Hendricks #1 - What If Stories

HENDRICKS No. 1, July 2019

Marvellously mashing up the motion picture worlds of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” with that of Ron Underwood’s “Tremors”, Matt Stapleton’s storyline for Issue One of “Hendricks” must surely have pleased fans of either movie franchise when it was first released in 2019. Indeed, if nothing else the whopping thirty-eight-page periodical does an excellent job of fleshing out the silver screen (supporting) character Leonard Hendricks, by showing just how much Martin Brody’s death and the continued corruption of Amity’s town council affected the police deputy; “I was a coward. I ran… We were going to expose them. Mayor Vaughn and that crooked developer Peterson.” 

Foremost of this super-sized comic’s hooks must be the continuation of events after “Jaws: The Revenge” and the author’s enthralling insinuation that the likes of Larry Vaughn always knew that their lovely little island’s waters were infested with man-eating sharks. This suggestion radically alters the “well-meaning and caring” but ultimately greedy portrayal of the town manager by actor Murray Hamilton, and replaces it with a much more dark, deeply disturbing tale of a man’s criminal irresponsibility, as well as arguably cold-hearted manslaughter.

In fact, quite possibly this publication’s biggest highlight is artist Rhys Wootton prodigiously pencilling a terrified titular character being lowered into the monster-filled sea without an air tank or equipment simply to stop him blabbing to the press about the councilman’s dirty little secret. These tremendously impactive scenes are wonderfully dramatic, especially once Hendrick’s poorly maintained cage is easily breached by a particularly hungry great white, and very convincingly explains why the traumatised policeman initially fled the community rather than speak out against his torturers.

Similarly as successful though, is this book’s secondary tale of Leonard unsurprisingly leaving Amity after exposing the mayor’s murderous machinations and supposedly seeking recuperative rest in the idyllic sounding settlement of Perfection. Heavily influenced by the tendril-tearing trauma which made “Tremors” such a beloved horror flick, Stapleton is finally able to show that the former-deputy plainly has some gritty determination of his own, as he neatly pens a homage to the cataclysmic conclusion of “Jaws 2” by having Hendricks lure a predatory giant worm into explosively chomping upon the local electricity mains supply cable.

Writer: Matt Stapleton and Illustrator: Rhys Wootton