Onyx reviews: Basketful of Heads by Joe Hill

Reviewed by Bev Vincent, 08/09/2020

Story: Joe Hill
Art: Leomacs
Color: Dave Stewart
Letterer: Deron Bennett

In this graphic novel, which collects all seven issues of the comic book released between October 2019 and May 2020, a young woman named June visits her boyfriend Liam on Brody Island off the coast of Maine. Liam, who spent the summer working for the local police department, is getting ready to move back to Bates College for the fall semester.

On his last day at work, four inmates escape from prison, instigating a manhunt. June and Liam end up house-sitting the sheriff's creepy mansion while a tropical storm approaches. Sheriff Clausen is a Viking memorabilia collector, and the Norse hatchet in his collection is shown prominently in an early panel. Readers will know that, like Chekov's gun, this weapon will come into play at some point.

The mansion is invaded and Liam is captured. He has something the invaders want, and they're willing to go to any length to get it, including chopping off one of his fingers to try to make him talk. June, eminently resourceful, does them one better, using the Viking axe to defend herself against assault. She decapitates one of the attackers but—to everyone's surprise, not least of whom her assailant—the wound isn't mortal. His body is out of commission, but his head is still alive and talking and thinking...and scheming.

As one might deduce from the book's title, this isn't the only head June collects while she gets to the bottom of the mystery of Brody Island. Basketful of Heads is a crime story crossed with the sensibility of classic EC comics fueled by Viking mythology. As June gets closer to the truth, the more she comes to realize nothing—and no one—is what it seems. She becomes an avenging angel, wielding the borrowed axe like a Fury as she confronts one evil man after another. June is working on a thesis about how masculinity is shaped by shame, and there's plenty of toxic masculinity and shame on Brody Island.

Despite the overall dark tone of the story, there is a lot of mordant humor here, too. Jokes of the "losing one's head" variety help balance the violence and terror. There are also some amusing allusions. The escapees are from Shawshank Prison, the institution featured in numerous Stephen King stories, although in Hill's world it is in Derry County and not Castle County. The tropical storm shares a name with Hill's wife, and there are a number of references to Norse mythology, including Ragnarok, Yggdrasil and Skíðblaðnir, "the best of ships." There is also an amusing payoff to an early conversation about ska music and the performer Sting.