Written by Scott Snyder & Scott Tuft
Illustrated by Attila Futaki“PERMANENT TEETH”
In 1916, a boy runs away from home in search of his father. But along the way he meets a salesman with sharp teeth and a hunger for flesh. SCOTT SNYDER (AMERICAN VAMPIRE, BATMAN, SWAMP THING), SCOTT TUFT and ATTILA FUTAKI (NYT Best-Selling-Artist: PERCY JACKSON) comes the most terrifying horror series of the last year.
Image Comics’ newest chilling, mind-bending horror blockbuster rockets toward it’s brutal ending with this issue. How well does it continue the trend established by the previous five issues?
Click below to find out!
It takes a very subtle, talented hand to craft a truly scary story. And by scary, I absolutely do not mean shocking. Anyone can write shocking. Rob Zombie can write shocking and I’m pretty sure he didn’t finish high school. No, to be truly scary means more than surprising your audience. You have to make them fear that surprise and still accept that it is coming. Knowing something bad will happen and knowing that you are walking right into it, that kind of self doubt and betrayal of one’s basic principal of avoiding bad things, that is scary.
Make no mistake, this is a very scary comic book.
That said, there’s a second layer to its success, and that is the fact that in addition to manufacturing true fear being difficult, making a comic book scary is even more difficult due to it being a single sensory medium. Unlike horror films, which can manipulate sound and sight, or haunted houses which can manipulate sound, sight, smell and even touch, horror comics only have sight to work with, which requires advanced level understanding of the medium at all points of the production in order to truly make you take a deep breath before turning the page.
Snyder and Tuft have built a story that encourages almost paralyzing self doubt on the part of the reader, and they did so in an the unlikely way of giving away part of the ending (or so it seems) right at the top of the first issue. We’ve known since then that Jack Garron (or whoever goes by the name Jack Garron by the time Elvis starts offending America) loses an arm over the course of this story. Which has meant that every single time he encounters something that could conceivably remove a human arm from their body (like for instance trains, bear traps, perceived cannibals, axes, etc.), our gut inclination as an audience is to assume that that particular shoe is about the drop and each time it hasn’t dropped over the course of the story, the tension rises. Our assuming that we know what is coming opens a door in our psyche that Snyder and Tuft have stepped through in order to throw us something completely different. However, it is the initial misdirection that makes the actual outcome even more gruesome and unsettling, because not only were the characters in the story duped, we as an audience were duped as well. Even with this issue, with so many of the secrets and twists laid bare in anticipation of the final flourish next issue, the Scotts are still toying with our perceptions, which ultimately makes good on the promises established by the book so far.
However, I said each every part of the production added to the fearful effect, and Futaki’s pencils and Greg Guilhaumond’s colors match the overall feeling of the book perfectly. While there is a slight sense of photo realism to Futaki’s work, there are just tiny instances of disjointedness in each of his characters. Every single character to appear in this book is just slightly off, slightly warped, slightly inhuman and imperfect. It’s almost not noticeable and, for all I know, unintentional, but it absolutely adds to the overall modus operandi of the book. It makes you remember what while you are reading something that was very meticulously polished, the imperfections peek through and stare at you. Nothing is more unsettling than the unraveling of intended perfection, and that is something this art recreates to a T. On top of this, Guilhaumond’s colors continue the trend of blurred vision and visual uncertainty that Futaki himself infused with the art over the first four issues before Guilhaumond took over last issue. I’ve said it multiple times throughout our coverage of the series, but the art’s greatest asset is the fact that you aren’t quite sure just where the characters end and the backgrounds begin. You want to scare someone really badly? Step one is to dim the lights and reduce a sense of visual clarity. The change in this issue is slight, but it is enough to set the tone to a masterful extent.
Ultimately though, what makes this comic truly chilling is the fact that there is no mystical element to it. No ghosts or demons or otherworldly dastardly do. All of the horror is derived entirely from situations that could conceivably happen to anyone walking down the street, be it during the turn of the century or even now. Anyone can be lied to, anyone can be promised things that turn out to be something far different. Anyone can be hurt, misdirected or sexually assaulted. Anyone. Anywhere. The creators know it, and it is from this nagging sense of despair and uncertainty built into our psyches in these modern times that they draw their hooks. Given my historical dislike of the horror genre, you’d think I wouldn’t have made it this far. But I have, and I want more, and I think that is the best compliment any book could receive.
Final Verdict: 9.0 – Buy
