“The Lonesome Hunters #1”: Supernatural “Up” With Monster Hunting [Review]

The Lonesome Hunters #1 offers us a rather bizarre yet interesting crossover. That is: what would happen if you crossed over Up with Supernatural?

The Lonesome Hunters #1: Details

The Lonesome Hunters #1 is the first issue of a new fantasy action-adventure horror comic book series by Tyler Crook (Harrow County). Crook is not only the writer, but also the artist, letterer, and cover artist. In pretty much every way that matters, Crook is the sole person responsible for this comic book through and through. Dark Horse Comics is publishing this comic book though, so there’s that.

The Lonesome Hunters #1 will go on sale on June 22, 2022 for a retail price of $3.99. You can preorder it directly from Dark Horse Comics.

Warning: spoilers for The Lonesome Hunters #1 below. If you want to read the action and horror for yourself, then stop here, and come back once you’ve lived a life of regret like the main character had.

The Lonesome Hunters #1: Plot Summary

The Lonesome Hunters #1 starts us off a hundred years ago by introducing us to young Howard: newbie monster hunter for the local church obsessed with hunting “heresies”. Armed solely with a magic sword apparently stolen from “a creature as old as the Earth itself”, he along with his father and a group of fanatics storm a random building where a bunch of people in knockoff Guy Fawkes masks have apparently summoned a deer-like demon. Or just a giant talking deer. it’s hard to tell. Regardless, Howard, his father, and the fanatics storm the building. In the ensuing fight, everyone dies except for Howard and the deer, and the building gets set on fire. The deer contemplates killing Howard and taking the sword, but decides that would be boring, and so helps Howard survive the fire instead.

The story then fast-forwards a century later to the present day, where Howard is just a bitter old man full of regrets and living in a pretty rundown neighborhood. Everyone he knew and loved has been dead for a century, and all he has is a magic sword to remember them by. There doesn’t seem to be much point to his life now. That all changes when he meets a young girl named Lupe.

Up: The Horror Story?

Lupe was just a random girl who shoved a silver pocket watch into Howard’s hands after being called up by her uncle. Howard thinks nothing of it, and just takes some sleeping pills for a catnap in his apartment room. However, his catnap is interrupted by Lupe banging on his door. Apparently, the uncle opened the window to deal with a magpie pecking at it, but then said magpie attacked him. Worse, said magpie is now perched on the uncle’s head, glowing, and both the magpie and the uncle have rolled back eyes, with the magpie chanting some kind of weird magpie ritual spell all the while.

Obviously, this isn’t a good thing. Thus Howard chant a spell of his own to thwart the magpie, while Lupe runs off to get a box for him. Inside the box turns out to be that magic sword from all those years ago. It looks a bit old and chipped, but still functional. Will it succeed in slaying the evil magical magpie before she can do anything creepier? Well, that’s what we’ll find out in The Lonesome Hunter #2.

The Lonesome Hunters #1: The Good

The story is the best part of The Lonesome Hunters #1, as befitting the artist of Harrow County. Tyler Crook wrote a pretty compelling and interesting story here. Like I said before, it reminds me of this weird mix of Up and Supernatural, mostly the former. As a fan of that Pixar film, I’m rather fond of this story type. The implication that Lupe’s uncle was a deeply flawed parent at best seems to be a good setup for Howard to be that good parent to Lupe. On the flip side, Lupe just might be what Howard needs to allow him to find some kind of closure for his traumatic past. Taking care of an innocent kid might be what Howard needs to finally purge his inner demons once and for all. From the looks of that giant deer thing, it might just be literal.

The artwork is another big plus for The Lonesome Hunters #1. You can definitely feel the Harrow County influence in the artwork. That weird mix of creepy horror and occasionally cute expressions makes all of the characters feel like they came right from Harrow County. I wouldn’t mind seeing more of the latter than the former though, given the structure of the story.

The Lonesome Hunters #1: The Bad

My only complaint with The Lonesome Hunters #1 is that there are not quite enough interactions between Howard and Lupe yet for my liking. Specifically of the cute and funny kind. If this story premise is like Up, I would like to see more of that. I really hope there’s some of that coming in the next issue. Your opinion here may differ though depending on your tastes.

Source: Dark Horse Comics