started this with anymore.
It’s pretty terrible. In execution it’s the kind of story that needlessly withholds details, not only from the reader but from its own characters. It makes no sense. The premise is that Elk’s Ridge is a small town that’s actually comprised of a separatist militia. Now, you can withhold that from the reader if you really like, but you can’t from the characters. If you do the logic falls apart instantly.
The story revolves around a father and son, the father being a kind of de facto leader in the community (who, because Fialkov didn’t really think any of this through, isn’t the leader) and his son the one who slowly discovers the awful truth.
Now the doubling down of bad plotting is that we’re given a needless red herring about what the awful secret is, that it has something to do with an abandoned mine that’s possibly haunted. Possibly this was considered a useful metaphor, but it isn’t. The mine factors into the plot in other ways, but whether or not it’s haunted doesn’t. This is an idea you can possibly build characteristics around, but not a plot.
And it’s just unpleasant. Some people love stories like this. It’s basically kind of Walking Dead, but without zombies, and I’m sure that was the appeal for any number of interested parties.
It’s disappointing to learn that Fialkov launched his comics career this way. He’s part of a whole generation of talent, a lot of which absolutely did not deserve such a fate, that never got to seize its rightful place as the new face of the medium. Some of them struggled gamely and fruitfully to carve out sizable niches for themselves anyway. Fialkov wasn’t one of them. I can’t say why. But now I personally am not rooting for him anymore.
It’s pretty terrible. In execution it’s the kind of story that needlessly withholds details, not only from the reader but from its own characters. It makes no sense. The premise is that Elk’s Ridge is a small town that’s actually comprised of a separatist militia. Now, you can withhold that from the reader if you really like, but you can’t from the characters. If you do the logic falls apart instantly.
The story revolves around a father and son, the father being a kind of de facto leader in the community (who, because Fialkov didn’t really think any of this through, isn’t the leader) and his son the one who slowly discovers the awful truth.
Now the doubling down of bad plotting is that we’re given a needless red herring about what the awful secret is, that it has something to do with an abandoned mine that’s possibly haunted. Possibly this was considered a useful metaphor, but it isn’t. The mine factors into the plot in other ways, but whether or not it’s haunted doesn’t. This is an idea you can possibly build characteristics around, but not a plot.
And it’s just unpleasant. Some people love stories like this. It’s basically kind of Walking Dead, but without zombies, and I’m sure that was the appeal for any number of interested parties.
It’s disappointing to learn that Fialkov launched his comics career this way. He’s part of a whole generation of talent, a lot of which absolutely did not deserve such a fate, that never got to seize its rightful place as the new face of the medium. Some of them struggled gamely and fruitfully to carve out sizable niches for themselves anyway. Fialkov wasn’t one of them. I can’t say why. But now I personally am not rooting for him anymore.
February 19, 2008
Story saves the day here, as a thrilling immediacy kept me from putting the book down, even as I endured the occasional squinty pause necessary to piece together action sequences rendered near-incomprehensible by the artists' smudgy panels. Having given it some thought, I'm inclined to chalk this up to a stylistic decision as opposed to a lack of skill, as childhood flashbacks are, by effective contrast, presented in a clear, cartoonish fashion.
I found that I never quite adjusted to the artwork, which in hindsight only added to the overall (and quite potent) cloud of dread and confusion that envelops these characters and their terrible town. This thing doesn't stop once it gets going, and I'm surprised any of the pages in the last two chapters remained intact, so intent was I on casting the fully-read ones aside to propel myself to the next grisly turn of events.
It may be a bit rough around the edges, but I doubt it would have worked any other way. A quick, scary read, and if a good director wisely makes a movie out of it, I'll be first in line.
I found that I never quite adjusted to the artwork, which in hindsight only added to the overall (and quite potent) cloud of dread and confusion that envelops these characters and their terrible town. This thing doesn't stop once it gets going, and I'm surprised any of the pages in the last two chapters remained intact, so intent was I on casting the fully-read ones aside to propel myself to the next grisly turn of events.
