Image Comics 2018
Written by Cullen Bunn
Illustrated by Mark Torres
Lettered by Simon Bowland
10 years ago, Dan Kerr turned his back on his wife and unborn daughter. Now, both mother and child have gone missing, and Dan must face cosmic terrors to find them again. He soon finds that ghosts stir when his estranged daughter is near. And as the dead grow restless, the cold deepens...
So just when you think that Cullen can’t find a new avenue of horror to explore he puts out another book just to prove you wrong. Well not just because the man apparently sweats out ideas in ways we will never understand. I love being creeped out, it’s extremely hard to really scare me so I have to settle for the creepy stories, and no one really does that better than Cullen. He can take a subject interject some psychological aspect to it that suddenly makes something so innocent become something ominous and foreboding.
The opening is utterly sensational. I love how it plays out and just that this is how the story starts and not with a whimper nor a bang but with something that widens your eyes, raises your eyebrows and gives you goosebumps. This guy who kind of has this attitude suddenly gets cold and searches for his wife and what he finds defies explanation except everything that leads to that moment is something that we are familiar with if you watch those ghost hunting shows on television. It is extremely well done, it grabs the readers attention and doesn’t let it go and ensures that you will continue with the story, so in other words a perfect opening doing it’s job.
The way that the book is structured is amazing to see. The ebb & flow created and how the pacing takes us through the book is so well done that while indeed we are left wanting more it also does that whole raising of the heart rate. The information that we get here is nicely revealed and what is implied is done so convincingly so that facts can remain unsaid but the truth is still known. I also think a lot of that is also contributed by Mark’s work on faces and facial expressions. Still just when you think something is going to happen something else occurs instead. I have my own idea how all of this is related to one another and we’ll see if I am right but in the meantime I wonder why Cullen has written a horror picture because hot damn would it be good.
This is my introduction to Mark’s work and I have to say I'm pretty highly impressed with it. I mentioned faces and facial expressions and it’s true they give us so much emotion and information that the words or dialogue alone couldn’t do. There is something about how he is able to manipulate the varying weight in the linework to really make moments pop and not how you’d expect. There are moments this light linework is in the background and it creates this effect that’s unexpected and kind of ethereal in nature which makes things even creepier. The utilisation of page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows off a solid eye for storytelling. The work compliments the story perfectly and it doesn’t get much better than that.
So what we’ve got is an introduction to Kerr and what he’s been hired to do. With a lot of innuendo and to find a woman and her daughter, whom I am sure is his child because well yeah read the book, Kerr finds himself in the middle of something he’s unprepared for and if the last page is any indicator he better hope he makes it out of this alive. With some stellar writing and extremely good interior artwork chalk up another Cullen Bunn must have book!