Bad Medicine

Christopher Twin’s Bad Medicine is a debut horror collection told in graphic novel format and inspired by Cree folklore. The stories are narrated by a group of teens who meet up under a bridge one night, light a fire, and begin telling scary stories to amuse themselves.

In the first story, readers learn about the Mimiskiwaw, little people who live by the river and like to play tricks on people. If you give them an offering, they leave you alone; refuse and they take you away. Chad, a young fisherman, encounters the Mimiskiwaw one day and, after mistaking them for little children, is never heard from again.

In the next story, a young girl named Tracy goes to her friend’s house one night and is kidnapped while walking along the highway. While she is being kept in her captor’s barn, she meets a young girl who just so happens to be the ghost of another missing Indigenous girl. With the help of the ghost, Tracy is able to kill her captor and flee to safety.

In the penultimate tale, when sheep begin disappearing on a farm, the farmer calls his grandson Thomas for help in hunting the wolf that is responsible. While on the hunt, Thomas gets turned into a wolf himself after he is bitten by the shapeshifting werewolf who is responsible for attacking all the missing sheep.

The final story focuses on Derrick, one of the friends gathered around the fire. After ditching his friends to go home early, Derrick is haunted by demons in his life, both literally and figuratively, as he comes to terms with his parents’ alcoholism and abuse and its effect on his own sobriety.

Bad Medicine ends with the rest of the group heading home and promising to come out and tell more scary stories again.

Filled with tales of ghosts, shapeshifters and tricksters, Bad Medicine is a great addition to the graphic horror genre for young adult readers. What really stands out here is the intersection between traditional Cree folklore and the lived realities of modern Indigenous youth in today’s world. Stories like Derrick’s that focus on the generational trauma of residential schools, and Tracy’s that take a critical look at the plight of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, touch on current Indigenous issues while highlighting the importance of traditional oral story telling.

Complementing Twin’s dark and chilling tales are his equally eerie illustrations that heighten the fear and emotions readers will experience while reading these stories. His choice of colour palette, including dark greys, browns, and blue, amps up the horror factor and makes Bad Medicine the perfect book to read on a cold dark night.