Trailers

by Mark Kneece, Julie Collins-Rousseau (Illustrator)

Josh Clayton's mother has killed a man and left Josh in charge of disposing of the body. The trouble is, the body will not stay put. From dogs to low-life trailer park denizens, Josh’s life slips ever more deeply into hell as he attempts to keep the corpse under wraps. Josh, a sensitive teenager, attempts to persevere in the face of a morbid guilt and fear over the crime conflict with his reluctant devotion to his mother. In the meantime, he has the additional task of taking care of his younger brothers and sister while enduring the ordinary minefield known as high school. As pressure on Josh builds to critical mass, he suddenly finds himself involved in a relationship with Michelle. She tries to understand him. And, to her credit, she almost does. Josh is forced to take a difficult stand against his own mother or never be able to move on. By two members of the faculty of sequential art at the Savannah College of Art & Design.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Fiction, Adult, Young Adult

160 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Mark Kneece has written stories for numerous comics, including Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. He helped found the sequential art department at the Savannah College of Art and Design and teaches comics writing as a professor of sequential art. He lives in Savannah, Georgia.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Josh is a high school teenager who wants to do the usual things like have friends, go to parties, get a girlfriend, but his mother who uses and sells drugs as well as her body, gets into an argument with her pimp and ends up killing him. Josh is put into a position where he has to bury the body outside of their trailer park, and in addition, he has to be a surrogate father/mother to his younger siblings, and take care of such things as grocery shopping and cleaning. The nightmare gets worse when he best friend, a boy his own age (around 16 or so) becomes his mother's new boyfriend, while his mother's drug use gets out of control. The only ray of light in his life is a girl at school who likes him but she doesn't know anything about his home life. Will Josh escape this nightmare and find a life of his own?

Mark Kneece has written a compelling and nightmarish account of an adolescence skewed. Josh is a likeable and sympathetic protagonist and his struggle for a normal life for both himself and his brothers and sisters is noble and brave. His relationship with the girl he befriends is also beautifully rendered, as they slowly become close and fall in love. The claustrophobia of life in a trailer park and crushing defeat of living below the poverty line are dealt with superbly and I definitely felt what it was doing to Josh and his mounting frustrations.

Julie Collins does a great job drawing this book, her style reminding me of manga comics but Americanised to suit the story.

I really liked the book. It was definitely not uplifting until the last few pages but I couldn't put it down as the troubles heaped upon Josh just grew and grew and the nightmare became more protracted, more depressing. It was like a Thomas Hardy novel in that sense like Jude the Obscure, however unlike Hardy it was easy to read and enjoyable. An excellent comic book in the Southern Gothic tradition and a great read.

[Emilia P · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great art, mediocre, slightly too broad story, but gets at something about how good intentions both aren't and are everything, somehow, especially when you're a troubled (or untroubled) teen. Worth reading for that message, I think.

[Sadie Borkowski · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you've ever spent time longterm in a trailer park community this is a pretty realistic portrait. The artwork reminded me a little bit of "Blankets" and had similar dramatic inclinations since it was told from a teenage boy's point of view but the subject matter is mature enough that it doesn't take away from the story. The ending wrapped up a little neater and cleaner than the tone in the rest of the book which didn't really do it justice, but it was a reasonable ending.

[Limboscene · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked up trailers in a clearance bucket at the local comic store.
The story is a bit tragic for the protagonist. I went along for the ride, I felt things. No regrets.
Worth giving it a shot - but understand it's not everyone's jam.

[Josephus FromPlacitas · Rating 2 out of 5]

A technically well-structured story and collection of drawings, but I couldn't buy in to the main character and his girlfriend. I don't know enough about Southern culture to say whether this group of trailer park characters is a true and faithful depiction, or a bundle of stereotypes -- same for the posh, upper-class family of the girlfriend character. They seemed to ring true as individual characters, although the cohesion of their community seemed a bit forced. And there was almost no serious consideration of black-white relations, even though the murder central to the plot should have revolved around it. The only black guy in the thing was a one-scene dead man.

