Welcome back to Hobtown, the charming but bleak rural village whose placid exterior belies the surreal underbelly teeming below. . . . The second must-read volume of the page-turning series that the New York Times calls “forceful and haunting” starts here in the first fully colored edition from creators Kris Bertin and Alexander Forbes!

Intrepid young investigators Brennan and Pauline are excited for Christmas break, until they’re sent to an extra-credit boarding school called Knotty Pines. After attending their first classes, however, they grow suspicious of the unusually strict headmaster and headmistress, who seem to be controlling their students and transforming them into boneheads and bullies.

On their final night at Knotty Pines, the students are paired up to pledge eternal allegiance to the long-dead Lord Hobb?and to each other?in unholy matrimony! Isolated from their fellow sleuths, Brennan and Pauline forge new alliances to lift a curse that has plagued the good people of Hobtown for centuries.

Kris Bertin is a Halifax-based writer of novels, short stories, graphic novels, and screenplays. His first collection of short stories, Bad Things Happen, won the 2016 Writer's Trust of Canada's Danuta Gleed Award. He is a two-time winner of the Jack Hodgins 'Founders' Award for Short Fiction and his stories have been published in The Walrus, TNQ, The Malahat Review, PRISM International, and many others. Kris Bertin's graphic novel, a surreal mystery story set in a remote east coast village (co-created with artist Alexander Forbes), The Case of the Missing Men, was nominated for a Doug Wright Award. He and his screenwriting partner, Naben Ruthnum, have projects in development at Oddfellows Entertainment. Visit krisbertin.com.

Kris Bertin's profile page

Alexander Forbes and Kris Bertin are childhood friends who studied separate disciplines in order to reunite and make comics as adults. They grew up in Lincoln, New Brunswick, and live in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Alexander Forbes' profile page

Jason Fischer-Kouhi is a cartoonist who grew up in Los Angeles and cut his teeth in Portland, Oregon. When he's not coloring Hobtown, he's making his own comics. His favorite color is yellow.

Jason Fischer-Kouhi's profile page