That's the way the teddy bear has her picnic...
Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees is a 2024 comic book by Patrick Horvath.
Samantha Strong, a brown bear, lives in the peaceful little town of Woodbrook, where life is nice and slow and everybody knows everybody. A perfect place... except for the fact that Samantha has a hobby of driving to the city, abducting a random person, and taking them out to the woods where she chops them up and buries them, which she's been doing for over twenty years. Despite this, all is well and good in Woodbrook... until a dead body is found strung up on a parade float for the town's bicentennial. With the town thrown into a panic, Samantha vows to find who's upset things before her little hobby is discovered.
Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees contains examples of:
- Ain't Too Proud to Beg: Cherry dies begging for her life.
- And I Must Scream: In the final volume, Sam injects Nigel with curare to paralyze him. She tells him that she used to use botulinum to paralyze people, but curare is something one can grow at home.
- Asshole Victim: Cherry fucking Gherkins, who's incredibly unpleasant to everyone except her husband.
- The Bad Guy Wins: In the end, Samantha successfully pins all her murders on Nigel, the sheriff apologizes for suspecting her, and the town slowly goes back to normal. There's also no indication that Sam is going to stop killing people, only that she might take a short break for all the excitement to die down.
- Beat It by Compulsion:
- Sam always carves her victims up, puts their pieces into paint cans, and buries them in separate holes. Not getting rid of them properly comes back to bite her when an offended Nigel uses them to reveal her secret to the town.
- Nigel obsessively takes pictures of his victims and keeps his weapons in a little lockbox... that lockbox and the negatives in his darkroom permit allow Sam to prove that he was the Woodbrook murderer all along.
- Beneath Notice: Issue 6 shows that Nigel is virtually ignored by a lot of people in Woodbrook, with a lot of people he interacts with being unable to remember his name or remembering it wrong. He clearly resents this.
- Beneath Suspicion: Both Sam and the real killer- the former is just the friendly owner of the local hardware store, while the latter is just Lola's nice son.
- Bittersweet Ending: Sam kills Nigel, meaning he won't be killing anyone else, but she was also able to convince everyone she was innocent, leaving her free to continue her own killings.
- Broken Pedestal: Nigel idolised Sam and started killing people to get her attention, with the ultimate intention of teaming up with her. In response, Sam tells him that they're not teaming up, they're not friends, and he can kill whoever he wants, but he needs to keep it out of Woodbrook. He is not happy.
- Call-Back: In the final issue, after Sam paralyzes Nigel, she decides to taunt him in the exact way he did when he framed her in issue 4. By tauntingly running him through how she set this trap up and how she's going to frame the scene up against him. And then taunting him over him "killing" the victim involved. Only difference is, Sam targeted someone Nigel actually cared about.Sam: I don't pretend to know what love is... ...your mother did, though. She knew all about what you'd been doing, and still went on loving you. Did you know she knew? That's so special. How could you kill her, Nigel? The only person in this whole world who loved you. How could you do that to her? Oh well.
- Carnivore Confusion: One cover for issue 2 features Cherry staring with some morbid fascination at a pig's head in a deli display. Of course, this mostly serves as a visual metaphor, and the actual comic clarifies that sapient and non-sapient animals exist together in this world.
- Commonality Connection:
- Since he was a child, Nigel had always felt that Sam was special and interesting, not like the other people in Woodbrook. This is most likely due to some subconscious recognition of their mutual insanity.
- Subverted when Nigel thinks that as soon as Sam learns he's been serial killing in an effort to impress her she'll be overjoyed and eagerly accept him as an associate. Sam is not and does not.
- Control Freak: Although she doesn't let it show around people (save for emphasizing neatness and tidiness in her shop), Samantha commits murder because she finds the notion of shutting down the chaos of a life and having utter control over something (namely her victim's body) to be a centering experience that quiets the voices in her head somewhat. In Issue 5, after being framed as the killer and forced to go on the run, the lack of control sends her mental health spiralling.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: Marvin- disemboweled, arms split in two and draped over the crosspiece of a float, and the killer nailed his ankles to the mast.
