In September of 1983, college student June Branch is visiting the idyllic Brody Island, Maine, where her boyfriend Liam Ellsworth is working as an officer for the local chief of police, Wade Clausen. The day takes an unpleasant turn when a hurricane rolls in, cutting off the island from the mainland, just as a group of convicts have escaped a prison transport and are running loose on the island. Finding herself in a tight spot, June arms herself with an old Viking axe from Chief Clausen's collection which turns out to be able to sever the head of its victims while leaving the heads still alive. The axe comes in handy as June finds herself being hunted all night as the storm rages.
In 2021, DC started publishing a sequel miniseries called Refrigerator Full of Heads. It was written by Rio Youers with art by Tom Fowler. Taking a place a year after June's misadventure, the story returns to Brody Island, with the axe resting at the bottom of the bay, but features a new cast of characters.
Tropes
- Action Survivor: What June Branch will probably become.
- And I Must Scream: Anyone beheaded by the axe ends up a living severed head, apparently unable to die. All of them end up trapped at the bottom of the sea, and as Refrigerator reveals, they're still there a year later despite partially rotting away.
- Bait-and-Switch: The story initially sets up the four escaped convicts to be the antagonists hunting June and Liam. It's revealed that the four villains are actually the corrupt police chief and his son, another corrupt cop, and the Mayor, who mistakenly believe that Liam is an undercover federal agent working against them.
- Closed Circle: When the storm hits, Brody Island is cut off from the mainland because the only bridge to it is partially covered in seawater.
- Continuity Nod: In Refrigerator Full of Heads a Stailinn Geal meteorite gets mentioned.
- Dirty Cop: Chief Clausen, Sal, and Liam are all corrupt.
- Face Death with Dignity: When the bisected Chief Clausen is faced with imminent death by immolation, he simply chuckles and calmly tells June to "knock yourself out", unlike his corrupt partners and son, all of whom constantly beg and whine for mercy post-decapitation.
- Fingore: June has to cut off one of her thumbs to slip out of handcuffs Hank had used to lock her in place.
- Losing Your Head: What the axe does, only it keeps them alive and talking.
- Peek-a-Boo Corpse: When Chief Clausen throws June into the bay tied to an anchor, she ends up right among the dead bodies of the escaped convicts, who were killed for their jumpsuits and dumped there.
- Poor Communication Kills: The whole plot of targeting Liam and June arose from Hank Clausen overhearing a pair of federal agents discussing their insider on Brody Island, Ellie, which Hank misheard as the initials L.E. Believing this to implicate Liam Ellsworth, Hank investigated Liam's bedroom, where he found an empty cassette case for a bootleg of a The Police album marked "Police", which Hank assumed was recorded evidence Liam intended to turn over.
- Shout-Out: Like many other of Joe Hill's works, Basketful of Heads also includes references to Stephen King — specifically, the inmates that have escaped transport are from Shawshank Prison.
- Slasher Movie: Basketful has a lot of slasher story tropes like taking place during a stormy night, featuring a young female main character and a series of killings committed with a big axe, but with the twist that the main character is the one running around with the axe and only kills in self-defense because the people slasher movie characters would normally go to for help, like the police, are all corrupt and are the ones who are trying to kill her.
- Suspiciously Apropos Music: After everything June has gone through, when she drives off in the end, the first song that comes on the radio is "Murder by Numbers" by The Police, which leaves June Laughing Mad at the irony.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Brody Island is one of these, with the police chief heading a marijuana-growing operation to sell to rich tourists, which is also complicit in the death of Emily Dunn and the subsequent coverup.
- Wham Shot: Issue #2 ends with a panel of the dead escapee's body, showing that he's dressed as a cop with a badge under his orange jumpsuit.
