Welcome to another installment of 31 Days of Halloween! This is our chance to set the mood for the spookiest and scariest month of the year as we focus our attention on horror and Halloween fun. For the month of October we’ll be sharing various pieces of underappreciated scary books, comics, movies, and television to help keep you terrified and entertained all the way up to Halloween.
The reason the likes of Stephen King or David Cronenberg are considered masters in the horror genre is not just in how they deliver the scares, but how their storytelling can speak to you on a personal level. Stories like Cronenberg’s The Brood and many of King’s novels are less about the monsters they present, and more about ordinary people and how they are going to resolve their domestic troubles amidst the horror that is going on. This is something that is at the heart of Image Comics’ The Closet.
Whether it is writing Batman or his creator-owned titles like Something is Killing the Children and The Department of Truth, James Tynion IV always seem to struggle when it comes to long-form storytelling, where he can get across his horror pitches, but can be cold on a dramatic level. But running for only three issues, The Closet is the comics equivalent of a really good horror short story.
The story centers on Thom, who is struggling to get his act together as both a husband and a father, with plans to move cross-country in the hopes of a fresh start. Thom’s son, Jamie, is seeing a monster in the bedroom closet and will not let them go, proving that the past will continue to haunt the flawed family.
The childhood fear of a monster hiding in the closet or under our beds is something that we can all relate to, and that horror is greatly realized through Gavin Fullerton’s moody art. Like a dark, twisted version of a children’s picture book, with a lot of emphasis on shadows, the climax of every scene is the presence of this closet-based monster terrifying the four-year-old Jamie. These wordless pages rely on Fullerton’s simple character designs, along with Chris O’Halloran’s muted coloring, delivering on the scary slow build-up.
As impressive as the horror is, wordplay between the few characters makes up the majority of the book, and it’s surprisingly compelling. The focus is primarily on Thom – his interactions with his wife in the first issue, his brother in the second and some stranger in the finale – and we can see the cracks forming in this man who wants to do right for his family, but is constantly screwing up. Once you reach the final issue, you get more of an explanation about why this family is falling apart and whilst the ambiguous ending might frustrate some readers, one can interpret it as the harsh reality of never escaping your past demons.
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