It may be a bit rough around the edges, but I doubt it would have worked any other way. A quick, scary read, and if a good director wisely makes a movie out of it, I'll be first in line.
October 11, 2018
Elk's run is a dark look into a community cut off from the world but nothing is going very well and the community is about to collapse.
We see a family who is very broken. A son who hates his father, and dislikes his living conditions, with a community very tightly closed off from the world. When it begins to see why they're closed off our main hero decides to get the fuck out of the town. However, when cops get murdered, the hunt is on to find the kids, and shit is about to go down in a dangerous way.
Good: The feel of dread felt throughout the whole story is great. I actually enjoyed a lot of the character's interactions and also the mysterious aura around the city really gives off a creepy and sad vibe.
Bad: Didn't like the art all that much. Sometimes hard to tell what happened. I also thought the backstories could have used a extra issue or two to really get connected.
Overall a dreary and well done tale. If it had better art it could have been great. Still worth checking out. A 3 out of 5.
We see a family who is very broken. A son who hates his father, and dislikes his living conditions, with a community very tightly closed off from the world. When it begins to see why they're closed off our main hero decides to get the fuck out of the town. However, when cops get murdered, the hunt is on to find the kids, and shit is about to go down in a dangerous way.
Good: The feel of dread felt throughout the whole story is great. I actually enjoyed a lot of the character's interactions and also the mysterious aura around the city really gives off a creepy and sad vibe.
Bad: Didn't like the art all that much. Sometimes hard to tell what happened. I also thought the backstories could have used a extra issue or two to really get connected.
Overall a dreary and well done tale. If it had better art it could have been great. Still worth checking out. A 3 out of 5.
September 20, 2010
I wanted to like this book more than I did. A lot of love and craft went into this graphic-novel thriller, which took years and several publishers to complete, but in the end, it's just not a satisfying read. The protagonist is all too heroic, and his struggle against his father is undermined by his father's almost unbelievable villainy. Aside from that pair, the supporting characters aren't very well developed and are almost indistinguishable. The plot itself, concerning an extremely isolated community in West Virginia is your usual "beware utopia" plot, but after effectively setting up the scene, the plot twists get more and more extreme and unbelievable. One saving grace is the evocative, scratchy artwork by Noel Tuazon, who I'd love to see more from.
August 21, 2007
The artwork in this volume is extremely vivid and memorable, but I didn't find the story all that original.
February 25, 2020
I still don’t know what to think about this book. It’s a realistic fiction utopia meets horror meets family problems. But at its core, the story centers around how far a person will go to protect their ideals. The story is told through the eyes of multiple characters, each with their own unique point of view. And not everyone has the whole story.
In the story, a group of veterans raises their families in a town they built called Elk’s Ridge. It’s located in rural West Virginia, cut off from the outside world. In this town everyone just has to work a few hours a week to keep things running smoothly, but otherwise can do what they want, except for leaving, they can’t do that. And everyone has to follow the code that they established when they built the town. If you don’t, really bad things happen to you, and this is non negotiable.
When tragedy strikes and the veterans take matters in their own hands, one of the protagonists sees his father carry out this ‘justice’ and decides to leave with his friends, and that’s when everything starts to fall apart. He wants to live his own life and do normal things that he can’t do in Elk’s Run, like read magazines or go to college and go on dates. And on top of that, he really doesn’t want to live in a community that could turn on him at any moment.
The veterans in the community are very old school. They believe in sticking to their code no matter what the cost and are very authoritarian. They also have lingering personal issues from their military service that make them see the world as a war and everything outside their control as bad.
There is a scene where the veterans are taking their sons hunting, and the fathers use that as an opportunity to discuss the difference between the hunter and the hunted, and how you must stand firm in the decision to hunt and make it as efficient and clean as possible out of respect for the animal. As the boys try to leave their parents and get help from the outside world, the line between who is the hunter and who is the hunted blurs and shifts. But if one scene sums up the fathers’ guiding principles, it’s this one.
