The sounds of hammering within the Winchester House are never ending. A sense of dread hangs about as its sleepless owner feverishly orders ceaseless construction on this sprawling labyrinth.
This is “House Of Penance” #1 from Peter J. Tomasi, Ian Bertram, and Dave Stewart and it’s not for the faint of heart. Check out our full spoiler free review below.
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Illustrated by Ian Bertram
IT’S NOT JUST THE HOUSE THAT’S HAUNTED . . .The Winchester House… famous for its original owners bizarre compulsion to incorporate a multitude of architectural curiosities. But as the bereaved Sarah Winchesters workers toil on stairways to nothing and doors to nowhere, a mysterious stranger arrives . . . and he could make Sarah’s demons all too real.
“House Of Penance” #1 is an exercise in using horror as delayed gratification. Telling a fictionalised version of Sarah Winchester and her obsessive construction of her house in San Jose, California, Peter J. Tomasi, Ian Bertram, and Dave Stewart construct a horrific story that, in this first issue, focuses more on building an atmosphere of tense dread than delivering any scares. It’s a pretty bold move, using the first issue to introduce the disparate pieces of the story and slowly bringing those characters together. By the end of the issue the reader knows the story will continue to build and build on these pieces.
Most first issues want to exist, to steal a phrase from the video game industry, as a vertical slice that encapsulates everything the series is going to be. It’s the creative team’s chance to lay everything out on the board, introduce the reader to all the players, and chart the course for the story. “House Of Penance” #1 does that, to an extent. It introduces all the major characters and creates a slow boil tension that increases with every page, but with little actual payoff.
This isn’t a complaint, by the way, this is actually something I think works in the issue’s favour. By delaying much of what the audience thinks the payoff of a horror story should be (the “scares”, if you will, but we don’t even know what form they’ll take here, if at all), Tomasi, Bertram, and Stewart are able to focus on establishing the characters, the atmosphere, and the world of the book.
That atmosphere is probably what will make “House Of Penance” #1 stand out so much. Right from the first page, the combination of Tomasi’s subtle writing, Bertram’s dense, European-style artwork, and Stewart’s naturalistic yet eerie colour palette sets the reader on edge for what is to come. There’s a morbidity surrounding the story that only gets stronger with every page as we explore Sarah Winchester’s frantic, wide-eyed obsession with death and the feeling of being haunted with the shocking violence of Warren Peck’s subplot.
Tomasi’s writing keeps that morbidity front and centre, showing just how commonplace violence and intolerance was in 1905. It was tough to read through those scenes, I’ll admit, and there’s probably a larger discussion about the portrayal of Native Americans that I’m nowhere near qualified to have, but both of these scenes weave into the tapestry of the issue’s morbidity.
The real shining star of “House Of Penance” #1, though, has to be Ian Bertram. If you’ve never encountered Bertram’s art before, this is the perfect place to start. There are a good number of artists I could rattle off here whose art Bertram’s either influenced by or share common influences. People like Moebius or Frank Quitely or Ramon Villalobos, but Bertram’s artwork entirely stands on its own.
By bringing a European sensibility to the intricately lined shading, even the smallest panels of the comic are intricately dense. Bertram’s depiction of the characters in the world is a huge part of the unsettling atmosphere of the issue, especially Sarah Winchester, whose small frame and wild eyes betray a sense of haunting that permeates throughout the issue.
Bertam exquisitely plays with panel layouts. On every page, there’s some unique element to the storytelling that doesn’t draw attention to itself in how unconventional it is, but fits right in that strange atmosphere of the comic. There’s a recurring motif of extreme close-ups of characters’ eyes, with two notable panels showing the eyeball framing what the character is looking at. Again, Bertram’s intricate linework only helps to unsettle the reader as it feels like the eye is staring right out of the page and at the reader.
Continued belowAll of this wouldn’t be these same without Dave Stewart, though, who brings Bertram’s artwork to gorgeous life. In most cases, Stewart’s palette is very naturalistic as Bertram’s artwork mostly speaks for itself, but the colours are rendered so beautifully against the inkwork that it just elevates the whole page. One of my favourite sequences in the issue in terms of colouring is actually Warren Peck’s introduction, where the environment is a desert at dusk, all grey and dusty. Stewart uses bright oranges and reds in the backgrounds of certain panels to punctuate the moments of violence. It adds to the exhilaration of the panels, something that makes it stand against the rather slow, character-focused pages in the rest of the comic.
All in all, if “House Of Penance” #1 is an exercise in delaying the gratification of a horror story, keeping it’s first chapter full of suspense and characterisation, and holding off the truly scary stuff for later chapters, I’d say it’s an exercise that works. This isn’t an issue that’s going to be for everyone. It sits at a crossroads between slow, atmospheric horror and fictionalised retelling of American history with writing that focuses on characterisation and artwork with a strong European influence.
It’s a comic that feels purpose built for my interests and, for my part, I loved it and can’t wait to read more, but I can also see that this isn’t exactly a mass appeal comic. Still, if nothing else, you should be checking this comic out to see the masterful artwork from Ian Bertram and Dave Stewart. The writing from Peter J. Tomasi is just another reason to stick around for the rest of the series.
Final Verdict: 8.9 – A strong recommendation from me to at the very least just check out the art. It’s worth the price of admission alone.
