Halloween Horror Review: IN A LAND OF MAGIC by Josh Simmons

In a Land of Magic

Written and drawn by Josh Simmons
20 pages
Appears in Sleazy Slice #1 (NSFW) / $6

You may know Josh Simmons from his survival horror graphic novel House or his 2007 samizdat Batman story that rendered the Caped Crusader a paranoid, homeless brute. If that’s the Josh Simmons you know, you’ve gotten just the barest glimpses of the bottomless darkness of his work. But if you haven’t read his work at all, you’re in for a brutal descent into some very disturbing places; one of those places is In a Land of Magic.

A hallmark of Simmons’ short horror comics—many of which appear only online or in small anthologies at the boundaries of good taste—is their unflinching dive into in-your-face, stomach-churning transgression that you won’t see the likes of nearly anywhere else. In a Land of Magic makes clear just how unlike other comics his work is.

You can’t tell from the outset. At first, the story just seems like a tale of elves and fairies frolicking in a beautiful and enchanted forest. But soon small chips begin to appear in the familiar sword and sorcery facade. They begin with the main characters speaking in an ironic patois of standard fantasy dialect and hipster slang: “What a coupla dumb fucks” and “Still tres fashionable, wouldn’t thou suggesteth, Hester, love?”

Despite this strangeness, things become conventional again when an evil wizard and his dragon confront the pair and threaten their lives. But when the hero handily defeats first the dragon and then the wizard, the story wildly changes shape: gloating over the wizard’s prone body, the elf unsheathes his tumescent penis and revels in how wonderful it feels to maim and kill, how it turns him on. Needless to say, this isn’t Tolkien or George R.R. Martin.

I won’t spoil the shock and terror of what comes next, other than to say that—with its creation of new orifices, shocking new kinds of rape, and perverse gloating—it’s truly horrifying. With its extremes of violence, In a Land of Magic is a hard comic to sit still through in some places. All of Simmons’ more extreme stories are similarly difficult, in fact, which is saying something. There are very few horror comics that truly feel transgressive, few horror comics that elicit queasiness when you read them. Josh Simmons’ do.

But despite the actions that drive the story, its true horror comes in the smaller, personal moments after the deeds are done. First, no matter what he’s done, the elf maintains a sincere belief that he’s the good guy and that his actions represent that, in his words, “good triumphs over evil.” It’s not uncommon for stories to feature deluded characters blind to their own true natures, but rarely does that story set the reader up via its aesthetics and archetypal plot to agree with those characters until it’s too late.

The second moment, the one that feels like your stomach jumping into your throat during a rollercoaster’s tremendous first drop, comes at the end when we’re reminded that the elf’s fairy girlfriend has witnessed all his depravity. When she truly understands that her boyfriend is a monster, and that he expects her to act like nothing has changed, it’s chilling. The threat of implied violence in his embrace and the queasy sexuality of the final page is overwhelming (to say nothing of the ironic final panel border–I won’t spoil it; you’ll have to see it). It’s hard to imagine a character experiencing a more horrific moment.

Story 4.5 / Art 4 / Overall 4.5

(out of 5 stars)