Now, as a piece of literature I think this is a thoroughly mediocre action book. It had so much potential to be more philosophical and dig deeper into the premise that makes readers pick it up in the first place. Did I enjoy it as a quick read? Yes. Is it a book that changed my life? No. If you like action stories that try to be more than explosions and chase scenes, then this is something that you should consider checking out from your local library. If you want something deeper, then you’ll probably want to pick something else.
In the story, a group of veterans raises their families in a town they built called Elk’s Ridge. It’s located in rural West Virginia, cut off from the outside world. In this town everyone just has to work a few hours a week to keep things running smoothly, but otherwise can do what they want, except for leaving, they can’t do that. And everyone has to follow the code that they established when they built the town. If you don’t, really bad things happen to you, and this is non negotiable.
When tragedy strikes and the veterans take matters in their own hands, one of the protagonists sees his father carry out this ‘justice’ and decides to leave with his friends, and that’s when everything starts to fall apart. He wants to live his own life and do normal things that he can’t do in Elk’s Run, like read magazines or go to college and go on dates. And on top of that, he really doesn’t want to live in a community that could turn on him at any moment.
The veterans in the community are very old school. They believe in sticking to their code no matter what the cost and are very authoritarian. They also have lingering personal issues from their military service that make them see the world as a war and everything outside their control as bad.
There is a scene where the veterans are taking their sons hunting, and the fathers use that as an opportunity to discuss the difference between the hunter and the hunted, and how you must stand firm in the decision to hunt and make it as efficient and clean as possible out of respect for the animal. As the boys try to leave their parents and get help from the outside world, the line between who is the hunter and who is the hunted blurs and shifts. But if one scene sums up the fathers’ guiding principles, it’s this one.
Now, as a piece of literature I think this is a thoroughly mediocre action book. It had so much potential to be more philosophical and dig deeper into the premise that makes readers pick it up in the first place. Did I enjoy it as a quick read? Yes. Is it a book that changed my life? No. If you like action stories that try to be more than explosions and chase scenes, then this is something that you should consider checking out from your local library. If you want something deeper, then you’ll probably want to pick something else.
July 28, 2017
The community intentionally isolated itself from the rest of the country. Nobody left or was allowed in, no television, no police and only one truck was used to bring in necessities. The idea was to be sheltered from the bad things in the world - a utopia that, sadly, couldn't last. The adhoc leader understands the risk from the outside world and is determined to keep the town under control even if it means killing the people standing in his way. Unfortunately, he ends up alone when the town is thrown deeper into chaos.
A foolish kid's joke ends up with one boy dead from being hit by a car. The locals decide to enact a 'fitting' punishment to the man responsible, by running him over too. Two policemen also end up killed when they investigate the town and risk finding the weapons that were transported by the truck. The events grow more and more difficult to control as the community tries desperately to return to their lives. The remnants of their humanity win in the end and they leave the town behind as it's purged in flames.
A foolish kid's joke ends up with one boy dead from being hit by a car. The locals decide to enact a 'fitting' punishment to the man responsible, by running him over too. Two policemen also end up killed when they investigate the town and risk finding the weapons that were transported by the truck. The events grow more and more difficult to control as the community tries desperately to return to their lives. The remnants of their humanity win in the end and they leave the town behind as it's purged in flames.
February 8, 2023
I bought this ages ago, but had packed it away in a move and just got around to reading it, years later, when I noticed it and realized I'd never gotten around to reading it.
Most of the story was dark and creepy in ways that I was able to believe, but some of it was just a little too weird for me, like getting together a whole group of army veterans who were both that disturbed and that willing to follow a leader who wasn't so much charismatic as just bossy. Turning that group into a cult was a little hard to swallow, as was the one budding romance, since there just wasn't anything about him that would have made him attractive to her, as far as I could tell.
