Zoe Thorogood’s Cassie Hack is figuring it out. She’s not going to find peace—Thorogood’s take on Tim Seeley’s monster slayer is early in what will be a long, bloody career of Slasher slaying. But, surrounded by peers and in a place of relative safety, she’s got a chance to breathe—and not just breathe, but rest.
As she writes in her journal:
Something crazy happened to me last night. I had a good fukin sleep. I didn’t dream about mom. Or wake up with the shits from diving in the trash. So, that was nice. Yeah. I like keeping my guts on the inside.
Cassandra “Cassie” Hack – Hack/Slash: Back to School # 2
Darla Ritz’s Hunters for Hire and Academy for Girls is that place—and it’s that place because Darla’s walked a road similar to Cassie’s—and by implication, her other students. Thorogood opens Back to School with a flashback to Ritz’s past, her last day as a scream queen that became her first day as a slasher hunter.
Darla’s flashback serves as a Cliff’s Notes version of what makes Thorogood’s work with Back to School so much fun. While maintaining a core art style (in this case, one that gleefully leans into action, gore, and fan service), she weaves in other mediums, using the contrast between them to heighten tension and reveal character. Consider the below page:
While Ritz is tormented by the Slasher she’ll soon strike down, headlines lay out her immediate future. Despite their colorful language and leading questions, they’re cold and dry compared to the vivid terror that Ritz survived. Deliberately juxtaposing multiple art styles (i.e., her assorted incarnations in her autobiography It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth) is one of Thorogood’s trademarks as a comics maker, and Back to School‘s second issue sees her deploy it to really fun effect.
Cassie and her fellow hunters are sent to investigate a digital Slasher, one with ties to the one-time indie sensation video game Frogboy and its increasingly controversial sequels. When they’re pulled into the game, Thorogood’s stylish action crosses with pixel art—first juxtaposing Cassie and company with the pixel Frogboy, then shifting everyone to pixels, and then everyone but poor Frogboy back to the mainline style. It’s funny, it amps up the impact of Back to School‘s horror action, and it makes up the issue’s thematic core.
Frogboy‘s creator and fans are at odds with each other in part because of their dueling perceptions of the work. The Slasher who attacked Darla’s movie did so because he took slasher movies as a grave insult. Frogboy‘s creator cannot see his fans as anything other than vultures picking at his flesh. Getting lost in perspective isn’t just isolating; it’s self-destructive—and sometimes just plain destructive.
It’s potent work that syncs well with Back to School‘s more immediate pleasures and ties in neatly to Cassie’s development. Her time at Hunters for Hire is expanding her world beyond what she knew, and the issue puts her face-to-face with someone who refuses to see that.
Hack/Slash: Back to School‘s second issue improves on its already strong first. I’m excited to see what Thorogood will do with the mini’s back half.
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