Just Beyond-The Horror at Happy Landings

Hello, Spongey here.

R.L. Stine has put his hands in a lot of pots over the years. I’ve noticed he’s especially gotten into this lately. I suppose he realized he’s not getting any younger and is crossing things off his bucket list, I don’t know. Some of these are interesting but today we get an example I’ve been wanting to cover since it came out.

In 2019, Bob went into original comics with the series Just Beyond. He did have that Man-Thing mini-series in 2017 which wasn’t exactly warmly received. Before that he had a few mini stories in comics ages ago as part of his early work but this was still his first real attempt hence why it was wonky.

This brings him more into his usual kids horror element, being an anthology as well. There have been four entries with the last one being in 2021. Meaning this may be another of his new efforts that doesn’t last long. It got an In Name Only Disney+ series in 2021 which I liked well enough. But that was it for the series.

The artwork for this is by Kelly and Nicole Matthews who have gone on to do the Magic Tree House graphic novels. Neat. I have read “The Scare School” and “Welcome to Beast Island” which were fine. I have Goodreads reviews that go into more detail but they were their pros and cons and were overall decent. You can see him struggle with the format as well as some of his usual nature. I was vetting them for review and there was some stuff to say but I feel like I wouldn’t add much from what I said before.

I felt a review for those would work better if I just jumped into it so that’s what we are doing. We’re tackling the 2nd one from 2020 which I haven’t read. We’re going fairly blind this time. Hopefully that helps and I do expect some good things based on what I’ve skimmed. With that said, we’ll see how this ends up faring for me.

This, is The Horror at Happy Landings

This cover is eh. The image itself okay but the more photo-real style doesn’t quite work. That alien hand is just three, and it doesn’t evoke too much in me. It’s just…there. It’s okay but nothing too special.

The book opens with our protagonist Annie Walden and her family on a “wilderness weekend” in Happy Landings, Ohio. Along with her is younger brother Parker, annoying cousin Clark and the parents. Also, Annie has red hair, ding ding ding. Of course the kids aren’t into outdoors stuff, while Clark is the annoying jerk/prankster type.

The parents are nature freaks though, so they’re here. Clark gives us bits that would be a chapter cliffhanger in an actual book but here the prank is revealed on the same page. That’s good I guess. His shtick is mainly joking about forest dangers like bears. I hope those things get him instead. Later, Mom goes “birding” while dad has the kids go out to get firewood.

Parker brought his phone but after dropping it, he ends up knocking over a beehive while trying to pick it up. While they got Gary Lutz’ worst nightmare after them, we cut to a spaceship landing. That escalated. I should mention that there are chapters here, with titles. Chapter 2 is called “Morons from Mars” which actually has significance. Stine has said that back in the day he tried to pitch a Goosebumps with that title but it got rejected. He’s told that story a couple times and now the madman finally used it, nice.

Some martians come out of the ship, and they are these hairball things with arms and legs. These are Jupiter and Jammy, great names. They seem to be here by accident and were meant to be going to school. Martian kids, now that’s scary. The ship, which is actually a pod, takes off, leaving them alone.

They run into some bears who swipe at them. They escape them but their info machine, called a KnowIt tells them the nearest shuttle to Mars is two lightyears away. I hope these aren’t villains because I just feel bad for them. Meanwhile, Clark and Mom/Jenny are birding when they see this big martian bird that also went out of the ship.

It attacks Jenny and she’s shaken up after it gets away. She took a video of the creature when she shows it to Dad/Harold, he says he doesn’t see anything. Either she’s a bad director or this thing is a vampire. Now she just looks crazy with these claims. Wait a minute, it’s a parent that isn’t believed by someone? Whoa, a taste of their own medicine.

She gets worried about Parker and Annie and they go to find them. Back with those kids, the martian bird shows up and scares the bees away. Jupiter and Jammy are also here watching these earthlings. They reveal themselves to ask for help. They don’t understand them I guess and they mistake them for squeeze toys and just hurt them a bunch. The real villains.

They’re too small to fight the humans, so instead they must take over their minds. Clearly the logical next step. They quickly jump out and burrow into their minds, that was fast. The kids are aware this is going and now they have these voices in their heads. Big Yeerk energy here. They put these kids to sleep to take over, and the way that is visualized is neat. Can’t use the picture or it’ll be the thumbnail when I post it on Twitter and trust me it’s cool.

