The Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City

 
The Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City

by Brandon Leach
Secret Acres
2016
 

 

After enjoying an excerpt in Best American Comics, I decided to seek out the complete Pterodactyl Hunters in the Gilded City. I enjoyed reading it, but also found it disappointing, because it's too short.
 

The story is set in New York, 1905, in a world where the city is besieged by pterodactyls that eat people. We follow Declan, an apprentice hunter, who spends his nights in a watchtower, while his older brother Eamon patrols the skies in a hot air balloon.

 
In the opening scene, Eamon kills the next-to-last pterodactyl in the city. Then he and his increasingly unreliable balloonmate Alfie spend the next night unsuccessfully hunting the last one. Declan spends the book wishing he could get a chance to hunt, wondering what he'll do for a job after all the pterodactyls are dead, and pining after Bridget, who has become a nun ... but maybe likes him too.

 
Declan prepares Eamon's harpoon guns, and when one misfires and blinds Eamon, he feels guilty. Alfie seems to think it was deliberate sabotage. Declan gets to take his brother's place in the balloon, he and Alfie find the last pterodactyl, and the book ends abruptly on a question - can Declan get over his nerves to take the shot and kill the monster, or will he hesitate or miss and let it get away? And either way, what will happen next?

 
While I guess technically the story is complete, I found this ending unsatisfying, and I also felt like Leach did too much set-up to have the story end there. Alfie and Bridget in particular seem to have their own stories in motion that are cut short.

 
I really like Leach's art. It's sketchy and loose, but full of life. None of the buildings he draws stand up straight or have any right angles, but he covers them in period details, and his backgrounds look like a neighborhood of tenements in turn-of-the-century New York. The pterodactyls seethe with anger. And the style really fits the story. Declan is kind of mopey and uncertain, feels like he hasn't accomplished anything, and doesn't know what to do next. The neighborhood is poor and has suffered from years of predation. The slightly shabby quality of the art suits that.

 
I just wish the thing was longer! The story can end there, but I don't think it should.