I couldn't believe in the moral compass/innocence/anchoredness of the main character, who is growing up in total chaos and misery. He did nothing resembling self-medicating, sublimating the craziness around him, self-blaming. It didn't ring true to me.

The art was clearly deft -- at first I thought it was too skritchy/black-and-white messy for me, but the figures were clearly well-studied and the characterizations super-consistent. So there was a lot of competence in story structure, design, plot arc, etc. But it didn't gel into something I could believe.

[Connor Sheridan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trailers is a graphic novel about a boy named Josh Clayton. He lives with his mother and siblings in a dilapidated trailer surrounded by a myriad of other dilapidated trailers. He loves his family, even though his home life isn't very desirable. One day, his mother is visited by her "boyfriend", who gets on her case about paying him for some sale (probably drugs, but Josh tries to stay out of it). Things get heated and Ms. Clayton ends up killing the man. While Josh is freaking out, his mother tells him to dispose of the body. This sends the poor boy down a slide filled with emotional twists and turns. Should he tell the police what his mother has done? Or should he just wait it out and hope everything resolves? Trailers was a tough book to get through because it was so gruesome and detailed. Mark Kneece did a very good job of capturing the life of a family in a trailer park, and of making Josh relate able. The ending could be predicted just after reading the description on the back of the book, but overall it was an emotional and thrilling read. I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of crime stories that stick to reality.

[Kristen Fiore · Rating 3 out of 5]

Trailers reminded me of a crime show. The plot was that Josh’s (the main character) mother has killed a man and expects Josh to hide or get rid of the body. The problems he faces with getting rid of the body never seem to end. He puts it in the woods away from the trailer park. The dog ends up finding body parts from the body and brings them back to Josh’s or near Josh’s sight. Then Josh finds a man sitting on the dead body and meditating. The scenarios just keep coming. To make matters worse, Josh gets involved with a girl that is interested in him. She tries to help him, but he’s being distant and isn’t used to someone being so gentle. I would recommend this graphic novel to anyone who likes to read about crime/drama.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed the art because it was simple and not over-the-top. The story is believable and it all just felt really real to me. I felt ridiculously sorry for the main character-- another reason why I enjoyed this graphic novel so much. Any work that can really strike a chord with me is something I value above other works. I suggest you check this work out. It doesn't at all have the complexity of a work like "Watchmen", but you know, it's something to just flip through and enjoy with a cup of coffee.

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent one-off graphic novel. The characters are interesting, the setting is properly grimey. I really liked the portrayal of the children, very true-to-life in that kind of place, with no edits for "decency."

I thought that it was very realistic that Michelle (a rich girl who wants to be a psychology student) would become interested in him mistaking a "project" for love. There was an interesting contrast between her interest which would traditionally read as love and the care that the main character had for his mother.

I liked the ultimate message too.

[JBP · Rating 1 out of 5]

Trailers is a rare 1 star from me as I didn't care for this at all. I blasted through it on a lunch break at work or I wound't have finished it. Kind of a ridiculously overwrought tale of a dysfunctional family in a Southern trailer park with a drug-dealing mom who has a bunch of kids that she doesn't care for. After killing her lover/drug supplier, her teenage son deals with the aftermath until he meets a cute girl. Cute girls can always help when a family is as effed up as this one is, right? Trailers is just one absurd sequence after another.

[HeavyReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

This ok book was about a teenage boy who lives in a trailer with his mom who sells drugs and turns tricks and with his three little siblings. The characters are not very complicated here. The mom is shown as all bad, not really caring about her children. The main character is a little more layered, but is shown to be the good one, the hero of the story. The art isn't very special. The story isn't very special either. It's not really a memorable book.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

i picked this up after a junior high student returned it because the cover was a little disturbing. i was right to be disturbed - i put a rating on this book of age 16+. there is graphic violence, sex, and drug use.

[Nux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Impressive!

[jenna Hudrlik · Rating 3 out of 5]

a bit over the top with all of the steriotypical cliches of trailer life and the ending was too melodramatic and unbelievable.

[Dana Jerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Didn't like this at first...
but by the time it ended I realized it had many layers...
a great movie perhaps??
-D

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written and drawn by two of my college professors! I really liked Mark's story as well as Julie's art