IDW Publishing 2018
Written by Joe & Keith Lansdale
illustrated by Silvia Califano
Coloured by Valentina Pinto
Lettered by Shawn Lee
Scully and Mulder and themselves on the road again, this time to a small East Texas town to investigate the disappearance of a woman said to have been carried away by a creature fitting the description of a harpy from Greek myth. But things only get stranger from there...
After the last Case Files I was made an immediate fan and this time it’s a new creative team with a new story. I stopped watching the show after a while because I was in my twenties and ya know life at that time revolves around fun and going out and exploring life but these Case Files remind me of everything that I loved about the show. It doesn’t try to be something it’s not, there’s no season so and so continuing the hit series going on here. These could take place at any time in the pairs 25 year history. Just snippets of life and cases that came and went.
The Lansdale’s make this one as exciting and offbeat as they come making it something that fits beautifully into the world of the X-Files. The opening is spectacular and the fact that they placed it in a trailer park complete with feuding neighbours just about damn well made it all perfect. The confrontational yelling and then to see what happened yeah all of it just fits in with some of those stories akin to the Jersey Devil, yes local legend here in East Texas calls it the Owl Witch.
I laughed so hard reading this issue and it’s all that darker tongue in cheek kind of humour that I really appreciate that garners too little attention in my humble opinion. I mean after the opening sequence of events we see Scully and Mulder showing up at the Sheriff’s office. You have to read this it’s just so damn good and that the boys get the whole characterisation/personality aspect down and the dialogue reinforcing their relationship and beliefs to one another is stunningly superb. This is why we love not just the franchise but the creators behind the stories and the company that knows when to let them unleash their imaginations.
There is this flow to the book that is undeniable when you read it. It takes the reader on a journey through belief, disbelief and what if in a way that makes you think there’s a Scooby villain just waiting to have his mask yanked off. So is this a case where a human is running around pretending to be the local legend in order to cover up their nefarious deeds and actions or is it all real? We have no clue and honestly at this stage that according to what we see as a reader is so open right now is brilliantly done.
Good god the interiors here are marvellous. I am a sucker for attention to detail and we get that and so much more here in spades. I mean the design of the shoppe how we see all this thought and care that makes it so perfect. The utilisation of the page layouts and the angles and perspective in that we see in the panels shows off a sensational eye for storytelling. That the panels are used so fully with the utilisation of backgrounds be it the woods or the Sheriff’s station and definitely Clahoun’s Emporium well this kind of creativity and imagination on display well see for yourself why I am raving about it. The interiors I talk about include the amazing colouring job so it's truly a team effort.
The X-Files is a franchise that will never die, too many people are long-time fans and others keep finding these stories and wish for them to continue. This is a prime example of the power of the mind being it in the writing or the illustration that says good strong storytelling is never out of fashion.