Jessica Farm

by Josh Simmons Hot on the heels of his first graphic novel, House, Simmon's Jessica Farm fuses serialized adventure, fantasy, and psychological horror and stamps it with his signature macabre sensibility in his atmospheric new graphic novel. Like a Lynchian take on Alice in Wonderland, Jessica Farm opens with an exterior of what could be any Midwestern farmhouse. Once inside, we track the titular heroine as she bounds out of bed on Christmas morning and goes about her routine, eventually breakfasting with her grandparents. The banality of the situation is subverted by a ratcheting sense of dread, as we discover that Jessica's increasingly nightmarish house is filled with creatures around every corner - some whimsical, some sexual, some despairing, and some malevolent.