Scout Comics/Black Caravan 2021
Written by Massimo Rosi
Illustrated by Ludovica Ceregatti
Each step towards darkness causes young people with special gifts to reveal themselves-along with their sufferings and evil desires. Their powers manifest, sometimes violently, and with insane brutality. In each case, their powers are connected to their psychosomatic issues. But now, those who created them-and view them as little more than lab rats-want them back, and will do whatever it takes to bring them "home."
Sometimes there are outright horror stories and other times there are those that just creep you the hell out, with everything in between being possible. This falls in the creepy as all get out category for me and the opening alone solidifies this. I can think of fewer things in this life than seeing what we do that are as disturbing as this and it literally made my skin crawl. I keep telling you folks that Massimo isn’t one to sleep on and that he’s a new generation of writer that knows how to continually hone his craft so that with each new outing and each new issue he just seems to steadily improve.
I love the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how they act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter really brings their personalities to the forefront. I love watching them grow and change as the events unfold around them. The pacing is superb and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story and delving further into the mystery of what’s going on we’re pulled deeper and deeper into the mouth of madness.
I greatly appreciate the way we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I really like seeing how the different arcs are being told simultaneously and parallel to each other as we see the connection they have, real or imagined. The way that all of this adds such beautiful depth, dimension and complexity to the story is wonderfully done. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is achieved exceedingly well.
I am a huge fan of the interior artwork here. Seriously the creativity and imagination that we see is off the charts and it enhances that whole creepy factor tenfold. The linework is clean, crisp and strong and with the varying weights and techniques being utilised to create the detail work throughout the issue is astonishingly well rendered. We see a fair bit of backgrounds being utilised throughout though there’s always room for more, still how we see the composition within the panels being utilised to bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the book is really rather extraordinary. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkably talented eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show a great eye for how colour works.
If what I am gathering from reading this is correct then these kids are experiments that were placed back with their families until their strange new abilities awoke. Now those who performed this upon them want them back. I could be wrong and have misread the intention here but either way these kids are frightened by what’s happening to them and have caught the attention of those who wish to use them for their own, nefarious purposes?. We’ll see how things continue to play out and I'm very invested and engaged in this which is precisely what was intended to happen.
With some strong intelligent writing writing and some brutally honest characterisation wrapped up in these creative and dynamic interiors prepare to be creeped out in some very real ways.