“Somna” #2

Readers beware. Cloonan and Lotay’s “Somna” #2 will ask much of you as you read its 60 or so pages. What would you do about a sexy smoke man appearing in your bath? How would you handle the endless judgment of your village’s priest? Would you fuck the devil in the pale moonlight? But most of all it will ask: were you able to secure a copy?

Cover by Tula Lotay

Written and Illustrated by Becky Cloonan & Tula Lotay
Colored by Lee Loughridge, Dee Cunniffe & Tula Lotay
Lettered by Lucas Gattoni
The new hit series from DSTRLY by BECKY CLOONAN and TULA LOTAY continues!

Set amidst the terrifying backdrop of the witch hunts in a quiet 1600s English village, SOMNA follows one woman’s erotic escape from the confines of her puritanical world.

No one is above suspicion when the relentless Witch Hunter Roland draws his net around someone close to him as this darkly sexual thriller races towards its gripping conclusion!

From the masterful minds of Becky Cloonan (BY CHANCE OR PROVIDENCE) and Tula Lotay (BARNSTORMERS) comes an intoxicating blend of history, eroticism, and the supernatural. This series will transport readers to a world where passion and spirits intertwine, captivating your senses to leave you craving more.

Drawing inspiration from cinematic masterpieces such as Midsommar and The Witch, SOMNA emerges as an evocative instant classic of the medium.

Potshots at the artificial digital (and to a much lesser extent physical) scarcity currently plaguing the premiere issue of “Somna” aside, issue two truly is a comic concerned with alighting questions in the head of its readers. Something is wrong in Ingrid’s town. We know it, Ingrid is beginning to suspect it, yet what that wrongness is remains shrouded in mist and hidden behind layers of assumptions, historical baggage, and misdirection.

Clearly the strange hazy man can’t be trusted, right? He’s the devil or a devil or a demon, providing her with what she wants, what she desires, with practiced tongue and swift hand. Seduction, the priest is quick to preach, is Satan’s favorite tool after all. And it is seductive, in both uses of the word.

Perhaps, then, this is not the devil, or at least not the “evil demon” conjured by men willing to burn a woman at the stake. His actions with her are empowering, probing and pushing Ingrid to release her shackles, to act, to express what she wants. Ingrid is not a person in this time. Her desires matter less than dirt to her husband and she lives under the constant threat of accusation of witchcraft. To want, let alone to want to feel sexual pleasure, as a woman is to be in the thrall of the devil.

Perhaps it’s not real at all. Perhaps he’s a manifestation of her repressed and pathologized desires. Tell someone their noises of pleasure are sinful long enough and they’ll internalize it. They’ll fear it. They’ll run from it all the while wanting to run towards it. Their fantasies will warp and weave and wind into something conflicted and unhealthy, something scary to mask the uncertainty with what’s beyond the figure and whether it is truly so bad.

What can we believe? This is the biggest of the questions in “Somna” #2, the comic feeding us multiple possibilities and seeding the same paranoia Ingrid is feeling.What was once stable – her friendships, her relationship with God, her marriage – shifts and fractures as she, and we, learn and see beyond the curated fictions and peer into their darker, hidden truths.

As Ingrid sleeps less and less, deprivation blurs the lines between waking reality and her hidden desires. While Lotay & Cloonan employ a device to clue us into when these shifts are occurring – Lotay taking on art duties for “the dream” and Cloonan “reality” – more and more what should be dream is rendered reality and what is reality becomes dream. How much we can trust to be truth is subtly, oh so subtly, cast into relief and exposed for the sham that it (might) be.

How certain are we that what Ingrid saw at the end “Somna” #1 is real? How sure are we that Maja is being honest with Ingrid now? Or Sigurd? Or Roland, Ingrid’s husband? Is it possible that the devil is real and IS, in fact, the root cause of the town’s woes? For sending Ingrid’s husband away? For causing her insomnia?

As you can tell by now, “Somna” has a lot to speculate about. Lotay and Cloonan have constructed a thoughtful thriller that’s equal parts beautiful as it is tense. I’ve missed Cloonan’s art so much – her thick inks and deep shadows, her attention to subtle posing and large, expressive eyes. Here it feels almost like they’re woodcut prints, enhanced through Loughridge & Cunniffee’s exquisite coloring, further cementing us in the past, contrasting and complementing Lotay’s more painterly, realistic yet ethereal style.

Lotay being the one rendering the “dream” was smart. The realism in her characters adds to the dissonance between the states for a reader and the lack of concrete backgrounds and a smoky, painted palette is better suited to the abstractions of an ever shifting dreamscape. Additionally, Lotay’s sequentials aren’t as strong as Cloonan’s, nor are the faces as expressive. They act better as singular images, as expected of someone who primarily handles covers, isolated yet related, conveying tone and action and relying more heavily on the lettering to pick up the nuances.

Speaking of, I adore what Gattoni is doing with the letters. The regular dialog appears handwritten and slightly archaic without being overly ornate or illegible with splashes of color for sounds, the shadow man’s dialog fluctuating between regular script in uncertain balloons and an otherworldly, ominous purple, while Ingrid’s thoughts are, interestingly, mixed case on a brown box, almost like a journal or perhaps a bible when considering the kerning on the “typed” font. It all evokes the era and adds additional layers to the potential readings of the comic, readings which I’m dying to explore but need a conclusion to truly analyze.

The devil take me, I think that’s “Somna” #2 in a nutshell.

Final Score: 9.2. A sensual, strong second issue rife with more questions than answers that leaves you aching for more. The last issue can’t come soon enough.