Summary

• The second issue of Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees continues the story of friendly animals in a small town, but things get disturbing when an elderly citizen's corpse is displayed for all to see.
• Samantha Strong, a carpenter and shop owner, is not only trying to solve the murder but also hiding her own deadly secret - she has been a serial killer for 20 years.
• The new killer challenges Sam's clean and tidy method by crucifying the victim on a parade float, creating tension and uncertainty about the killer's motives and connection to Sam.

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees, for those desperate to see more of this disturbing and cute world. Friendly anthropomorphic animals bustle about a small town, taking care of each other and holding parades, but the peace is upended when one of their oldest citizens' corpses is put on full display. Carpenter and shop owner Samantha Strong needs to find out who this demented murderer is - before anyone realizes that she is also a serial killer.

This mashup of Animal Crossing and Dexter already had excellent world-building in its first issue, released this past October. Animal people inhabit a world similar to ours, and Woodbrook is a peaceful small town that could have popped off the pages of a Richard Scarry book. Sam loves her community, and never turns down a chance to help her friends and neighbors, but she also harbors a deadly secret: over the past 20 years, she has murdered 43 people and never been caught.

However, Sam never killed anyone she knew, or anyone from Woodbrook. Someone new is messing with her perfect little life.

A Serial Killer Needs to Catch a Serial Killer

Writer and artist Patrick Horvath said in an interview that he was inspired by a real murder in a small Belgian town when he created this series. The story of a serial killer having to hunt another serial killer also brings to mind the plot of Dexter, the successful Showtime series that ran from 2006-2013. That serial killer also had a set of rules he lived and murdered by in order to justify their crimes to himself. Samantha's rules have kept her safe for more than 20 years: never kill anyone in Woodbrook, and always kill someone random. She also keeps her murders incredibly clean, with tarps, paint cans, and other tools from her carpentry shop. Her catchphrase both at her day job and in her secret life is, "Everything neat, and everything tidy."

This is in sharp contrast to whoever killed poor old Martin. An elderly man with dementia, he would have been an easy mark for the second killer. Rather than quietly getting away with it as Sam has, the new killer has crucified Martin's body on a parade float, revealed during Woodbrook's bicentennial celebration. They wanted to announce their cruelty to as many people as possible in the town, but it remains to be seen if this is really meant as a challenge to Sam from someone who knows what she's been up to.

Are Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees' Animals Really Animals?

As Sam cleans up her most recent murder, she sees another brown bear, albeit a naked one, walking on all fours. This doesn't seem to be the neighborhood pervert but a regular wild animal. There's a butcher's shop in Woodbrook, the Chopping Block, that serves pork; the cover to issue #2 includes the dark scene of a pig woman looking in the window in horror at a severed pig's head and ham hocks on display. The animals may be a metaphor for real people; Sam says her murders muffle the voice in her head, so she may also be perceiving other people as animals to make her killing easier. That said, the anthropomorphized animal people may just live alongside normal animals as a way of heightening the horror of this mysterious series. Either way, Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees will be a wild ride as the story from IDW Publishing continues.

Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees #2 is available December 13 from IDW Publishing.