- Didn't Think This Through: Issue 4 reveals that the killer stalked Sam, discovered that she was a serial killer and started killing people to impress her so she'd want to team up with him. It apparently never occurred to him that a serial killer who does as much as they can to conceal their murders and the remains of their victims is not going to be the kind of person to whom the very public, attention-grabbing murders he's committed would appeal at all.
- Nigel apparently never realised that A, framing Sam for his murders would put him at the top of her shit list, B, he was making an enemy of someone who's very logical, methodical, has access to tools and weapons and has much more experience killing people than he does, and C, if Sam came back to Woodbrook, it'd be to clear her name or get revenge, and both of those would result in a bad outcome for him.
- Dissonant Serenity: Although Sam smiles when dealing with others as a way to mask her sociopathy, it seems that when she's committing murder the calm and relief it causes brings her a genuine relaxed smile.
- Doesn't Like Guns: Samantha disdains using guns to kill, saying they're for idiots who don't know what they're doing.
- "Eureka!" Moment: Sam has one in Issue 5 while watching two non-sapient bears fight over a deer one of them killed, and seeing one kill the other.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Sam mentions that she regards Lola as the closest thing she has to an actual friend, and seems to be genuinely worried about her physical condition. Not that this stops her from killing Lola as part of her revenge against Nigel. Nigel also seems to care about his mother—she may be the only one he feels a connection to, besides Sam.
- Evil Feels Good: After he starts killing, Nigel becomes almost intoxicated on the euphoria he got from murdering people and leaving the whole town utterly terrified. It proves to be his downfall, because he got so hyped up on how good it felt that he obviously didn't think that anyone could hurt him or stop him, and as Issue 6 shows, that's not the case at all.
- Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: After cornering Cherry in the elementary school and chopping her head off, the killer puts her head on a mop and writes 'Head of the Class' on the wall behind her with her blood.
- Evil vs. Evil: Sam's only issue with Nigel's murders is that they're putting her at risk of exposure as a murderer herself.
- Expy: If the town is meant to be one of Busytown in general, Samantha may be an intentional Corrupted Character Copy of Miss Honey
. In the first issue, a young female cat wearing a blue bow also appears who closely resembles Sally Cat. - Family Business: Samantha's hardware store originally belonged to her parents, while she at first hated the idea of owning it but relented when she only had a few options.
- Framing the Guilty Party: In the final volume, Sam kills Lola and uses her body to set a trap for Nigel, paralyzing him and forcing him to shoot himself. She concocts a story about how Nigel killed his mom when she and Sam confronted him about being the murderer and the gun went off while she and Nigel were struggling for it. And it works.
- Furry Confusion: There are non-anthropomorphic animals in this world. For example, Samantha encounters a regular bear and a fox in wild after she buries another one of her victims in the first issue.
- Foreshadowing: Chapter Two's cover is Cherry looking at pig heads in the window of the butcher shop.
- Furry Reminder:
- Charlie and his family are moles and they all wear thick glasses.
- Bertie can pull his head into his shell.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: Cherry has one, which contributes to her unpopularity.
- Internal Reveal: In the final volume, Samantha tells a paralyzed Nigel that Lola knew he was the Woodbrook murderer all along and went on loving him anyway. She then asks, tauntingly, if he knows that she knew. He's not exactly in a position to answer, but he starts tearing up after she says this.
- Interspecies Romance: Cherry, a pig, is married to Howard, an owl.
- It's All About Me: Again, Sam's only issue with Nigel's murders is that they're putting her at risk of exposure as a murderer herself.
- Morality Pet: Howard is the only one to whom Cherry is nice. And he's legitimately upset by her murder.
- Mature Animal Story: One about a serial killer hunting another serial killer.
- Mummies at the Dinner Table: Subverted. It seems like Melody has her husband's body in her bed but it turns out it's just a dummy.
- Neat Freak: Sam's response to anxiety appears to be severe cleaning, as demonstrated when Nigel reveals he's been stalking her and knows her secret.
