Chupacabra: Tales of blood and ink

by Matthew Medney, Kyle Faehnrich (Artist), Steve Orlando (Editor)

Hi it’s me, Alessandra, you can call me Sanny though, wait, don’t think that’s because we’re close or anything, I just don’t want to hear you butcher the rolling R in my name thats all.   Anyhow I guess you're wondering why you're here, how did we even meet? You know I’m just a high school senior right? I know, impressive, but stay with me, I’m trying to uncover the truth about these strange occurrences, these strange coincidences happening in my home town of East Valley.   Actually, let's take a step back for a moment, and level set a few things. First of all, you ever wonder why it feels like the elite class never ages, why no matter how hard you work, no matter how “lucky" you get, seemingly you can't reach the levels of what you see in the media? I would think that alone would spawn questions about things, about how, and who and why, and when. But evidently, when you ask those questions, you are faced with resistance, with lies, with attacks… lucky for me, that's my favorite flavor of admiration.   Seriously, no wonder these mysteries haven’t been uncovered yet, haven’t been given their 15 minutes of fame. Everytime you poke around, you get framed or canceled or worse… expelled. Gosh, I sound like Hermione Granger, but I'm serious.   I don’t come from much, well actually, I don’t really come from anything, my mom and I live in the poorest part of town, and I'm one of the “lucky ones” bused into EVR to “show” inclusion from the most prominent public school in the nation.   As you know if you were paying any attention up above, my dad died before I was born, so I don’t know much about him, but I do know his death, and my mom being the absolute legend she is, is what secured me a spot at EVR. And I’ve been taking advantage of that privilege ever since the ripe old age of 9. Come to think of it, it’s a bit strange isn’t it that I was picked, ehhh whatever, well come back to that. As I was saying, I aced every class, was smarter at every turn, ha, these locals never saw anyone like me, and that's the way I like it.   No stupid, not my race, not the color of my skin, we’re talking about my economic class, my lack of privilege and my big ole brain. Stay with me here, this isn't a story about race, it's a story about the capitalist caste system we have lulled ourselves into here in America.   So when I say I am the last person who should be snooping around, asking the tough questions, you know I mean it. But there I go again, too smart for my own good. I can’t just leave these questions in my head unanswered, I can’t just let these oddities persist without justification, I’m just not wired that way. So whether I get expelled, or (hopefully at least) tortured, I will find some of the truths about the underbelly of the American elite class, all the while graduating from one of their elite schools, in the midst of applying to one of their elite institutions; God the irony of the elitism is not lost on me.   Hopefully if I’m lucky, I can get a front row seat to how the sausage is made. To how these people stay in power, to what the operation entails to create the system and most interestingly of it all, why the hell does it feel like there's shit that happens that reality can’t explain?   Now that you know a bit more about what we’re up against, the possible dangerous afoot, are you still willing to see this through?   Ya? Ok then, down the rabbit hole we go.

104 pages, Hardcover

Published September 3, 2024

Reviews

[Adam Fisher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Review submitted to Diamond Bookshelf for potential professional publication.

[Ms Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

I am extremely disappointed by this book. It has good things going for it: would interest ya/adult audiences looking for mature mystery/horror books, strong main high school aged character, and a unique art style. It seems to be an edgier and more violent take on the "teen investigating supernatural" type and seems to be going for a live action adaptation.

However I cannot overlook the glaring inattention to detail that will deter most readers. It seems like this book needed more time in editing because there are way too many errors. The publisher seems to be very green but the writing and editing team have strong comic industry resumes so I am very surprised with the lack of quality.

Firstly the lettering has issues: words get butted up against each other close enough to be read as one word and sometimes letters in words are miswritten as typos or left out entirely. The word "age" should not be split with one letter on one line and the other two on another, especially without a dash to indicate it's one word. The speech bubbles also consistently have issues where it seems dialogue said by one character is in a balloon pointed to another. These are technical issues that should have been caught in editing and I am shocked to find so many. Another area where dialogue gets confusing is with Sanny, she breaks the fourth wall a lot to speak to the reader but there is no clear distinction when she's doing to other than her character looking towards us. Typically this kind of inner monologue would be denoted by being inside a box bubble and maybe even in italics. Her fourth wall breaks are also relied on to convey how time has passed. At one point we learn weeks have gone by in the middle of her talking to us. There are text boxes that name settings for us that could have easily been used for Sanny's fourth wall breaking.

