Meet The Shrivelwoods is a 40-page Gothic horror-comedy written by fan-favourite 2000AD scribe, musician and artist Kek-W, available through his Bandcamp merchandise page.
The publication contains two text stories about the creepy Shrivelwood family, wealthy and decadent maple syrup magnates who bear a superficial similarity to The Addams Family but with the darkness dial turned up to thirteen.
Chapbooks are somewhere between a novel and a fanzine, an easily digestible booklet with an affordably low page count; a format with a rich and fascinating history.
The Old Dank Manse, the first story in Meet The Shrivelwoods, tells of a contemporary, failed romance writer seeking solace in the bosom of her rich Vermont extended family, at their "crumbling Gothic mansion", but finding something much stranger than she expects.
The second, Christmas With The Shrivelwoods, takes the form of a late 19th Century letter from Minnie Shrivelwood to her uncle, Heinie, who is currently restrained in the Hartford Retreat For The Insane. It's a bonkers - matter-of-fact - recounting of the family's preparations for the Christmas holidays.
Both tales blend surreality and slapstick with leftfield black humour, shock revelations and general absurdity, as should be expected by those who have read Kek-W's Dark Judges: Fall of Deadworld work in the universe of Judge Dredd.
I was also reminded of the Wojciech Has's very weird The Hourglass Sanitorium for the short stories' occasionally unsettling, nightmarish narrative logic and potentially disturbing imagery.
Rambling - by design - the chapbook's two stories are delightful, amusing, and quick reads that most definitely leave you wanting to hear more about the different generations of this peculiar, and freakish, inbred family of maple syrup-obsessives.
