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windingcorridor · 8 months

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Manhunt is a life-changer, the kind of book that shifts your insides around and makes room for itself. I finished it at 3am last night, and have been wandering around the house since. I feel hollowed out. I want to- need to- read it again. Christ.

This book has a ton of Content Warnings, some stemming from genre, most stemming from its premise and perspective. CW: transphobia, dead-naming, cannibalism, dysphoria, rape, implied incest, fatphobia, public execution, slavery, torture, body horror.

Disclaimer: I'm writing this review from my perspective as a man exploring their gender, folding in They/ Them pronouns with my He/ Him. While I have considered in myself whether or not I am a woman, I don't think I am. Do with that info what you will.

I found Manhunt on a recommendation shelf at my local bookstore- shout out to Eagle Eye Books in Decatur, GA- and its cover grabbed me instantly. It's a shocking image, blunt in its implication and color. It's a fitting one, too, echoing the words inside. You're going to get grabbed and the story isn't going to let go until the last.

You can get a synopsis for the thing anywhere, so no need here. Just know that Fran & Beth's story starts with the punchline- "What if being a man turned you into a rage zombie?"- and runs red with it. Being a trans woman is already goddam hard in the real world- now imagine people looking at you the same way people in zombie movies look at people who have been bit. It's a fantastic grounding device, with Felker-Martin using it as a jumping off point to point out how fucked transphobia can get.

Speaking of rage, this book is so full of anger and hatred, righteous and otherwise. It smacks you, not just inside the content but with its construction. Felker-Martin hates transphobes, trustfund child-adults, people who will put a hashtag on their twitter profile but never do anything. She never writes this out explicitly, but the way th`e story is told? Buddy, she makes that very clear.

The characters are deliciously complex. You start with easy sketches- the pretty one, the strong one, the fat one, the TERF, the trans man, etc- but you hop from perspective to perspective often enough that things begin to mold into a rich picture.

(If I have any criticism of the book at all, it's that, occasionally, we shift perspective so fast and often that timelines can get wobbly. I'll think it's only been a few hours in-story, but then a character will mention it's been a few weeks. It course corrects cleanly, though, and never became too much of an issue.)

One of the perspective characters- Ramona- is a part of The Legion, militarized TERFs who have taken over huge swaths of the US in name of eradicating "men wearing womanface." Thing is, Ramona has a thing for trans women. By day, she's an XX chromosome tattoo wearing Nazi, by night she's sleeping with a trans lover in a secret brothel. She hates her hypocrisy (so many of the characters ooze self-hatred), but she is so caught up in the fervor of her movement that she can't slow down.

These contradictions cover the whole cast. At times, I hated them. Others, I loved them. By the end, all I wanted to do is spend more time with them.

It's here I want to say- I love you, Beth. It's obvious that the author loves you, too. Not in the "here's-some-plot-armor" way, the book isn't cheap like that. The author writes Beth and all of the other trans characters with so much empathy, personal history, and heart, it's difficult not to see them as breathing, beautiful people.

When you have a book like this- one that moves at so much force- you worry that there isn't a way in hell that it will stick the ending. Happy to report that as much of a power-drill the last act is, I left the book satisfied. I, alone in my living room, warm forgotten beer on the coffee table, wife and daughter asleep in the next room, muttered, "Whoa," when I read the last paragraph.

So, yeah. Read Manhunt. It isn't for everyone. The best art never is. But if you allow yourself to be taken by it, hold on.

Nick <3

#books #book review #horror #gender #transgender #manhunt #gretchen felker martin

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primepanels · 2 years

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DCeased: Unkillables and Hope at World's End (Double Review)

DCeased: Unkillables

Synopsis:

A group of heroes, anti-heroes, and supervillains are forced to band together to protect an orphanage in the wake of a zombie plague caused by a corrupted Anti-Life Equation.

My Thoughts:

I thought this was a good side story to the DCeased mini-series that featured several characters who aren't present in the main story. You get Deathstroke, Rose Wilson, Red Hood, Cassandra Cain as Batgirl, Jim Gordon, the Creeper, Cheetah, Solomon Grundy, Lady Shiva, Vandal Savage, Mirror Master (the Scottish one), and probably some others I'm forgetting. There's also a mysterious hero the orphans talk about who helped them when the plague started who is revealed near the end. If you follow the clues, you might guess who it is.

I think the main appeal of this book is that there are a lot more grittier characters than in the main book. Most of them have little or no qualms with killing, so they aren't conflicted about it when the infected hordes attack. There's a lot more in-your-face blood in this one than in the main series.

There's a little bit of crossover between the two series, and I would definitely recommend reading the main series first. If you don't, it'll be spoiled for you within the first several pages of Unkillables.

DCeased: Hope at World's End

Synopsis:

Several stories about different characters during the Anti-Life Equation outbreak.

My Thoughts:

I thought this was a very good collection of companion stories to DCeased. If you read the main book and wonder, "Where's the rest of the Flash family?" "What's Black Adam doing?" or "Where was Martian Manhunter before his sudden appearance?", this collection can answer those questions. It also gives you a closer look at Jimmy Olsen's role in things, and it features the surviving Justice League team trying to stop a huge attack by several super-zombies that isn't included in the main storyline.

One big issue that's explored is whether or not the infected should just be killed. Superman is hesitant to kill anyone, insisting that there must be a way to reverse the Anti-Life effects, while Lex Luthor, Talia Al-Ghul, and even Cyborg think they're beyond saving. It's kind of the elephant in the room in the main series, and it's good that they touch on it here.

The art is hit or miss since the there are multiple artists throughout. Some may not like the cartoony style of some of the issues, but it didn't bother me too much. One of the themes of most of these stories is hope in spite of the seemingly hopeless situation, so a slightly lighter tone isn't bad in the right places.

Again, you should probably read the main series first. And I don't think it's quite as cool as Unkillables. But if you like the main series and want more, I think this is worth checking out.

#DC Comics #DCeased #Unkillables #Deathstroke #Slade Wilson #Tom Taylor #Zombies #Karl Mostert #Trevor Scott

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