THANKSGIVING / Script by MARK RUSSELL / Art by MAURICET / Letters by ROB STEEN / Published by AHOY COMICS

The Holidays tend to be a stressful time of year for many people. That’s certainly the case for Jo. She’s happy to keep her family at a distance for most of the year and it’s not hard to see why.

Grandpa never turns the TV off. Grandma is casually racist. Mom has been withdrawn ever since Dad abandoned the family. And Jo’s brother, Terry, is a habitual stalker on the verge of being fired for his mistreatment of a female coworker. The only person in her family she likes is her Uncle Stan, the gameshow host, who is the most normal person in the family despite being a celebrity and rich.

This Thanksgiving, however, things are going to be different. When a traditional holiday party game goes awry, suddenly everyone’s dirty secrets spill out. And Jo will find herself struggling to deal with it all and the deeper meaning of family.

Nobody writes horror and social satire like Mark Russell and Thanksgiving is a master class in how to handle both. Russell is on familiar ground here, exploring the banality of evil – the idea that some people fall into evil, not out of actual belief, but because they accept it in the name of peace. To borrow a line from Terry Pratchett, “There are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.” That idea sums up the mundane horror of Thanksgiving in a nutshell.

The artwork by Mauricet is likewise perfect. On the surface, this looks like a nice, normal, slice-of-life comic. Scratch the surface, however, and there are horrific details to be found under the pastel facade. The same is true of Rob Steen’s letters, which add to the illusion of normalcy.

Thanksgiving deserves a bigger audience than it is likely to receive. This is a masterful work of horror on par with Get Out. If you enjoy stories of evils hidden in the name of nicety, you should read it.