That said, if you can swallow all of the iffy logic, the story itself is interesting. The "cult" leader's apparent plot was illogical and vague, as all good cult plots are, but again, that's where I had trouble with folks going along with him. There is a suggestion that it's all just him, but at least some of the others know about the stockpiling of weapons and explosives. So, maybe they're all just off-the-rails militia types? It didn't seem like it, during the resolution.
This didn't sell well in single-issue format, and I can see why. I wouldn't have bought it in that format, either, because the first issue really wasn't all that interesting or convincing. In book form, though, it grew on me a bit as I read. Still not great, but pretty good, and worth reading.
Most of the story was dark and creepy in ways that I was able to believe, but some of it was just a little too weird for me, like getting together a whole group of army veterans who were both that disturbed and that willing to follow a leader who wasn't so much charismatic as just bossy. Turning that group into a cult was a little hard to swallow, as was the one budding romance, since there just wasn't anything about him that would have made him attractive to her, as far as I could tell.
That said, if you can swallow all of the iffy logic, the story itself is interesting. The "cult" leader's apparent plot was illogical and vague, as all good cult plots are, but again, that's where I had trouble with folks going along with him. There is a suggestion that it's all just him, but at least some of the others know about the stockpiling of weapons and explosives. So, maybe they're all just off-the-rails militia types? It didn't seem like it, during the resolution.
This didn't sell well in single-issue format, and I can see why. I wouldn't have bought it in that format, either, because the first issue really wasn't all that interesting or convincing. In book form, though, it grew on me a bit as I read. Still not great, but pretty good, and worth reading.
May 16, 2017
Elk's Run by Joshua Hale Fialkov was a very dark and gritty talk about a small town called Elk's Run. The inhabitants of the town are all Vietnam War veterans and their families, who wanted to escape the horrors of the war and start over. The story's follows the main character John, and his friends as they try to figure out a way to leave Elk's Run after a series of deaths occur at the hands of some of the town's people. Readers soon discover that even though this story takes place in the United States, it doesn't seem much different from wartime in Vietnam. Most of the colors used in this graphic novel are very dark, except for when there are flashbacks to some of the characters childhoods. I would not recommend this book to anyone under the age of 15. There is a lot of mature language used and some of the images are very graphic. Elk's Run was nominated for the 2006 Harvey Award in the categories of Best Writer, Best Artist, Best Letterer, Best Cover Artist, Best New Talent, Best Continuing or Limited Series, and Best Single Issue or Story (for issue #3).
April 8, 2019
I am trying to broaden my reading scope, so tried this graphic novel. Not a great success. The pictures were dark (both literally and metaphorically) and I had trouble recognizing the characters and at times even figuring out exactly what the pictures were trying to portray. The topic is relevant – creation of a supposed ideal community and how it can go awry (e.g., Branch Davidians, near Waco or Jim Jones and Jonestown). However, there is very little character development and the story relies on drama rather than anything nuanced or subtle. For example, at one point all (?) the women the community leave – before that rare mention of the women and no background on why they are leaving, other than the current crisis. In fact, the information on how the crisis arose over the years is missing. Book would probably appeal to young adults who like action films. I tend to like books about basically dull people to whom nothing much happens – more or less. I was also surprised at how quick it was to read - about an hour!
January 21, 2018
Gritty, dark, tumultuous, paranoia, these are several of the review vocabulary I saw in reviews of Joshua Hale Fialkov's novel, and how I felt after finishing this graphic novel. I thought the illustrations were amazing, matched the theme of the controversial topics represented here, that are carry-overs from the past wars, reactions to troops coming back home from Vietnam, and so much more. While I go into many graphic novels with the knowledge there will be dark topics, subjects, and material represented - this novel has won many awards and I definitely can see that. However, in this time and day, this was too much of a downer in attitude after finishing to celebrate the elements that make it a meticulously done graphic novel, which it is. The brooding emotions that come out from the topics addressed stuck with me and weighed me down long after reading this novel (which might be a testament to the reality - ness of this happening in a tumultuous world today).