- Nothing Exciting Ever Happens Here: Woodbrook is an incredibly peaceful town. It's why Samantha goes to the city to abduct her victims, because if a murder ever happened in Woodbrook, everyone would be talking about it for years.
- Not Me This Time: Samantha is a murderer, but she's never killed anyone in Woodbrook, as a disappearance would be noticed. She wants to find out who the actual killer is, because if her secret is found out, everyone will think she's the guilty party.
- Oh, Crap!: Issue 4 ends with Nigel killing Charlie and leaving his body in the hardware store, after digging up the cans of one of Samantha's past victims and putting them in the hardware store too, forcing Samantha to flee.
- Only Friend: Samantha calls Lola this. That doesn't stop her from killing Lola to set a trap for Nigel, though.
- Out-Gambitted: After tricking Melody out of her house in order to investigate it, Samantha hears Melody come in and hides herself. Melody talks to the dummy in her bed and tells it she's taking a shower. Hearing the shower start, Sam sneaks out of her hiding place and heads for the door, only to be confronted by Melody, who's holding a gun on her.
- Plot Allergy: Samantha learns that Nigel is also allergic to lavender.
- Pragmatic Villainy: Samantha notes her own interest in finding and stopping Woodbrook's new serial killer by the end of the first issue- the murderer is such a psychotic showoff that there is significant risk that her own killings might be uncovered with all the new attention.
- Precision F-Strike: Samantha's narration drops an f-bomb after she finds out that someone isn't following the unspoken rules, stating that it would be A major fucking problem.
- Red Herring: After hearing from Bertie that he had heard a sneeze after Melody (the only other person working on his float) had supposedly left the room due to her lavender allergy, Sam sees her sneezing near flowers and begins to suspect her as the other killer. After tricking Melody into leaving the house, Sam sneaks in and discovers Melody's terrible secret: After the death of her husband, Melody made a dummy in his likeness and has treated it as if it were alive for decades. Oh, and she's not the killer.
- Second-Person Narration: The first four issues are in first-person narration, but Issue 5 switches to second-person, and then back to first-person for Issue 6.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: In the final volume, it's revealed that Lola was aware of both Nigel and Sam's sociopathic nature and murderous activities without telling either of them—for years in the case of the latter.
- The Sociopath: Samantha is aware that she is one, though she's adept at faking otherwise. While attending the funeral for one of the Woodbrook victims, she watches the emotions of those around her with interest and notes that she's probably caused these emotions in others numerous times, finding the prospect fascinating. In Issue 6, she kills Lola without any regret, saying that she and Lola went back 40 years and Sam liked her, but ultimately, Lola was just someone she knew.
- Stalker without a Crush:
- Suspecting that Melody is the killer, Samantha begins quietly stalking her, and even sneaks into Melody's house in an effort to confirm her suspicions.
- Nigel has been stalking Samantha for a year, even before he knew she was a killer.
- Through the Eyes of Madness: Sam spends the first part of Issue 5 hallucinating that her dead, carved-up victims are walking around, and is genuinely unsure whether she's going insane or if everyone else is just not bringing it up. She later goes into a cave and hallucinates that her head is held on by brightly-coloured balloon snakes.
- Too Dumb to Live:
- In Issue 6, Nigel is on the lookout for new victims and has clearly got a specific person in mind, even though killing someone else in his style after framing Samantha as the killer would exonerate her.
- In the same issue, Nigel sees that Sam has returned to Woodbrook and goes straight into her house, not even suspecting that she might want revenge or have set a trap for him, which she has.
- Town with a Dark Secret: That secret being that the owner of the hardware store is a serial killer. And now another serial killer has suddenly appeared.
- Villain Protagonist: Sam is the main protagnist and just so happens to be a Serial Killer.
- Wham Shot:
- The last page of Issue 1, which shows the first victim's body exposed for all to see.
- Marvin's funeral, when Sam hears Nigel sneeze, realizes that he's the killer and they have a Held Gaze as he realizes she's figured it out.
