Boy Zero: Volume Two [Part One] - Caliber Comics

BOY ZERO: VOLUME TWO, May 2016

There’s a genuine palpable sense of fear running through Charles Chester’s narrative for “The Maw” as “two young boys, 11 and 12 in age, were about to succeed” where “an entire Police Force was failing” and unmask the identity of the serial killer stalking the outskirts of Glass City. In fact, the adolescents’ utter naivety that a single battery-powered torch will suffice in protecting them from a creature that has already butchered so many of their hapless friends arguably must have made many of this graphic novel’s readers hold their breath in abject terror alongside Edmund as the petrified lad unnervingly waits for the homicidal murderer under his friend’s bed; “i’M. Going tO. lUre yOur fRieNd. EdMUnd oUt. oF His beD. and gUt hiM. in HiS liViNg rOOm. TTHEn I’M. going to. BASH. his SiSterS heAd. in.”

Of course, after all the grisly casualties and Detective Drekker’s laboriously incompetent enquiries, the “award-winning filmmaker” doesn’t simply pen a straightforward revelation as to just who so recently strangled “little Durga” to “death and buried [her] in less than half an hour’s time… [in] broad day light.” Instead he rather cleverly tries to reassure the more gullible within this publication’s audience that the overconfident Nigel has actually already got his man in custody, and that Christian is as wrong about knowing what is really going on as he debatably is about believing that “Superman would not have any powers” if “the sky was completely blocked out because of a nuclear winter”.

The police investigator’s utter assuredness that because Mister Adams’ cigarette lighter “was found next to the body of Dill” he is clearly guilty of the young bespectacled lad’s brutal slaying is arguably understandable enough, even if “a child was killed while you have me locked up.” However, the prisoner’s extreme reaction to seeing the portable igniter, as well as his realisation as to who he lent it too, must have taken many a bibliophile by surprise, as the moustached inmate literally sees red in his efforts to escape his shackles and tear to pieces the person he believes brutally disembowelled his own kids.

Equally as well delivered is Shiloh Penfield’s story-boards, which not only add an extra emotional element to Mister Adams’ torment, but undoubtedly ramp up the terror in the panels depicting the boys’ battle against the true evil stalking their neighbourhood. Dekker’s all-too brief attempt to thwart the murderer by gunning him down in the bedroom is especially well-pencilled, to the point where the agony on the officer’s face as he’s stabbed in the belly is involuntarily etched upon the memory well after this chapter in the story has been read.

Written by: Charles Chester, and Artwork by: Shiloh Penfield