Three kids go looking for answers to questions arising from the behaviour of their ‘owners’ (what the rather flowery language of the story’s narrator uses to refer to their parents) and elders.

As they make their way through the titular, terrifying forest, it seems that there’s plenty more to be afraid of as they venture further from their homes, and into dangerous enemy territory. There’s also an ancient religious sect and their adherence to an ancient, local mythology to deal with. Can the children all make it home in one piece?

Writer and artist Boz Mugabe’s Scornwood is a seriously dark, surreal and twisted tale with scathing commentary on authority, and how it can so easily be used to corrupt and instil fear of the other, as well as to twist and shape those fears for the benefit of those in power.

It’s a search for truth in a world which has only fed you rotten lies; in which adults are unquestionably regurgitating anything they’re told, with cycles of abuse set to continue over the decades that follow.

The central trio of kids aside, there’s just a couple of adults in the book who come across as decent people; everyone else is pretty abusive, controlling or violent; sometimes all three.

It’s an astonishingly well constructed graphic novel, with a deeply stylised aesthetic that doesn’t let up for a single panel throughout its extensive page count. It’s an incredibly grim piece of work, both visually and tonally; though there’s humour in the observations of the kids in the story, everything still feels pretty bleak, even up to the final panel.

As such, its relentless darkness can make it quite a challenge to get through (there’s a wealth of shocking events that our poor central trio go through), but I was genuinely impressed with Mugabe’s melding of an underground comix style with an almost Beano-esque sensibility. Scornwood is a real assault on the senses, and it’s a pretty dense piece of work too, thematically, with quite a bit of room for interpretation in some of its events.

Scornwood feels like it exists in its own world, and I’ve never read or experienced anything quite like it. The almost Lynchian surrealism, blended with a Goonies-esque adventure of kids striking out on their own, proves to be a potent, if incredibly downbeat formula, and unless Boz Mugabe creates another longform work of this ilk, it’s unlikely that we’ll see anything like it again.

You can buy Boz Mugabe’s Scornwood directly from his website.

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