Review by Karl Verhoven
Meredith McClaren immediately grabs the attention by opening Meat Eaters with a girl we later come to know as Ashley Moore lying dead in a forest, then coming back to life and staggering back home. When she wakes up in the morning she notices her toast tastes funny. That’s the first indication prompting further investigation leading to Ashley asking herself whether she’s a zombie. Well, the lurid cover goes some way to answering that question.
The cover, though, is deceptive, suggesting full-blown horror that never actually manifests, as McClaren’s primary interest is the human problems of supernatural conditions. In this world all kinds of supernatural types walk the Earth, but instead of trying to feast on every human their aim is to fit in as unobtrusively as they can. An arbitrary solution is coconut water working just fine as a blood substitute, but there’s little than can be done about the craving for raw meat.
Treating the condition of being undead from a human perspective is a neat and different approach to the concept. Ashley can take advice from others she runs into, but they’re not always the most reliable, so just as through most of her actual life she’s left figuring things out for herself. It makes Meat Eaters a weird type of coming of age story as Ashley is told early that there’s no reversing her new state. Mostly, though she just wants to be left alone, but an unusual moment of something going right means that’s not going to happen.
An odd story is accompanied by some experimental art, although that might not seem to be the case given the tidy cartooning. Diving further in, though, reveals cross-sections, x-ray views and Ashley distinguished by being largely grey in a colour world. This is mixed with attractively drawn pages ensuring the story transmits.
Ultimately, and surprisingly, Meat Eaters becomes about taking responsibility, something Ashley has in many ways avoided. “Just because there’s some other creep here doesn’t mean we have to deal with it” would at one time have been precisely Ashley’s attitude, but now she sees the world differently. Does McClaren intend the entire story to be a metaphor for coping with adversity? Probably not, but it works that way and ties up surprisingly well in what’s actually quite heartwarming. Not what the cover promised, eh?