June 7, 2017
A medio camino entre "El bosque" de Shyamalan y cualquier película de aventuras de los ochenta en la que un grupo de preadolescentes se enfrenta a un misterio y se convierten en adultos durante el proceso. Como idea es muy original, pero explora demasiado poco a los personajes, usando las páginas más que nada para los sucesos. El dibujo se usa de forma muy inteligente para marcar las distintas líneas temporadas.
Como mejor funciona es como alegato sobre las secuelas psicológicas de la guerra entre la soldadesca.
Como mejor funciona es como alegato sobre las secuelas psicológicas de la guerra entre la soldadesca.
February 17, 2025
Art: The sketchy art is somewhat appropriate to the story told, but it is mainly confusing, being difficult to tell if some character is the same from the previous vignette or is just someone vaguely resembling him.
Script: good characters and worldbuilding, but the story is just too simple and predictable. I like small stories which don't need to blow up the world -but this one does, in a way.
Overall this comic is enjoyable, but not memorable.
Script: good characters and worldbuilding, but the story is just too simple and predictable. I like small stories which don't need to blow up the world -but this one does, in a way.
Overall this comic is enjoyable, but not memorable.
September 30, 2018
Strong concept and overall story arc. Shaggy linework and dark low contrast coloring combine too frequently so as to interfere with clear conveyance of the narrative, especially in key moments of tension and action.
November 10, 2017
Interesting take on PTSD and paranoia in a post war environment but I got lost on some of the through lines.
February 17, 2019
3.5 stars
February 20, 2019
dnf. meh.
July 20, 2020
Vietnam vets turned isolationist villagers. It all starts to go wrong when the intolerance begins.
May 16, 2023
Highly derivative, predictable, and poorly illustrated. Why family is not such a good thing?
September 4, 2024
3.5. A better version of Grass Kings but I wish there was more depth to its strong ideas.
July 26, 2017
An interesting graphic novel that explores how far people will go to preserve their "perfect community." A strong script is marred a bit at times by art that makes many of the characters look too much alike. Still, there are some strong moments here, and it raises some good questions about our contemporary society and what we are willing to do to preserve our quality of life.
February 22, 2010
Elk Run is a glimpse into a cult-like village built by Vietnam War vets (and paid for by one who is both sympathetic and wealthy) designed to provide a supportive environment for the vets and their families while allowing them to remove themselves from a society of which they disapprove. Residents sign an agreement to abide by the rules and then are free to raise their families and work only if they choose. The story centers on the son of the town's "leader" (it's not clear if he's elected or self appointed or something else) who is a teenager frustrated with the confined life he leads.
The story begins to hint at darker things to come when a supply truck arrives full of weapons and ammunition. It is never clear exactly why these are needed and most of the townspeople seem to be as much in the dark on the reasoning as the reader. As efforts to maintain the town's secrecy become more frantic, police officers are murdered, the hapless supply truck driver is captured, and the town's teenagers attempt to escape.
I found the story as a whole to be disconcerting and believable. The "survive at all costs" mentality of the town is not surprising in this day and age. Some of the exchanges between the townspeople were a little heavy handed and exaggerated but Fialkov manages to keep the pace fast and these moments pass quickly.
I thought this was enjoyable on the whole and worth the time to read.
The story begins to hint at darker things to come when a supply truck arrives full of weapons and ammunition. It is never clear exactly why these are needed and most of the townspeople seem to be as much in the dark on the reasoning as the reader. As efforts to maintain the town's secrecy become more frantic, police officers are murdered, the hapless supply truck driver is captured, and the town's teenagers attempt to escape.
I found the story as a whole to be disconcerting and believable. The "survive at all costs" mentality of the town is not surprising in this day and age. Some of the exchanges between the townspeople were a little heavy handed and exaggerated but Fialkov manages to keep the pace fast and these moments pass quickly.
I thought this was enjoyable on the whole and worth the time to read.
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