Elk's Run
"Elk's Run" is a graphic novel that tells the intense story of fifteen-year-old John Kohler, Jr. and his tumultuous life in Elk's Ridge, West Virginia, a separatist militia community built by Vietnam War veterans and their families. The narrative unfolds as John Jr. grapples with the violent dynamics within his family and community, especially following the tragic death of his friend Mike, which leads to a series of escalating conflicts. The town's isolation is palpable, as it is only accessible through a tunnel that closes at night. As tensions rise, John Jr. and his peers embark on a desperate escape from the chaos, confronting their parents' violent legacies and their own moral dilemmas along the way.
The graphic novel is characterized by its distinct artistic style, combining rough, flowing lines and a painterly use of color to evoke the emotional intensity of the story. Themes of family, authority, and the haunting consequences of history permeate the work, reflecting a broader critique of American militarism and post-9/11 paranoia. The publication history of "Elk's Run" is notable, having transitioned from self-publishing to a graphic novel format after facing challenges in the comic book market. Its critical acclaim and the conversations it sparked about independent publishing contribute to its significance in the comic industry.
Elk's Run
AUTHOR: Fialkov, Joshua Hale
ARTIST: Noel Tuazon (illustrator); Scott A. Keating (colorist); Jason Hanley (letterer)
PUBLISHER: Villard
FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 2005
FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2007
Publication History
The first four chapters of Elk’s Run were originally published as four 24- to 26-page, full-color comic book issues (eight issues had been planned). Beginning in March, 2005, issues 1-3 of Elk’s Run were self-published by Joshua Hale Fialkov’s Hoarse and Buggy Productions. Although the series was lauded by several comics industry professionals and received critical acclaim from Variety and Entertainment Weekly, Elk’s Run sold well below expectations, prompting its creators to move the series to an outside publisher, the short-lived Speakeasy Comics.
In September 2005, Speakeasy published a bumper edition of Elk’s Run, collecting and reprinting the first three issues with a new cover illustration by Darwyn Cooke, an introduction by Steve Niles, and behind-the-scenes back matter such as character design sketches, the initial proposal for the series, and a coloring tutorial. In November 2005, two months before going out of business, Speakeasy released the fourth and, as it turned out, final published issue of Elk’s Run.
In June 2006, the incomplete Elk’s Run series was nominated for Harvey Awards in seven categories: Best Writer, Best Artist, Best Letterer, Best Cover Artist, Best New Talent, Best Continuing or Limited Series, and Best Single Issue. The series was also popular in the Los Angeles offices of Random House. The Villard division of Random House took over as publisher soon after Speakeasy’s demise, and Elk’s Run was completed and published as a single graphic novel.
Plot
Elk’s Run is the story of fifteen-year-old John Kohler, Jr.; his parents, John and Sara; and their town’s descent into chaos. The town, Elk’s Ridge, West Virginia, is a separatist utopian militia community built atop a defunct mine by a group of Vietnam War (1965-1975) veterans and their wives, connected to the outside world only through the Elk’s Run Tunnel, which is closed at night.
John Jr. and his friends Matt Jones, Adam Smith, and Mike Taylor are playing there around 11 p.m. when the Kohlers’ neighbor, Arnold Huld, drives through the tunnel in a drunken attempt to flee Elk’s Ridge and reunite with his estranged wife. Huld runs into Mike, killing him. After Mike’s funeral, John Jr. witnesses his father leading the men of Elk’s Ridge as they hold Huld down while someone backs a car over him.
Two days later, Sara Kohler defends Huld’s murder to the other wives while preparing for a monthly delivery of supplies. Two policemen arrive looking for Huld, whose wife has reported him missing. When the police officers discover crates of assault rifles in the delivery truck, John Sr. shoots the police officers, tells truck driver Jim Miller he is now a resident of Elk’s Ridge, and orders John Jr., Jones, and Smith to bury the two bodies.
The three boys and the only young woman in town, Alysha, abandon grave digging to attempt an escape from the town. Smith spots two armed townsmen, Nick Silvas and Steve Jaeger, searching for them. The teens ambush the pair and wrest away their guns. Enraged, John Jr. beats Nick to death; Smith is shot in the gut during the struggle. The teenagers hide in the mine below the town, where they find John Sr.’s plans for bombing government buildings and, as a contingency, Elk’s Ridge.
