This weekend, at Glasgow Comic Con, I managed to pick up a book that had been on my radar for a while, but that I had never gotten around to reading: “And Then Emily Was Gone” by John Lees and Iain Laurie. A horror book that combines the inspirations of Twin Peaks with the original Wicker Man, it’s something I’ve wanted to explore for a long time and now I finally have that chance.
Strap in as we’re about to enter the grotesque and macabre world of “And Then Emily Was Gone”.
Written by John Lees
Illustrated by Iain Laurie
A haunted former police detective goes in search of a missing girl, and finds Hell instead.AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE is a dark horror-mystery that tells the story of Greg Hellinger, a man who sees monsters. A former detective driven to the brink of madness by terrifying apparitions, Hellinger is tasked with finding a missing girl named Emily. His search takes him to a remote community in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, where strange and terrible things are happening…
Collects the complete, critically acclaimed mini-series that Newsarama calls, “Grotesque and horrifying, like visions torn from the mind of a criminally deranged psychopath…10/10!”
“And The Emily Was Gone” is a masterpiece of horror. I’m going to open with that lofty statement just so you know where I’m coming at with this review. This book is something rather amazing in that I knew going into it that it was already a beloved series and incredibly hype and it still caught me off guard with just how genuinely well crafter it was and how horrific it is. What John Lees and Iain Laurie have created is a book that captures a visceral level of horror like no other I’ve seen. And if you’ve followed my writing for Multiversity, you should know that I’m something of a sucker for a good horror comic and “And Then Emily Is Gone” is a great horror comic.
I should note before we really get into this review that I am talking about the trade paperback of “And Then Emily Was Gone” that collects the five issue miniseries in full. The series tells the story of Greg Hellinger, a former police officer plagued with visions of monsters, and how he is contact by a young girl named Fiona to help her find her
friend, Emily. Greg and Fiona then embark on a surrealist journey that descends into the deepest, darkest corners of the mind and unearths a terrible secret on the island of Merksay.
When talking about “And Then Emily Was Gone”, the first thing that will probably come up is Iain Laurie’s artwork and for good reason. It’s horrible. It’s grotesque and malformed and disturbing and, honestly, it’s perfect. Laurie’s art is one of the key elements that makes this series stand out as he brings a level of grotesquery to the forefornt of the experience of reading the book. From the first page, it’s clear that this book is not going to be pretty or nice, but instead it’s going to be filled with horrors the likes of which you have never seen before. Laurie’s style is detail-oriented and incorporates a strong European influence in the linework that pushes the boundaries of how exaggerated the world and the characters can be portrayed to the limit and then it digs in its heels and keeps pushing.
The characters of “And Then Emily Was Gone” are wholly unique and easily distinguishable from one another larger because Laurie exaggerates their features almost to the point of caricature. Hellinger’s large nose, Fiona’s gap between her front two teeth and Vin’s overbite go from defining character traits to exaggerated focal points in their design. It’s an artistic choice that creates a world in which even reality feels less real. What keeps the reality grounded is instead Laurie’s storytelling and page structure, which focuses on large, straight-lined panels and creates a rigid uniformity to some of the pages. That way, when the surrealist horror really kicks and the dream logic is in full swing, Laurie can simply break down the walls of the panels and let the lines become messy or off-kilter or allow them to disappear all together as he isolates panels in a sea of white space.
Continued belowThe effect is one of falling into a dream. At first, things seem normal enough despite those little details that keeping it from feeling too real, but they’re too small to really notice at first. Then things start to break down and those little details start to pile up until the reality of the unreality you’re experience threatens to swallow you whole and you realise too late that’s not a dream, but a nightmare. That’s what “And Then Emily Was Gone” is. It’s a living nightmare transcribed onto the page, daring you to get lost within.
While Iain Laurie’s artwork is certainly a key element in what makes this series stand out, the writing from John Lees should not be ignored. One of the most engaging aspects of Lees’ writing is how he humanises each character. Much like how they are depicted in the artwork, characters wear their flaws on their sleeves. There are no heroes here. Even Hellinger is just a man plagued by demons, trying to drown them out with booze. That makes his journey into the dark heart of Merksay all the more compelling as he is dragged along on this mystery he can’t help be see through to end, no matter how dire that end may be.
The biggest compliment I can give to Lees’ writing, unfortunately, constitutes as a spoiler and as this review is essentially geared in a way that I am recommending the book to those of you who haven’t read it yet, I don’t want to just outright explain the ending to you. I will say this, though: it took a lot of courage on Lees’ part to end this series the way he did, without wrapping everything up in a nice, little bow or having everything be explained. Mysteries are left unanswered, horrors are left unexplained and the fate of the characters is not exactly a cheerful one. To pull off that kind of an ending to a horror story is difficult and Lees and Laurie pulled it off majestically here.
So, there you have it: “And Then Emily Was Gone” is a masterpiece of horror. It fuses a subtle sense of dread in the writing as the mystery builds and builds and eventually the walls of reality come crashing down and the flood of surrealist horror comes rolling in. This, combined with Iain Laurie’s amazingly disturbing artwork, creates a book that is uneasy to read. It’s been said that the medium of comics is hard to pull off horror in as it lacks the ability to pull off jump scares and sudden, startling noises like films can. I think that’s a load of nonsense. What comics can do is scare you with the subtleness of an idea the same way a good novel can while being able to visualise the abstract, surrealist horrors within. It truly is the best of both worlds and with “And Then Emily Was Gone”, it’s safe to say that comics is an amazing medium for horror.
