How The Best Hunter In The Village Met Her Death is a comic book by Molly Ostertag. It was the winner of the 2018 Ignatz Award for Outstanding Story. It can be purchased on Gumroad here
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The titular hunter is famed throughout the village for being unmatched in her skill in hunting game, and prides herself on pleasing her husband with her talent. But there’s more to her than others know, mysteries even she doesn’t know about herself, exemplified in her unusual birthmark that aches with some kind of hidden purpose. These secrets loom under the surface, until the hunter’s encounter with a mysterious beast overturn the entire foundation of her life.
How The Best Hunter In The Village Met Her Death contains examples of:
- Achey Scars: The hunter has a large birthmark on her back that aches every so often and grows larger after her encounters with the Beast. Fur grows out of them when she succumbs to the Beast’s allure.
- Darker and Edgier: Most of Ostertag’s fantasy stories are for children but How The Best Hunter, featuring blood, nudity, and romance with an animal is strictly for adults.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: The story, written by a queer author, centers around a woman whose marriage with her husband is seemingly happy, but she is secretly dissatisfied and longs for a forbidden attachment. Her description of having to ‘return his love’ after a party and feeling ashamed of it is particularly metaphorically suggestive.
- Feminist Fantasy: No one in the medieval-period village has any problem with a woman being a hunter and her husband being domestic, but a closer look uncovers how this dynamic is still one where the woman is expected to do all the hard work while the man doesn’t bother to learn essential living skills.
- Full-Frontal Assault: In her final confrontation with the Beast, the hunter faces it down completely in the nude.
- House Husband: While his wife hunts, the husband tends to their home. Despite her pride in hunting, the hunter resents that her husband has noticeably not bothered to learn how to fend for himself. After she leaves, he learns to hunt, and it’s left unclear if he’s intentionally attacking his former partner.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: The Beast resembles a deer but with the sharp teeth of a predator and oddly shimmering eyes. The hunter herself becomes a beast resembling a mix between a ram and a mountain lion.
- Rage Breaking Point: After the feast and a night spent with her husband, the hunter cannot sleep and continues to ponder the Beast. When her husband insists she return to bed, she loses her temper, feeling he is ungrateful, and slashes him across the face with her bare hands.
- Riddle for the Ages: The hunter is said to have been discovered all alone as an infant, with nothing more than her mysterious mark on her back. It’s never revealed where she came from, or what this may suggest about her eventual transformation into a beast.
- Scars Are Forever: The hunter’s scars from her first encounter with the Beast remain, as do the slashes on the husband’s face after the hunter attacked him. The hunter’s scars received in animal form from her husband’s arrows are said to “never completely heal, but they fade.”
- Transformation Fiction: The hunter becomes a beast too and runs off with the creature to live in the wilderness.
