Page 45 Review by Stephen
Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month November 2024
Every bit as tense and psychologically astute as the best of Brubaker & Phillips, I have rinsed every panel on every page again and again in order to work out who, how, when and why. Oh, very much the why.
You're going to want to brace yourselves.
Milwauke, December 1973:
A department-store Santa is discovered stripped down to pants, tied to his armchair, eyes a flood of blood. Separately, his two teenage elves are found in a snow-swept barn, stark naked, genitally mutilated, strung and lit up like a Christmas tree.
Milwauke, December 2023:
Michael and Derek have been boyfs for seven years. Michael is the more intense of the two, and the more distant, sad, self-absorbed. Currently he's being driven, partly by formative experiences in his childhood, to interview the now elderly man, Randall, originally arrested for the crimes on not inconsiderable (yet circumstantial) evidence.
As Michael explains, "Randall hasn't changed his story in almost fifty years. He says he's innocent, and maybe he is. He hopes the gay writer is going to be the one who tells the story he wants. The one he's wanted people to tell. But this comic... It's not really about him.
"It's about me."
Chicago, December 2023:
History repeats itself.
Superb character acting on Hixson's part, in conversation and even on the back where the Santa-costumed killer's physically awkwardly, supporting the small-ish axe with both hands, blood all over it, all over the christmas lights around the bodies in the snow.
You'll hang off every line of dialogue, for this is as subtle and behaviourally nuanced as Tynion's NICE HOUSE ON THE LAKE which I SO wish I'd made Page 45 Comicbook Of The Month. But I had no idea then how spectacularly that title would blossom into the most gripping monthly comic on the market.
Lastly, I've not photographed most of the boys' crime scene because it is beyond horrific AND because you deserve to have that thrust in your face in the context of the comic itself.
One more chapter to go and they’ll collect the second half. Page 45 CBOT Members: you can have 20% off that too - just ask!
