What I Bought 3/5/2025 - Part 2

I didn't make it far enough to figure it merits a proper review post, but Hello Neighbor is the early frontrunner for my least favorite game of the year. Just did not dig the look, the gameplay, any of it. Really glad I bought it on sale, so I didn't flush any more cash down the toilet than I had to.

For today's reviews, we're looking at two issues of a single mini-series. Which is also what we'll be doing Wednesday, just a different mini-series. 

Dust to Dust #2 and 3, by JG Jones (writer/artist), Phil Bram (writer), Jackie Marzan (letterer) - The rattlesnake proved more effective at deterring trespassers than the sign.

Issue 2 is centered around a missive dust storm that sweeps over the town, forcing everyone indoors. It gives the sheriff a chance to speak with the town doctor about the jawbone the kid found in issue 1, though the doc warns not to go digging into the past. It also tells us a little more about the sheriff via conversations Sarah the photographer has, first with the doctor's wife, and later with the sheriff, as they drive to the nearest town to investigate if the Olsen family (the ones leaving their farm in issue 1) made it that far.

As the car is found on the road, with the occupants burned alive, the answer would be "no." The sheriff finds a gas can, but by the time he returns to town and collects the local bigwig/mayor (and said bigwig's PTSD and gas attack-afflicted brother), it's gone. The mayor is, predictably, quick to dismiss any notion of a gas can, and later invites Sarah to his office to, essentially, discredit the sheriff's judgment via character assassination. Although he oddly does so by taking how unflappable Lawton was during the war.

There are some other minor threads. Jones and Bram introduced some snake-handler preacher the sheriff and mayor both expect to make hay of a brutal murder. The mayor's daughter is engaged to some local ballplayer, who mostly seems horny. The local moonshiners found the Olsens' mule, which will make them prime suspects. And what I suspect is a rainmaker arrives in town with a fireworks display. but right now, it feels like things revolve around the sheriff, the mayor, and the photographer.

Which probably makes Sarah the pivot point, though I suspect she'd side with Lawton. He wants to expose the killer to protect people, while the mayor is trying to cover it up to protect "the town." Sarah's presented as believing (or at least saying she believes) that the right photograph can open people's eyes and create positive change. Helping expose a killer would seem to fall under that heading, if we take her at her word. Issue 2 starts with her trying to photograph two boys playing along the road, but she's encouraging them to act like it's any other day, so it's not a totally genuine picture, is it? I guess you have to make allowances for the time it takes to set up a camera back then.

Jones uses a lot of short, wide panels, emphasizing the emptiness of the region. No trees, barely any houses once you get outside town. The road runs through an expanse of nothing. Which suggests the scope of what the people trying to hang on are up against, while making it seem as though there's no place to hide.

And yet, someone killed a little girl not too long ago and was never caught. The sheriff either sees the ghosts of both the girl and the Olsen boy, or these are just hallucinations. I'm not sure which was it's meant to go yet, though I lean to the latter. This doesn't feel like a book where the supernatural would be involved, so much as one where people try to disguise their human motives behind a supernatural facade. The sheriff also seemingly had a dream where the girl was carried off on horseback by a character from one of the John Carter books.