It’s been a few weeks since I finished the last issue of Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees by Patrick Horvath but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been thinking about it almost daily. I had been reading an article about the Eisner nominations for 2024 where it was given the best new series nomination. And the second piece fell into place: Hoopla had the series.

Believe me, I tried to pace myself. I borrowed the first and second issue. Then waited a day before borrowing the third through sixth. I did spread out reading them over several days though I had to resist the urge to ignore work and household duties to sit and read them all in one sitting. It’s the age-old bookworm problem– the compulsion to sit and read it through because it’s THAT good but the knowledge that once you’ve read it, you can’t read it again for the first time, so you have to slow down.

So, I did have them at my fingertips with Hoopla, though I do also now have it on my list to own. When they’re this good, it must be owned. The combination of storytelling and stark visuals (even as evidenced in the cover art) create an air of disturbing questions that must be answered by reading them. And when you meet Samantha Strong, a brown bear living in an idyllic small town operating a business who confesses that she doesn’t murder the locals, well, you know it’s something you need to know more about. Science meets mystery. Intrigue meets turmoil. Curiosity meets wit.

Each issue moves the needle a little closer to a resolution. And when (in this case because it was a digital read) I swiped to the last page, read it, and paused. The complete picture, set up from the very first pages of the first issue was all wrapped up and I was not the same. Who could be?

The series is smart in the same way I was taken completely by W. Maxwell Prince’s Swan Songs. I feel smarter for having read them. I value the creativity that the creators put into their work. I marvel at the work that goes into capturing a piece of the human experience that can reach out from the pages of a comic to shift perspective and make me think deeply.