Three unemployed slackers find themselves embroiled in an unusual dispute with their new neighbors: Carole and her weeping mother. When the shabby Carlisle intervenes, he incurs the wrath of their landlord—the silent, grinning embodiment of evil, Mr. Stapleton—and his mute minion son, Craig. As Mr. Stapleton's malign influence spreads to his housemates, Carlisle takes the fight to his enemy and realizes he must sacrifice his life to save the world. Owing more to William Blake than to Stephen King, this brooding, unnerving, and absurdist graphic novel deliberately shuns the conventional genre of blood and gore in favor of freak falls of licorice candy, cherubim in cowboy suits, and narcotic cavity-wall insulation.