John Jr. sneaks to the delivery truck, where Jim Miller gives him a CB radio. Jones radios the police for help and tells the operator his location. Upon hearing Jones’s transmission, John Sr. kills Shane, the man tasked with searching the delivery truck. John Sr. leads a group into the mine in pursuit of the teenagers.
A gunfight erupts between the teenagers and the adults. A stray bullet sets off the napalm John Sr. had rigged to the town’s gas lines as the contingency plan. The first explosion caves in the mine and buries Smith. More explosions set Elk’s Ridge ablaze. Sara unsuccessfully orders people at gunpoint to stay in town. She finds her husband and tells him the townspeople are fleeing through the tunnel. John Sr. tells his wife that the tunnel is closed and locked and that anyone in the tunnel will burn to death. Sara suggests saving the people, then recoils when her husband alludes to killing their son; John Sr. then savagely beats his wife. The beating is stopped when John Sr. spots John Jr. and Jones with guns raised.
John Sr. shoots his son in the shoulder, disarming him. The father and son fight until another group of townspeople restrain the father, and John Jr. then persuades the group to leave his father and rescue their friends and family trapped in the tunnel. Jones, John Jr., and Alysha also run into the tunnel and force open the tunnel door. Police and rescue vehicles waiting outside the tunnel assist with the evacuation. John Jr. runs back into the town, returns with his mother, and tells police Elk’s Ridge is empty, leaving his father to the encroaching flames.
Characters
•John Kohler, Jr., the protagonist, is the restless, rebellious fifteen-year-old son of a leading voice in Elk’s Ridge. He hates his father but shares his father’s leadership abilities and capacity for violence, albeit with a stronger moral compass. He leads his friends against his father to escape the town.
•John Kohler, Sr., the antagonist, is a middle-aged Vietnam War veteran, husband, father, and a leader in the Elk’s Ridge militia. He killed an entire Vietnamese family, and his willingness to destroy repeats in his efforts to preserve Elk’s Ridge through escalating acts of violence.
•Sara Kohler, wife of John Sr. and mother of John Jr., is quick to slap John Jr.; officious and hostile to the other women in Elk’s Ridge; and, above all, subservient to her husband. She loves him for his quick decisive actions until he talks about killing their son.
•Matt Jones is one of the teenagers who rebels against the town. He is friends with John Jr. but is closer to their mutual friend Adam Smith. He initially blames John Jr. for Smith’s death but later apologizes.
•Adam Smith, Jones’s best friend, is the one teen reticent to join John Jr. in his escape from Elk’s Ridge, going so far as suggesting they bury the bodies of the policemen.
•Arnold Huld, the Kohler’s next-door neighbor, kills teenager Mike Taylor while drunk driving out of Elk’s Ridge in search of the wife that left him and the separatist community. The men of the town execute Huld, inciting events that end with Elk’s Ridge exploding.
•Alysha is a teenager and friends with John Jr.
Artistic Style
Noel Tuazon’s rough-edged, curvilinear brushwork, with lines used sparingly and that do not often connect, hovers between realistic and cartoony in ways comparable to comics artists such as Matt Kindt and Eddie Campbell. As colorist Scott A. Keating has said, Tuazon’s line work is “flowing and naturalistic,” suggesting form rather than dictating it.
Tuazon sometimes varies the thickness of his lines for compositional effect (with backgrounds drawn in thin lines differentiated from thick-lined foreground objects) and, occasionally, as a narrative technique. The heaviest lines are saved for drawings of flashbacks to John Sr. killing people in Vietnam, while flashbacks to John Jr., Smith, and Jones becoming friends over a contraband issue of Rolling Stone are rendered with thin lines only. Variations in line thickness are used to differentiate past from present, and to contrast the blunt violence of one generation with the fragile innocence of another. Overall, the rough-edged sketchiness of Tuazon’s lines and his dynamic placements of solid black give his images and page composition a propulsive, restrained frenzy that amplifies the creeping dread, ratcheting tension, and snowballing violence of the narrative.
