From Basketful of Heads #2; illustrated by Leomacs, with colors by Dave Stewart

The comics series Basketful of Heads features protagonist June Branch as she attempts to defend herself and rescue her boyfriend from nefarious assailants; armed with a mysterious magic axe that allows her to behead her adversaries in a single stroke while keeping the heads cognizant and talking, June struggles to solve the mystery of her boyfriend’s disappearance, getting information from a growing collection of decapitated heads that she keeps in a basket and covers with a torn American flag. Basketful of Heads benefits from its intriguing characters and secrets, and the comic’s suspense is enhanced by the compelling horror of decapitation.

Written by Joe Hill and illustrated by artist Leomacs with colorist Dave Stewart, Basketful of Heads is set in the year 1983, in the small community of Brody Island, Maine. College student June visits the island to meet her boyfriend Liam Ellsworth as he finishes his summer job serving as a deputy to police chief Wade Clausen. The day June arrives, four male convicts escape from a local prison. Despite Liam’s offer to help, Clausen insists that Liam and June join his wife and son for dinner while he searches for the fugitives. June meets the Clausen family at their home, and is shown Chief Clausen’s collection of Viking antiques, including an 8th century axe.

Later that evening, as a tropical storm hits the island, Liam and June watch the house alone while the Clausen family runs an errand; then the convicts show up, breaking into the house. June hides and is later found by a convict, who tells her that Liam has been taken away by the other convicts. To defend herself, June grabs the axe; in the ensuing confrontation, June discovers the axe’s power when she decapitates her assailant.

From Basketful of Heads #2; illustrated by Leomacs, with colors by Dave Stewart

The comic establishes June as a captivating protagonist, and builds suspense through the mystery of Liam’s abduction, the isolation of Brody Island during the tropical storm, and the threat of the convicts, who are not what they appear to be. But the comic’s horror comes from the unsettling decapitations resulting from the axe’s supernatural powers.

Both June and the decapitated convict struggle to understand what has happened. Readers see panels depicting an upside down June alongside a headless body, as Leomacs renders the viewpoint of the convict’s severed — but still conscious — head. The convict is both terrified and confused, and June is in shock. Later, June cuts off the head of another assailant, who screams inexorably as he tries to process what has happened to him.

Readers will likely find the talking severed heads depicted in the comic quite macabre. The heads are both fascinating and gruesome, and readers may even feel some sympathy for the axe’s loathsome victims, who were menacing antagonists before June swung the axe. The emotional uneasiness generated by the depiction of severed heads is hardwired into human beings; readers’ discomfort is a natural response to the decapitation imagery.

Anthropologist Frances Larson documents the cross-cultural human fascination with decapitated heads in her book, Severed: A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found; Larson notes that human biology compels a strong emotional reaction to a severed head:

“We cannot confront another person’s head without sharing an understanding: face to face, we are peering into ourselves. We are hard-wired to react to a person’s facial expression, spontaneously and unconsciously. We experience an automatic and rapid neurological response to seeing a sad, happy, angry or distressed face which causes us, unconsciously, to mimic its expression. When it is the face of a bodiless head, our physical reflex — that instinctive empathy — conflicts with the knowledge that this person must be dead. After all, what is missing is as important as what remains, and the person’s lost body is as compelling in its absence as the head is absent in its presence.”

Larson also explores the history of fantasy tales featuring severed heads that live on after decapitation, like the “head in a jar” trope found in science fiction stories. Larson traces this concept back to the invention of the guillotine; the mechanism was so swift, observers wondered whether cognizance might persist in the moments right after decapitation, leading to stories like this one:

“During the Revolution, rumours spread of guillotined heads that lived on without their bodies. When the severed heads of two rival members of the National Assembly were placed in the same sack by the executioner, it was said that one bit the other so fiercely it was impossible to separate them.”

(Note the similarities between this gruesome 18th century guillotine story and the first page of Basketful of Heads #1, depicting a quarrelsome conversation between severed heads, as one bites the other.)