G7 Comics 2017
Written by Elvis Valdez & Wilson Guillaume
Illustrated by Wilson Guillaume
Coloured by Wilson Guillaume & Kenneth Gaynor
Lettered by Wilson Guillaume
A frightened little girl finds herself lost aboard a cold and dark ship. Unfortunately for her she is not alone. Darkness continues stalking her every move as three dubious characters begin determining her fate.
On my first read threw of this, yes you need to make more than one pass at it, I was slightly disturbed by some behaviour that we see. Then I had time to think about it and while it is deplorable a huge shout out has to go to the utterly believable characterisation that goes on here. Because this poor scared little girl is so much more than she appears as we saw in the last issue, which by the way was shocking in all the best ways. This makes her more than a match for these gentlemen in the long run but still wow.
So far we saw what happened in Haiti and now she’s stowed away on this ship and it has this feel of the old world and it has this kind of mysterious quality to it that is both inherently creepy and extremely interesting. The mood, tone and feel that they bring to the table here is pretty darn spectacular. It has elements of classic horror and blends that with some more recent slasher stuff and melds it with this level of characterisation that makes this one hell of a read. For a group of unknowns they are putting out one heck of a good, solid book. This is why I love self/small/indie press because the love and passion they manage to capture and create is fun!
Right now we are seeing through the wonderful world of characterisation that the people she ends up killing deserve it. But what happens when she gets to a place where she’s just a scared little girl and it comes out and kills innocents? Whatever this thing that inhabits her or follows her is something that won’t care what it kills so long as it does. There really is nothing creepier than a horrific child wrapped up in that sweet innocent package. It is that thing that really makes this whole thing what it is.
The artwork here feels very new as in unseasoned. The guy Eddy looks like the walking dead and King’s shirt keeps appearing throughout with the whole Confederate God Bless America on it. It’s little things that fans notice though King really does look like a backwater bigot so that’s good. The use of page layouts are used extremely well through angles and perspective, I like that the eye for storytelling here is well represented. We do get a really nice emotion and feeling from the work and honestly I do really like it there’s some great linework going on. The creativity and imagination is nice to see as is the use of backgrounds here. Overall everything works.
The way this story is used to get us further into the mindset of this little girl is very well executed. The structure, ebb & flow of information through both the words and characterisation is essential to this working as well as it does. Also that this ship is smuggling Haitian’s to America to be used as slaves or sex workers or what have you means that things in Miami are about to complicated and interesting.
Taking a Haitian legend and bringing this to life in such a way that’s both horrific and interesting is being very well. I think this is something different and unique in the world of the genre and it is something you should be reading.