They go to the parents who are happy to see them but Dad mentions the firewood. The alien kids head out to get some which the parents just let them do despite the bird being around, even if they try to voice that concern at first. The aliens of course want to get home and the bird has a tracking device on it that will help them get home by putting it on their KnowIt.

But first bring over wood that is literally on fire. How did they light the fire? They calm down from that and try to have dinner but the aliens don’t get earth eating customs. With this and them starting to feel tired in these bodies, I again just feel bad for them. They leave the bodies to go look for the bird.

They bump into a snake but it’s attempts to get them are thwarted by martians having a different pain threshold. So that bear would have done nothing to them, nice.

“Everything is different here. So frightening. It’s only been one day. But…I’m homesick, Juniper”

At this point, these guys are kind of the real protagonists, we’re even getting more emphatic moments with them. The bird finds them but attacks them for some reason, getting at Jammy specifically.. Back with the kids, they have no memory of the time the aliens spent with them. This bit makes me feel for them, so we have a connection to them now, yay.

They tell Clark about their memory loss and since the parents aren’t around right now, he has to not believe them. Meanwhile, Jammy was torn in half but he gets put back together easily. Alright, these things can’t die so it’s now hard to feel too much for them. This bird was trained for war and being from the same planet doesn’t protect you from that.

So they gotta find some way to get the tracker off it. They think the kids’ bodies will help since they’re less small so that’s their next method. They head back and take over the kids. They act kind of threatening and don’t just tell them the not actually evil reason they’re doing this, which feels like a mistake on their part.

Clark sees this at least. He tries to tell the parents but, you know what the result is. It’s stratifying when it’s a jerk this is happening to. The parents announce that they now want to leave early due to the bird. This is bad for the alien kids so they beg to stay. Their excuse is they like being outside now but I feel like the parents will think avoiding a monster bird is more important.

And they do as we smash cut to them at home so fast it gives me whiplash. We get some “aliens don’t get human stuff”  humor, which includes messing with a toilet. Literal toilet humor, I was wondering when we’d sink to that. Annie suddenly comes to, with the alien telling her to go to sleep.

It gets huffy and zaps her. This is their first actually malicious act and I still think it would be better to just…explain things to them. Annie is put to sleep so at least she’s not totally hurt. Jupiter does their homework but in Martian, whoops. Parker comes to as well and Zammy (not Jammy, but I’m keeping it as I swear it was written that way but no?) tells him to not fight.

He’s not gonna do that. He fights back so dad can come in and ask the age old question; “Why you hitting yourself?. Zammy gets control but then Parker’s friend David shows up to play video games. Aliens aren’t true gamers so he tries to wake Parker up to help him. It doesn’t work. Annie/Jupiter pops up and they goof around which makes David wonder what their deal is today.

He’s suspicious, what do they do now?

“Let’s tear David into two halves and hide the halves somewhere”

Well duh, it’s the only logical step. They try this method but they drop him due to Zammy sneezing. He’s allergic to Earth or something, this was brought up before. With this, the martians finally just go search for the bird and leave the bodies to do so.

They end up at a diner where they are spotted and attacked. They look just like cute little balls but they find that gross, so they run away.

“That went well”

Hahahha, Just Beyond was filmed in front of a fake studio audience. Clark happens to be around and spots the two. He chases them and they end up in a shop where the aliens hide in this thing of toys that look like Club Penguin Puffles to me. Clark looks for them and asks the owner if he’s seen these creatures.

“These look like Sponge creatures”

“Sponge? Oh yes. That’s a very popular cartoon series. I have a few in the back”

Ha.

They escape but this guy randomly picks them up and goes “I’n taking cute critters home to my kids”. Who even does that? These things could belong to the store for all you know. Off page, they just take the man over and head to Annie/Parker’s house. They jump into the kids for…reasons. They wanna find that bird, they don’t any specifics body for that.

Clark comes in and tells the parents about things again but you know the rest. Jupier and Zammy head out and plan to drive out to the forest, and give the kids control as they hope they know how to drive this thing. The actual children protest but they are zapped into doing it. Some fun chaos later, they end up back in the forest.

The martians leave their bodies and start their plan to catch the bird. That plan is to use one of them as bait to get the bird to come. Screwing over their own is their most evil act tbh.

“There’s only one part of your plan I don’t like” “What’s that?’ ‘All of it”

Okay that was funny.

They start the plan and it works at first, bringing the bird here. But they can’t find a vine to use to grab the other one to save them and end up using a snake. That snake scares the big alien bird because it’s a wuss. Hey I like the setup and payoff, as this is the snake from earlier.

