A Librarian on Elm Street

 I didn't plan it on purpose, but somehow I accidentally stumbled into reading one Grady Hendrix book a year for the last three years.  My Best Friend's Exorcism was a solid read. Hendrix spent a lot longer setting up the friendship between the two main characters, Abbie and Gretchen, before the spooky stuff started. Later, as a potential possession escalated tensions and strained the bonds of friendship between the two, the time we spent really getting to see the girls grow up and grow together did pay off nicely and make the pain Abbie went through feel real. Although, as a father myself, every time Abbie's Mom gave her advice I found myself nodding along and telling Abbie to listen to her mother.  But, that's a big part of the book. This is about two teenage girls trying to make it through life and figure things out for themselves in a time of social change. The 80s saw a dramatic change and fight back and forth in American culture with the pendulum swings from Madon...

 I didn't look at who the author was when I started reading this digital advance copy I received from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. The art looked familiar....the occasional blurry disjointed images bordering on Impressionism reminded me of something....then after I finished the book in one sitting I Googled and sure enough "Tatsuki Fujimoto, author of Chainsaw Man."  Tatsuki does the weirdest, craziest stuff I've ever read in Manga and still somehow like. He's surprising and disturbing and pulls you along with characters that you sometimes dislike and sometimes break your heart. And don't even get me started on whatever the hell Fire Punch was, I still haven't got a damn clue.  But his work has a life to it, a complexity and greyness that defies expectations. Pages of images without text work in Goodbye, Eri because the story is immersive and pulls you down into it. Pages of abject blackness beg you to ask....Is this the end? Is this all the...