This week sees the digital release of a comic that’s garnered a fair bit of buzz in self-published print form, not least because it’s gorgeous and weird, one of those one-of-a-kinders that sets out to create the kind of taste it takes to appreciate it. If you’re going to read one delightfully oddball comic this week (and it’s generally a good idea to check out at least one, you know, for your health), make it the haunting rural fable that is “The Outliers”.
Written and Illustrated by Erik Johnson
A school bus is forced off a cliff by a vehicle in pursuit of a legendary woodland giant. Secrets are revealed when it’s young passenger, a boy known for his inability to speak, commands the giant to in an unknown language. Exposed as link between our world and another, the boy must choose to stay or journey to a place on the periphery of human consciousness — the world of the Outliers.
Following a bus breakdown, bully and all around nasty piece of work Jespers winds up taking the short bus home – much against his will, because quiet-kid Tsu gives him the willies. But it’s Tsu who is the star of this comic, and he quickly steals away our attention. As we get a look as his living situation, it’s clear that this is no ordinary kid – and by the issue’s end, he’s smack dab in the middle of no ordinary situation.
A lot of the atmosphere comes from the bleak rural setting – a place where “you two only live a few of miles away from each other” is presented as a reason for two kids to be friends. Inky trees are visible is nearly every panel, looming when don’t outright dominate the composition, and you never quite forget that pretty much anything could be hiding nearby without us knowing.
As you’ve probably already guessed, there is plenty to be worried about lurking in that forest, but without getting too spoilery about it, it should be noted that Johnson presents the extraordinary in a really deft way, balancing scariness with novelty with interest in terms of both visual storytelling and dialogue. His monsters aren’t quite monsters, nor are they friendly woodland sprites, and this ambiguity lends a good helping of suspense to the tale.
Johnson’s art is thoroughly unusual, set off by that unquantifiable “underground” feel. His lines are both bold and precise, and between all the different kinds of crosshatching and shading, there are at least a dozen textures of shadow to be found. His (human) characters lean a bit on the grotesque side, but don’t lose the capacity for expression, while the more unusual beings are delightfully so, even more textured than their surroundings and carrying a distinct whiff of the otherworldly.
Adding to the interest of it all are the little details where you least expect them – the button panel of a microwave, a solar system mobile in the corner of a room. None of them are really necessary, and yet they all feel integral, important, like a clue to the greater mystery. A wash of colour – green in the first half of the comic, blue in the second – lays out the finer detail and adds a little more depth, but subtly. And far from detracting from the whole, the limited colour scheme lends a neat starkness to the overall look.
All of this said, sometimes the visual storytelling is a little unclear, and it takes a few extra passes of the eye to figure out what’s going on. You might attribute the difficulty to all the different textures going on, but that’s a bit like attributing ice cream headache to a scoop of Rocky Road. It balances out, with the overall experience far outweighing any hiccups encountered along the way.
If I’ve got any real complaint about this issue, it’s that it reads like a prologue: we’ve established our characters and the atmosphere, and only now can we really get rolling. The going is compelling regardless, but it’ll be even more of a treat once the story begins to come together. Meantime, though, “The Outliers” is looking to be an altogether unique little myth about the beings that inhabit the edge of consciousness.
As a side note, the physical copy of this comic a lovely object, and you do miss some of the beauty of the thing when reading it in digital. But the price is bumped down to compensate, so if you’d like to get a taste of what “The Outliers” has in store for us all, a digital copy is a solid bet.
Final Verdict: 8.9 – Buy
