Title:
The Milkman Murders
Publisher:
Dark Horse
Writer:
Joe Casey
Pencils/Inker/Cover:
Steve Parkhouse
Dark
Horse editor Scott Allie likens The Milkman Murders to a horror story
in his introduction. He says horror is more an emotion than a genre,
and that Casey and Parkhouse capitlize on this idea as their story
tragically, gruesomely unfolds. Barbara Vale is a typical suburban
housewife whose middleclass dream has become a nightmare. She tries
vainly to prod her family “into the light” as it is represented
on television, until a personal incident clarifies the futility of
her efforts. Unable to go up, she instead spirals downward into the
kind of insanity we read about all to frequently in our daily
newspapers. Horror indeed.
Casey’s
characters at first seem clichés, but only if they were given
some 21st century version of “they all lived happily
ever after” ending. Instead, Casey chooses them to follow a path
established by their own nature, allowing each to remain true until
the very end. Closer examination suggests they are nuclear family
archetypes after the bomb has dropped and survivors have begun to
mutate. Like Married With Children gone from bad to worse, they
squabble, toil away at meaningless genric jobs, existing rather than
living in suburbia.
Parkhouse’s
figures have distinct cartoon quality, but this perhaps reinforces
the idea that they are caricatures drawn from everyday life. Part of
the charm of his artwork is the background subtleties, such as a
detergent that promises “a whiter nation,” suggesting that
Barbara Vale’s middleclass dream isn’t all it’s cracked up to
be. Instead of wondering why Barbara Vale takes her untimate path, it
left me wondering why it didn’t happen sooner.
