Black Mold
Comic, Keith Mclean, 24 pgs, adventuresome.ca, $8
Darkness falls in Black Mold. Young men and women set out to explore, ensnare themselves and learn lessons in and around the woods. Without getting too deep into plotlines, this is a story of teen angst with layers of bullying and the occult, though not necessarily bullying from the occult. The story is just linear enough to follow but also has enough twists and WTFs to make it, well, a zine. Speaking of which, it looks awesome, and both the drawings and production values are top notch. Cartoonist Keith Mclean uses strong, bold colours to create characters who have excellent body language and empathetic faces, even when they’re being complete assholes to one another. The length is great too, as is the pacing. A certain degree of tension builds but it never becomes trite or (strangely) cartoonish. Again, it feels like a teen angst tale so they’ll be something relatable for everybody, since we were all once young (or younger) people, searching for something and predictably afraid of what we might find out. Black Mold also gets bonus points for namedropping both Zellers and Value Village, bringing a bit of CanCon to a story that is otherwise pretty universal. (Cam Gordon)