You can tell how absorbed I was in Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by how quickly I finished it and jumped into its sequel. The murder mystery story, a kind of Richard Scarry x Dexter hybrid, was an unbelievably compelling page turner. That said, despite an open end of sorts, I couldn’t see how it could really spawn a sequel.

The story followed anthropomorphic bear Samantha Strong, the owner of a hardware store in a small town (hence the Scarry aspect), who happens to be a serial killer who follows a very clear set of rules which allow her to carry on her activities undetected (and there’s the Dexter). Her calm, orderly and clandestine murders are suddenly put under threat of discovery when a second killer starts to much more visibly make their presence felt in the sleepy, neighbourly town of Woodbrook. Sam took it upon herself to catch and eliminate this new, mystery murderer before her own, horrific crimes were uncovered.

It was masterfully written, and gorgeously illustrated, with the storybook tone juxtaposing brilliantly with some genuinely graphic, gory content. The story did come to a satisfying conclusion, so how is its follow up, Rite of Spring, set in motion?

Early on in the first series, Sam ventures out to the city to claim a random victim. Abducting and then methodically dismembering a kind (also anthropomorphic) duck, she then carefully wraps all of the individual pieces of his body and buries them in the woods.

Fast forward 8 years, and it’s now the 90s; the rise of the internet in the world these animals inhabit mirrors our own, and that duck’s sister has been trying to find any trace of him whatsoever, with absolutely no luck.

With the spread of information and connections that the burgeoning internet is providing, however, it seems that the understandably obsessed duck is going to find her way to Woodbrook…

Despite the fact that we, as readers, were generally on Sam’s side throughout the first series, there’s no denying that she had been responsible for some pretty awful stuff, and definitely deserved to pay for her crimes. To refer back to Dexter, this wasn’t a vigilante dishing out gruesome justice to those who deserved it; her actions were carried out on kind-hearted innocents, to sate her innate, ursine bloodlust.

So a new kind of story begins here, and the focus remains on whether or not Sam will be caught, but this time, with all of the details given on how that young victim’s disappearance has affected those close to him, it does feel as if we want her to face justice.

I doubt, however, that it’ll be that simple. This first issue is a knockout at establishing the setup, however, and we’re promised just as absorbing a ride as we had last time. Welcome back, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees. Let’s see where the Rite of Spring takes us.

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