Keeping the monsters at bay

If you’ve been to Sackville, N.B., you might have wondered what’s inside the huge, windowless, white steel cube on the edge of this small town of 6,000. The fact that “the Sackville Cube” is a huge cold storage facility for frozen fruit, and has the unremarkable name of the Atlantic AutoCold facility, does little to diminish the strangeness of this landmark that seems straight out of a science fiction movie.

So when Jon Claytor’s creepy and poignant new graphic novel, Nowhere, begins with the arrival overnight of a giant white cube on the edge of a small town called Beauséjour, it is natural to assume this is a thinly disguised version of his hometown, and that this coming-of-age horror story bears some resemblance to his own experiences of the weirdness of small town life.

Claytor is a U.S.-born, Sackville-based painter, illustrator, graphic novelist and writer and one of the founders of Sackville’s acclaimed SappyFest independent music and arts festival. His graphic memoir, Take the Long Way Home, depicted his eight-week road trip across Canada shortly after achieving sobriety. He has also published a number of non-fiction online comics, including a series about the effects of the opioid epidemic in the rural Maritimes (ruralharmreduction.com) and short comics for the CBC about interesting Maritimers.

Nowhere begins with the arrival of the white cube in Beauséjour, where it introduces an element of mystery to the lives of people who otherwise know everything about each other’s mundane business. Drawing on some classic horror tropes, Claytor then introduces the protagonist, 12-year old Joel, as he, his mother and his stepfather (along with the family cat, dog and two turtles) wind up in Beauséjour when their ancient Chevy Impala dies just outside town in the middle of the night.

What they were running from and why is never clear, but Joel has been shunted from town to town and is no stranger to being the new kid at school, or to living in a motel. His mom gets a job at the diner, and his deadbeat stepdad tinkers on the car, but never seems to get it going.

The fact the Impala is capable of thought and goes on joyrides late after dark is just the beginning of the odd things going on in this town at night. Giant rats and black dogs with red eyes walk the streets, glow-in-the-dark deer graze and stare and zombies, vampires and creepy clowns come out and roam the streets. Claytor plays with monster tropes by also giving us scenes of a vampire’s therapy sessions, the nightmare clowns complaining about their jobs and a pair of alien overlords who would rather watch TV soap operas than control humanity. Soon, people start to go missing, and Joel and his friend need to figure out how to survive what seems like the end of the world — or is it?

Like the best horror stories, Nowhere can be taken at surface level and read as a metaphor for the real monsters in our midst. From his abusive stepfather to the school bullies, Joel is surrounded by others who force him to withdraw more into himself and find refuge in making art. The fact that characters often refer to “home” in quotation marks points to the serious undertones of this graphic novel about coming-of-age in an unstable, threatening environment where the monsters are more human than undead.

Claytor’s distinctive visual style uses large lettering, expressive sketching and a moody monochrome palette to create an atmospheric and eerie sense of place, while the occasional splashes of red add drama and a sense of threat. This is a graphic novel that rewards repeat readings to grasp the full picture of what is happening to Joel’s reality, and to appreciate the fine balance between horror and humour Claytor achieves in drawing out the mysteries of both adolescence and small towns.

Candida Rifkind is a professor in the department of English at the University of Winnipeg, where she teaches and researches comics and Canadian literature.