Los Animales De Burden Hill: Ritos Peludos (2011) - Plot & Excerpts
Beautifully illustrated graphic novel written by Evan Dorkin and painted by Jill Thompson. This was recommended to me by my local Comicbook Guy with the description "It's like a Stephen King novel, but with animals." I found it was much more like The Celery Stalks at Midnight, or Howliday Inn by James Howe, but with much more mature and darker themes. It is a series of collected short stories of the animals who live on Burden Hill (an upscale neighborhood which seems to have a Sunnydale-like propensity for sinister going's on.) For the most part it is a fun jaunt into paranormal stories, with animal main characters. Lost is probably the most serious and saddest of all the stories, but all of them have their appeal. Unfortunately there hasn't been a second collected volume, so to continue reading the other stories, one would have to hunt down the individual comics to get more of the continued storyline. On paper, a story where animals solve supernatural mysteries should have me drifting off to the next reading option immediately. But it came with an emphatic recommendation from Kotaku that suggested that the story had more to it than some sort of spooky Homeward Bound.The art really sells the bulk of it. There's a dark, stylish power to much of it that sells the notion of a secret canine society that solves supernatural problems in this quaint town.And the story does deal with severe issues and tragic consequences in a way that makes some of the conclusions genuinely heartbreaking.I suppose my main issue is that I wanted more out of the story overall. Maybe it's because I read so many massive comic book series with massive story arcs, but I really wanted them to dig into the individual characters more. The episodic nature of it seemed to limit how much depth it could really go into.If they create an ongoing series for this I might get more excited. The mystery-of-the-day format seems to be a stifling limitation on an interesting set of characters.
What do You think about Los Animales De Burden Hill: Ritos Peludos (2011)?
In the idyllic neighborhood of Burden Hill, a group of dogs and cats fights crime--er, evil.
—jhaz_tho
Darker than I expected, but excellent.
—Ashaldo2011