I was really intrigued to see a modern tackling of the chupacabra outside of being in an ensemble of other cryptids. The art is excellent and is a style not often seen in the current graphic novel space. The presence of alternate covers and extra art show that there's a lot of passion here and I wish the story being told could do it justice.

Overall it's clear to me there is a focus issue. The intended audience is unclear. Is this for high schoolers? Adults? The teenaged main character and snarky writing style skews younger while a lot of the art would definitely not fly in a high school library. I originally assumed it was a YA and thus I (a school librarian) read it and other than seeing it sold in the main graphic novel sections of stores can't really tell who this is for. The fact the book has been published since September and still shows that a book trailer is coming soon while they are already selling merch (all of this found on their incomplete website) shows a lot of their intentions. I'm happy to be be proved wrong but I wholeheartedly do not recommend this book.

I read an advanced readers copy through Edelweiss. Near the end of the book the art changed to black and white and the extras section had mock newspapers with lorem ipsum text. I am not sure if these issues have been resolved in mass publishing or are all just ARC problems. Will update review once I can get my hands on a physical copy.

[Elena · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thanks to Edelweiss+ for providing a digital copy of this book.

The story takes place in San Diego. Several students have gone missing and the main character's father was murdered to stop him from finishing the research he was conducting for an article about a sinister chupacabra cult. She decides to finish the investigation.

In theory, this graphic novel has all the elements that I like in a story: a good mystery, an investigation and a lot of danger. However, this story didn't really work for me. The whole premise is hard to believe. Several students have gone missing and nobody is investigating anything. While I have no doubt that powerful people could stall an official investigation, so many students cannot go missing without people talking. People gossip about everything. Then, everything is far too convenient. The main character is invited to one of the cult's social gatherings and she happens to see a murder there without even trying too hard to find something creepy. For a secret society, they are not even trying to remain secret. There is a reason for this at the end, but it feels ridiculous until you reach that point.

I wish I had known that the main character interrupts the story to talk to the reader every once in a while, as I was rather confused the first time it happened because I didn't realise what was going on.

Also, I was not a big fan of the art style. It's difficult to describe in a text, but the panels are drawn using many lines, which I found rather distracting.

The ending of the story is unlikely to be considered satisfactory by many readers. While it does provide a conclusion, it is very sudden and it feels like a joke. Up until that point, the plot had been rushed, but acceptable. However, the final few pages changed everything and it was difficult to take the story seriously.

Finally, there were several spelling and grammar mistakes that don't seem to be intentional. Moreover, there are several instances of lorem ipsum at the end and the last few pages of the story were black and white without there being a logical reason, at least not one I could see. Having said that, this is an ARC, so I hope all these problems have fixed in the final version.

Overall, unfortunately this is not a graphic novel that I can recommend. There is indeed mystery, but everything goes downhill towards the end.

[Becca · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was looking forward to checking out this graphic novel due to the representation and the synopsis. However, this unfortunately was a fairly disappointing read for many different reasons. The ending made me feel like the character was honestly lying to the audience the entire time and I found the actual content to be very rushed. I think if this were longer and had more time to develop the characters properly, then this would potentially be an interesting read. I'm also personally not a fan having many pop culture references in books.

For full transparency, the publisher sent me a copy of this for an honest review.

1.25 stars.

[Raven Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

The violence is not subtle, but not gratuitous either. The art is very busy and hard to read the text as it can blend in. Not a fresh story but does add a few elements not seen before. Overall, okay story, but not my cup of tea. Ending was not what was expected. Read via an online reader though available.

[Blaine McGaffigan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I liked the art.