Barstow
Award-winning horror writing and filmmaking team David Ian McKendry and Rebekah McKendry team up with Eisner-nominated artist Tyler Jenkins in this quirky and gruesome comedy horror graphic novel about a scenic desert, an eccentric town, and demons from Hell.
At the center of the Mojave Desert, at the crossroads between hell and gone, lies Barstow. FBI Special Agent Miranda Diaz is in this godforsaken land on the trail of a missing agent. Agent Lima was in the area investigating human trafficking when he disappeared without a trace. He’s a man she’s never met, and yet her name was the only clue he left behind. Something dark…something demonic…lurks beneath this oddball town and Miranda is determined to unravel the mystery before all hell breaks loose.
Reviews
"Barstow is a weird combination of dark comedy and grotesque horror that shouldn’t work but does. It wears its influences on its sleeve but yet isn’t afraid to do its own thing, no matter how disturbing that may be."
Barstow’s fish-out-of-water story seems to be a hybrid of Twin Peaks and (the original) Wicker Man, albeit in a much less green setting. The McKendrys' use of a desert town and these weird, out-there characters subverts the rumbling under the surface that’s typical in small-town stories.
"The best gore has sustenance and Barstow has it... Barstow #1 takes its time getting off the ground but in doing so, it does a great job in grabbing the reader and smacking them with freshly ripped entrails."