One of my favourite Christmas traditions is the telling of ghost stories. . . though it’s not a tradition that seems to exist anymore outside of books. That said, here the tradition is pleasantly still alive and well thanks to Eric Powell and company. While this review endeavors to be mostly spoiler free, a few minor ones were unavoidable. That said, some stories (especially Mike Mignola’s) benefit from the reader knowing as little as possible about them beforehand.
Written by Eric Powell, Becky Cloonan, and Mike MignolaCover by Eric Powell
Illustrated by Eric Powell, James Harren, Becky Cloonan, and Mike Mignola
Colored by Dave Stewart
Lettered by Eric Powell and Comicraft
Designed by Phil BalsmanFour of the top creators in comics gather to continue the Victorian tradition of ghost stories on Christmas Eve.
Four tales of the bizarre and terrifying to keep you company on the cold yule night. A unique approach to the ghost story format where the creators themselves become part of the story in this deluxe edition hard cover designed by the award-winning Phil Balsman.
While this review is running as a part of Multiversity Comics’ Mignolversity column, “Four Gathered on Christmas Eve” is absolutely an Eric Powell book. He both writes and draws the framing sequences, ‘The Gift of Major Courtenay,’ and writes ‘Eyes in the Primordial Dark’ for James Harren. Thanks to the framing sequences, even in the stories Powell didn’t work on, you can still feel his presence because you can imagine hear his characters from the framing sequence telling the tale. This is an Eric Powell book through and through.
Through the framing sequences and ‘The Gift of Major Courtenay’ we see impressive range from Powell. The ‘Major Courtenay’ is a genuine ghost story, with heavier blacks and many moody panels. The framing sequence has its moody moments too, but these are almost always being used as a beat to build toward a comedic moment. As you’d expect, his comedic timing is excellent. I especially loved the way each story returns to the framing sequence with a series of narrow panels of the listeners giving their feedback.
While both stories are black and white, the two are immediately distinct from each other. The framing sequence is looser, more chaotic while ‘Major Courtenay’ is clean with sharp panel borders. Powell also letters his pages, and even here he distinguishes the framing from ‘Major Courtenay’, with the latter being much more formal. The borders and lettering pair perfectly in both stories, and the make it visually obvious at a glance which is the framing and which is ‘Major Courtenay.’
The other three stories are lettered by Comicraft, and like Powell, they use tailored approaches to make each story distinct. James Harren’s ‘Eyes in the Primordial Dark’ has the words butting tight up against the bounds of the speech balloons and text boxes, giving the the story a cramped feeling. This is perfect for a story in which one of the characters is a blowhard that thinks too much of his own voice, and for two characters stuck in a confined space. In Becky Cloonan’s ‘The Kelpie,’ rhythm and mood is the primary drive of the lettering. There are often panels that could have only one text box, but instead have two. The beat this creates between the two is an essential element. The text boxes also change at key moments, breaking from the familiar format of the rest of the story to make the reader feel the wrongness of what’s happening. Mike Mignola’s ‘Night of the Jaberwok’ also requires a rhythmic read, but there’s a greater emphasis on space. Text boxes and speech bubbles are more generous with space here than in any of the other stories, and that space grows even larger at key moments. It reflects Mignola’s timing, where there are often silent panels and breaks in the poem’s rhythm. In both Cloonan and Mignola’s stories, the rhythm is an essential element, and Comicraft uses the lettering to heighten this aspect.
Continued belowThe lettering in each story doesn’t just make each one distinct and it doesn’t just show us the necessary words; it makes the reader more attentive to what the art is doing, focusing our attention where it needs to be without us realizing it’s even doing it. I mention the lettering so early in the review because it shows how without knowing anything else about these stories, the lettering alone gives you a sense of them.
Dave Stewart colors the story and he uses his color to punctate separation between the characters. The opening page has comparatively little contrast and it’s very gray. This is in stark contrast to the rest of the story; our first look at space is saturated and colorful. But it’s when the two characters are sharing a panel that you can really see what Stewart is doing. At first they are the same, but then a shift happens. And the difference can be quite extreme with the one character in warm colors and the other in cold.
In Becky Cloonan’s ‘The Kelpie,’ Stewart’s colors were a major highlight. It was such a pleasure to see what he did with Cloonan’s pages, but impossible to talk about without spoiling the story. All I’ll say is that there is an inevitability to Cloonan’s story, and Stewart reflects that in the colors. At the beginning of the story we see the way Stewart colors the protagonist when she’s out in the night and it is very different from the way he colors her out in the night at the story’s end.
Cloonan’s story ended up being my favorite. She has a way of using eyelines to affect the way we read from one panel to the next. There’s so many nuances to this dynamic too, like the way the soldier’s eyeline is always higher than the protagonist’s when their panels are on the same tier. No panel exists in isolation; they are all speaking to each other. There are lines of action that flow through the pages that give everything a feeling of inevitability. And with text being a poem, you’re being pulled along with the rhythm it establishes—the story literally pulls you along, perhaps moving on from a panel sooner than you normally would.
Mike Mignola’s ‘Night of the Jaberwok’ is an adaptation of Lewis Carrol’s Jabberwocky from Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There. The protagonist of the story begins by wondering if the tale was even real, and his confusion throughout reinforces this aspect of what the story sounds like to a listener.
But the best bits are the bits I can’t talk about. They are best experienced. Everyone involved in “Four Gathered on Christmas Eve” not only brings their A game, they are all clearly happy to be involved. Each contribution feels like it was brought to life with enthusiasm. In this regard, I wonder when Eric Powell put together the framing sequence. Was it after the each story was complete? The Victorian characters’ personalities play off of their stories so magnificently, I don’t think Powell could’ve written them that way without having read versions very close to being finished. I imagine him cackling at the drawing board while drawing his compatriots. And for me, this was the best part of the book; the Victorian storytellers truly steal the show. Best of all, they read better the second time when you fully understand their characters.
Final Verdict: 9 – I can’t recommend this one enough. “Four Gathered on Christmas Eve” captures the true spirit of the season—a vicious competition for mince pies.
