Hill House Comics is a project that publishes comics containing thrill stories that are named after Joe Hill, son of Stephen King. After reading the first of the albums, one may be tempted to thesis that in the series we can find elements that we know well from the works of both father and son...
A basket full of heads begins seemingly innocently. A pretty girl comes to a small town where her boyfriend acts as a summer sheriff's assistant. However, instead of a romantic time, she becomes entangled in events that seemingly overwhelm her. Escaped prisoners, corruption, drugs and ... an ancient ax that makes severed heads still able to speak and think. It turns out, however, that our heroine is a tough grandmother and is capable of actions that we would not expect from her, given the first scenes.
Hill's scenario assumes that each of the notebooks making up this story will end either with a twist and the introduction of a new plot to the plot, or with a different kind of cliffhanger. As a result, the story he tells has a multi-level character, and each successive story reveals a new plane of intrigue. This assumption works up to a point, but towards the end it disappoints a bit as a whole, giving the impression of being overloaded.
A basket full of heads in a plot is primarily a mixture of a crime fiction and thriller, i.e. genres unknown to Hill. And just like in his novels, here they are combined with fantasy elements, and more specifically with terror. The only question is whether it is necessary, does it bring added value? You can argue with that. This story wouldn't change much, it would still be the same story with the same turning points and tension. However, it certainly adds a bit of atmosphere and amazingness, giving the whole a strongly pulp character, referring to the stories from several decades ago. Anyway, this was probably the goal of the creators, because Leomacs illustrations with the colors of Dave Stewart also refer to this style.
Hill's comic book is a work for people who appreciate classic stories with a thrill, in which there is little real terror, but we get a bit of macabre watered with fantasy, all integrated into a crime story. A nice mix.