Recommendation: Hedrek: Night of the Mummers

I first came across the work of  Laurence Alison when he created a book about the life and mythology of Heracles (see October 2021s blog post).  This was a book that I really enjoyed, illustrated beautifully throughout by 2000AD art droid and independent creator David Hitchcock.  So when I saw that the pair had teamed up again, this time to create a comic, I pledged immediately to the Kickstarter campaign for a digital copy of "Hedrek: Night of the Mummers".  Laurence kindly sent my digital copy, ahead of release, to cast an eye over and review here.

My introduction to David's work was reading his version of the classic Dickens horror story "The Signalman". For me, he has a style perfectly suited to recreating Victorian England.  He has a real flair for horror as could also be seen in his recent 2000AD stories about a possessed, cult leading, ventriloquist's dummy. With the latest book, Laurence has given David a new box of toys to play with in the form of a folk horror murder mystery.

Set in a small Cornish coastal village, the hero of the piece, dedicated cop Detective Hedrek Stern is drawn into a gruesome murder investigation.  The horrific murders seem to involve strange characters known as mummers, actors from folk plays, often dressed and masked as creatures of folklore, like the Green Man.  This is no ordinary crime and certainly, no ordinary criminals behind it.

Alison shows his real life skill set in the procedural elements of the book.  His background, as a Professor of Forensic Psychology, is working with and training police officers on interview techniques, profiling and criminal investigation.  Obviously this gives him the inside track on how they work and think.  Here he's also written an original story with elements and characters that I've never encountered in comics before.  He has a good ear for accents and writes the cornish dialect in a way that you really hear the characters voice, without it being a caricature.

David Hitchcock has done an awesome job on the artwork, many of the pages are just filled to the brim with a Bernie Wrightson level of detail.  The panels and splash pages compliment Laurence's script perfectly and give the feel of watching a prime time cop drama on TV.

If I have any gripe it's that, the story felt like it was a little cramped into the 38 pages.  I would love to have seen this multi-layered story given a bit more room to breathe and perhaps be spread over two issues. That being said, I really enjoyed Hedrek: Night of the Mummers and this is a great scene setter, I certainly look forward to more from this creative team and Detective Hedrek Stern. 

If you would like to back the Kickstarter and grab a copy for yourself head here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/scarcomics/hedrek-night-of-the-mummers?ref=checkout_rewards_page