The Marsh

By Mario Van Buren

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I don't really get this comic. It starts off with little kids playing, swings, footballs, not understanding swearing, oh look a cute kitten! Adorable! And then *BAM!* incomprehensible last page twist.

I just really don't get stuff like this, and the problem with twists is that I can't really discuss them without spoiling things, so I'll talk about the art a bit first.

I really like the cover, it's simple, but looks good and has some nice use of colour around the edges. Van Buren's art style is cute, though the spindly legs and arms on the charactesrs make them seem more like Pinochio puppets than actual humans. He draws a pretty adorable cat though. I'd love more cat adventures.

Art finished, it's time for a *SPOILER WARNING*. Don't read on if you don't want to know.

The title is "The Marsh", so you might think that something's going down in there, and there's an offhanded comment near the begining that "We're not allowed in the marsh.", no reason given, but they're little kids. Parents don't need to give them reasons.

The actual reason is that there is a dead body in the marsh. Wait, what?! There are maggots eating his head!? Why is he there? The adults apparently don't know about it (because otherwise it wouldn't be there!), despite only being one child's football throw into the marsh. But this only raises more questions, who is it? If it's someone from this town why aren't they looking for the body? If someone goes missing wouldn't you look in the marsh? If it's not someone from the town who is it and how did they die? Why does the main character make it seem as though they haven't been allowed in the marsh ever, when the body doesn't seem that old (it seems to have just started decomposing).

It just doesn't make logical sense to me, but maybe I'm missing something. Maybe the comic was supposed to just raise a million questions in the reader. I don't know.


(Look at the cute kitty!)

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)