Keating uses a digital coloring process to evoke a painterly aesthetic compatible with the naturalism of Tuazon’s ink lines. He overlays textures from hand-drawn watercolors in every image except those depicting flashbacks to distinguish the messiness of the present from the fixed nostalgia of the past. In early chapters a muted palette and diffuse lighting evoke the claustrophobia and uncertainty of the story. Later, as the story reaches its fiery, bloody climax, bright dramatic lights pierce deep dark reds. Jason Hanley’s digital lettering is equally subtle, incorporating sound effects only occasionally and thus to greater impact.
Panel layouts take full advantage of the medium to create precise, controlled pacing. Standard rectangular panel grids stop and start with dramatic pauses created through omitted panel borders and backgrounds. Emotionally intense scenes are stretched out in horizontal panels across two-page spreads. The high drama of a rare splash page is always complicated by small panels superimposed on the larger image, depicting close-ups of uncomfortable details invisible in the bigger picture.
Themes
Elk’s Run was inspired by a year of Fialkov’s youth spent living with his family in an isolated small town, so it is unsurprising that themes related to the inescapable connections of family pervade the work. John Jr. fights John Sr. with lessons John Sr. taught him. John Jr. returns for his mother, despite her support for John Sr. throughout the events of the novel. Traditional elements of a coming-of-age story about teenagers defying their parents’ authority, leaving home, and becoming adults are distorted in an echo chamber of post-September 11, 2001, paranoia. Additionally, the book’s references to the Vietnam War and antigovernment militias also imply a historically based critique of American militarism.
The book achieves much of its character development and world building by visualizing the inextricability of past and present. Panels showing John Sr. killing a family in Vietnam are interwoven with the murder of Arnold Huld. The scenes in which John Jr. decides to escape and kills Nick Silvas are paralleled by scenes in which John Sr. teaches his son how to shoot a bear. Jim Miller gives Smith and Jones contraband magazines in a flashback, and he later gives John Jr. a contraband CB radio. Jones and Smith affirming their friendship in the past is juxtaposed with Jones watching Smith die in the present. History and family give events meaning, but those meanings are portrayed as emotionally conflicted, tragic, murky, and complex.
Impact
The fraught publication history of Elk’s Run was viewed as a commentary on the state of the American comic book specialty-shop direct market. The attention the initial issues received from well-known comics professionals like Warren Ellis, Brian Michael Bendis, Brian K. Vaughn, and Steve Niles and from mass-market magazines like Variety and EntertainmentWeekly was extremely rare for a self-published comic book. The lackluster sales that followed were seen as a signal that the comic-shop market had become effectively closed to independent small-press creators making innovative work outside of the two dominant comics publishers, Marvel and DC. In reaction, several online comics communities rallied around the series.
When Speakeasy Comics went bankrupt, the lack of sales on Elk’s Run was again discussed as symptomatic, not of the failure of the industry as a whole, but of the failure of Speakeasy to properly promote its titles. The final move of Elk’s Run to a graphic novel format marketed to general-interest bookstores seemed to confirm that the comic-shop market could no longer sustain small-press comic books, a view echoed by Fial-kov when he and Tuazon created Tumor, their follow-up to Elk’s Run, for the electronic-book reader, the Amazon Kindle.
Further Reading
Aaron, Jason, and Cameron Stewart. The Other Side (2007).
Fialkov, Joshua Hale, and Noel Tuazon. Tumor (2010).
Urasawa, Naoki. Monster (2006-2008).
Bibliography
Fialkov, Joshua. “Bug Talks Tumor with Joshua Hale Fialkov!” Interview by Mike L. Miller. Ain’t It Cool News, November 9, 2009. http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43012.
Fialkov, Joshua, Noel Tuazon, and Scott A. Keating. Elk’s Run Bumper Edition. Toronto: Speakeasy Comics, 2005.
Watson, Sasha. “Sons Against Fathers in Elk’s Run.” Publisher’s Weekly, March 13, 2007. http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/14188-sons-against-fathers-in-elk-s-run-.html.
Weiland, Jonah. “Catching Up on Elk’s Run with Johsua Fialkov.” Comic Book Resources, September 20, 2005. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=5689.
‗‗‗‗‗. “The Horror of It All: Fialkov Talks Western Tales of Terror and Elk’s Run.” Comic Book Resources, December 21, 2004. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&old=1&id=4579.