Mark Russell Writes About The Horrorshow That Is American Thanksgiving

Posted in: Ahoy, Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News | Tagged: Mark Russell, thanksgiving

Mark Russell writes about the horrorshow that is American Thanksgiving with Mauricet from Ahoy Comics

Thanksgiving is a gory and timely new horror-comedy one-shot from writer Mark Russell of Flintstones and Billionaire Island, artist Mauricet, letterer Rob Steen and publisher Ahoy Comics. Mark Russell has written a letter intended for retailers about just why he wrote Thanksgiving, which he has shared with Bleeding Cool. He says;

“I hope this letter finds you well which, as time goes by, becomes less of a benign pleasantry and more of a genuine concern. Not as it pertains to you personally, as such, but as it pertains to all of us and everyone trapped in the deathbed of American democracy. I wrote the horror one-shot Thanksgiving to ask a simple question. Who are we? It’s a question I’ve been afraid to answer for some time now as I watch the country I thought I knew devolve into a soulless police state facilitated in equal parts by the apathy or joyful cooperation of fellow citizens.”

“So “how did this come to be” seems less relevant of a question than “who caused this to be”. The short and unsatisfying answer being that we did. So who are the people who sit across the table from us every year at Thanksgiving Dinner? Who are the people who want masked gangs to kidnap people off the street in the name of law enforcement? Who are the people who shrug when the state disappears people, including their own family members, into detention camps and overseas super-max prisons, regardless of whether or not they have ever even been convicted of a crime? Who are the people who, for years, told us that we needed a veritable flood of assault rifles and handguns onto our streets to keep us free from government tyranny and then sat back and cracked a beer when the tyranny they warned us of came? Who allowed, or more accurately, willed this to happen? The people we look at across the Thanksgiving table. The people we smile at as they pass the greenbeans. Were we always like this? Did the people at the Thanksgiving table somehow gradually become monsters, and we just didn’t notice because we were too focused on the candied yams? Or has it always been there, just masked by the fact that we want to imagine the people we love are worthy of it?

“This is what the issue Thanksgiving is about. It uses the Thanksgiving dinner as a metaphor for how being family blinds us to the monsters at the table and about how easy it is in passing the rolls to become monsters ourselves. And it is, as you’ve probably guessed, a horror story. Thanksgiving speaks as entertainingly as I dare about something I can no longer ignore. It’s a story told around the campfire in which the campfire itself is the killer. But I don’t know what else to do at this point. I don’t know how we begin to get better without first telling a story about what has gone wrong. Thank you for taking a chance on this title. It meant a lot to me that AHOY was willing to publish it and that you are willing to read it.

“Yours sincerely, Mark Russell”

The oversized 48-page issue about a family dinner gone horribly wrong will feature three grisly covers by Mauricet—a main cover, a “Blood for Dinner” variant, and a “Turkey Death” variant—and land in stores on the 22nd of October, 2025. Which is presumably around Thanksgiving Day time.

And on the comic book itself, here is the Ahoy Comics PR.

“Thanksgiving: a day for American families, when the alienated, the estranged, and the politically antagonistic come together to perform unity—until the strain inevitably tears them apart. But for one family, the addition of a cruel and deadly secret—involving the continuing rampage of the mysterious Turkeyneck Killer—solidly binds them together in the saddest, most shameful way. This fall, pull up a chair at your own risk at THANKSGIVING, a gory and timely new horror-comedy one-shot from writer Mark Russell (X-Factor, Second Coming), artist Mauricet (Howl), letterer Rob Steen and publisher AHOY Comics. The oversized 48-page issue about a family dinner gone horribly wrong will feature three grisly covers by Mauricet—a main cover, a “Blood for Dinner” variant, and a “Turkey Death” variant—and land in stores on October 22, 2025… just in time to ruin your holiday.

“Thanksgiving is a black comedy using the most American of holidays as a metaphor for what our nation is in danger of becoming,” said writer Mark Russell. “t tells the story of a nuclear family with many of the same divisions you find within our nation and how deep the rifts between people become while we aren’t paying attention. About how a monster lurks in plain sight, but we choose not to see it.”

“Welcome to the Grandts family’s Thanksgiving dinner,” said artist Mauricet. “Please take a seat at the table. We are about to start serving the meal. For the appetizer, you will have a bit of dysfunctional America wrapped in cynical humor. For the main course, we offer you one of the most original serial killers the country has known. Still hungry? Expect a rather surprising dessert…”

“Mark got mad about something big and wrote this story—I think to help process it,” said AHOY Comics Editor-in-Chief Tom Peyer. “I think it’ll help us all process it. Whenever he gets mad, I hope he brings it to AHOY. Mauricet, meanwhile, is doing the best work of his career, but then he always seems to be.”

Thanksgiving #1 will land in comic shops on October 22, 2025.

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