“Mall” #4

“Mall” #4 sees Ronin and Andre plunged deeper into the heart of the mall’s underground, with revelations on the horizon. Warning: spoilers ahead.

Cover by Zak Hartong

Written by Michael Moreci & Gary Dauberman
Illustrated by Zak Hartong
Colored by Addison Duke
Lettered by Jim Campbell The penultimate issue hurls Andre closer to the shocking finish line-as he races monsters, mayhem, and murderers toward a secret buried deep beneath the mall.

“Mall” #4 makes good on the last issue’s cliffhanger with some sewer-chompin’ good times, a revelation or two and a delightful twist in the Machiavellian battle for consumer dominance. Moreci and Dauberman take a simple concept – post-apocalyptic consumer hell – and flip the Romero script a little. There are no zombies (well, kind of) and the threat doesn’t come from the world outside. It’s from the good ol’ human beings within.

Good horror should teach us something about ourselves, and there’s no one way to go about achieving that. From pandemic paranoia to grindhouse gore and in between, horror illuminates our anxieties, impulses and perversions in a way no other genre can. “Mall” toys with a few different tropes, from the Dawn of the Dead– and Night of the Comet-esque setting to a classic underground descent, and it mostly pulls them off. The book’s also not afraid to go for the absurd, which is key if you want to pull off memorable horror. There’s the seriousness of the family drama combined with alligators in the sewers and zombies dressed in Hot Topic gear, and that balance helps to lighten some of the narrative load and drive home the utter insanity of consumer culture.

That said, “Mall” does stumble a little in a few places. Moreci and Dauberman occasionally add too much dialogue between Ronin and Andre when the moody stillness of the sewers would be better served by letting Hartong’s art do the talking. There’s one moment during the first flashback where Drew’s physical entrance is heralded by an off-screen bit of dialogue, but the panel angle and page structure make the reveal a touch awkward. Drew’s soliloquy is spot on for the character, but the impressionistic shift from well-groomed villain to leering psychopath doesn’t entirely play. And, finally, Andre’s still a little remote and buried under the weight of his backstory and the plot. Moreci and Dauberman salt in enough intrigue to keep the story ticking, but a little more sympathy for our main character couldn’t hurt.

Hartong’s art is scratchy, dynamic and a welcome jolt in “Mall.” Hartong experiments with a lot of different panel layouts to good effect, but doesn’t go so experimental with structure that we lose the orderly edifice of it all. The beauty of “Mall” is in the backgrounds: the supporting cast and their wacky details, the outfits, the endless tile and broke-down cheer of the mall itself. The masked folk are appropriately creepy and upsetting without delving too far into schlock or breaking the larger aesthetic. Ronin is a blur of akimbo violence and fury, while Andre’s physicality is a character-appropriate mixture of efficiency and panic. There’s one splash that does away with borders entirely and uses the marker strokes of the black background to bleed from a flashback into the present. Another nice detail is Hartong’s decision to eschew action lines in favor of blurred limbs and a little frenetic shading instead of a clean line. This choice keeps the effect grounded and suits the overall realism of the book.

Duke’s color palette is an appropriately textured, antiqued, bitter plethora of greens, yellows and reds, with occasional splashes of moody purples and blues. Ronin’s red fatigues are a good counterpoint to Andre’s practical earth-toned gear and are a great focal point in the gloomy sewers. The opening flashback requires some background simplicity from Hartong due to the chaotic fight in the foreground, but Duke adds excellent textures to the backgrounds to get at an antiseptic quality that offsets Andre’s anguish. Duke makes good use of a variety of skin tones for Andrew, his father, Drew and El Duque, and eschews those flatter, sterile browns we see too often in comics. Finally, the splash mentioned above works so well because Duke picks out each section in a harmonious wash of color.

Campbell’s lettering demonstrates his expertise, as usual. Balloon placement can be difficult within art like Hartong’s, but Campbell’s adept at stringing together smaller balloons to extend tension and play with stacking on the page. Andre’s “Fuck. You.” is an excellent plot beat because of the lettering choices. Campbell chooses a font that tilts a little to the left and pairs blocky vowels with just a bit of a wobble to complement the book’s subject matter, and the balloon stroke is subtle but necessary to help the page come together. Hartong provides some excellent drawn sound effects, and there are a few that Campbell puts in later that echo that style and blend nicely.

Put simply, “Mall” is effective not because it’s a “what if?” story, but a “when?” story. I caught myself driving by a mall a few months ago and reasoning that it might not be such a bad place to take refuge should the world end. Fortunately, I’ve watched and read enough horror to know that it’d be an incredibly bad idea … and one we might all succumb to, anyway. The burnt out husks of rampant capitalism might be our only shelter, and of course we’ll fight over bespoke back scratchers and wage territorial war in the food court. Moreci, Dauberman and the team wrap a compelling whodunit in this entertaining veneer, and with one issue left we’re due for a revelation and reckoning.

Final Verdict: – “Mall” #4 draws the series to the precipice of an explosive finale with a good balance of plotting, art, colors and lettering.