This lets them get the tracker and contact mars. The voice on the end says there’s been a search for them and they are finally coming to bring them home. I’m happy for them. But Clark shows up as I swear he has teleportation magic now. He grabs them to prove to the parents they are real instead of just taking the L.

They plead with Clark, turning on their translator to do so which now works but Clark doesn’t care. I wasn’t expecting the random prankster to be the true villain but here we are. Other Martians land to get Jupiter and Zammy but now they’re gonna miss it. Parker and Annie are on Clark’s side, so the kids are the villain this time, that’s cool.

Suddenly the bird comes back for a 2nd helping, with the snake gone. The next page shows the bird stunned which lets them leave. Wait, how did that happen? Is there a page/panel missing? They take over the kids to get to the ship faster. They get there and leave the bodies. They thank the kids for their service and they will never forget them. Parker returns the notion in a nice way. they sure changed their tunes quickly.

The other martians see the “humans” coming and close the ship door before our martians can get in, uh-oh. Thankfully it gets stuck so they open it, allowing them to get in. Yay! Clark runs in to get them and the door closes. Clark doesn’t want that but they say they are just passengers, they can’t do anything. This is shown in a creepy weird way.

“Why are you so nervous? You like scary things, right?”

“You’re going to love Mars”

The End. Abrupt but honestly, still perfect. No notes. Clark getting this is satisfying and it doesn’t really undo the sympathetic nature of the aliens either, generally. I’m happy with this ending, good job.

Final Thoughts:

Gotta say, this was a pleasant surprise. The others I read were fine but this was the best of them. I wasn’t sure about it at first but once it gets clear what it’s going for, it gets to be pretty good. One big thing that helps it is the use of the medium.

The artwork is really nice, mostly regarding the use of color. It uses it well to sell certain situations, which is cool given things are pretty simple. It has some cool moments and nice lighting near the end as well. The others overused caption boxes as narration, forgetting that this is a visual medium but this doesn’t have that.

It’s basically third person so captions are spars here, so the visuals speak for themselves more often. This does mean I can’t latch onto the kids too much, without the “Hi I’m 12” stuff to fall back on. But with the angle it goes for, it’s less of an issue.

It can feel padded at times, with the back and forth. It’s short but could be tighter in some spots. It’s a lighter one and not every bit of humor works per say, although most of it is fine. It feels standard at first with the kids being nothing too special but it comes into its own when we get into the meat.

Here’s a story where the aliens are basically the protagonists. We follow them for most of it, and they have this journey of trying to get back home. A few forceful moments aside, they do nothing bad and Stine does a good job of putting in these little moments to make us feel sorry for them.

Their “aliens don’t get human stuff” shtick is tired but it isn’t too overdosed, and the visuals do help make some land better for me. I was so worried they would try to make them still villains despite everything but thank god it didn’t do that. The kids come around on them and we are totally meant to feel for them by the end.

Clark has an interesting role. He starts as the annoying prankster who seemed pointless but he becomes the true villain. We also get the “you gotta believe me” stuff with him and while it gets repetitive, it works because he is the villain so it’s a switch up from it happening with the sympathetic main kid. The main kids are more just dealing with the effects of stuff going on. That can make them feel eh but it’s an interesting change at least.

I wish there was a bit more in some places, like how the kids change their mind on the martians on a dime. Maybe you could make them a villain like Clark but just making that nice bit feel earned works too. Either way, I dig the ending, it gives us a creepy moment while punishing the right person.

There are flaws with the pacing and such but in the end, this was pretty good. Again, it picked up in my mind when I got to see what it was going for. It shakes up the usual Stine formula by making the “monsters” the sympathetic ones and it does that well. It has some usual Stine-isms but he puts a fresh spin on it and commits to letting us have empathy for the martians.

That’s cool. I wouldn’t say it’s great or anything as it could have been tighter in some places. But in the end, the unique angle and likable martins made it a good one. It helps that it’s simple and easy to follow. I like the others I read fine but this stands as the best. Not perfect but certainly refreshing at least.

Rating: Good

Well, that was a good time. Maybe we’ll do the reaming one someday but for now, this worked. This inspired me, I’ll go and re-watch that streaming service. Let me boot up Disney+ to watch-OH WAIT.

…Anyway. next time, it is time for another Fear Street trilogy. This time my Twitter folks get to vote on what I do. Will I explore a very specific spooky address, deal with more haunted cars or jump to the modern day of 2005? Only time will tell.

See ya.

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