‘Bone Orchard: Tenement’ #5 remains dazzling

This larger-picture approach doesn’t diminish the efficacy of the book’s almost droning tone.

October 18, 2023

Tenement has been moving at uneven speeds: the literal descent into horror happened quickly, dropping our characters into another world in its second issue, but what has followed has been a slow series of intermittent shocks and character moments flowing from issue to issue in such a way that it’s hard to remember what small moment happened where.

After several issues in the dark spaces of the building – both uncanny and mundane – the book’s fifth issue offers a sudden, relieving tone change, a moment anchored in a visual and narrative location distinct from the issues preceding. Our group of characters, now pruned down to their prophesized number of seven, find themselves in a brightly lit apartment.

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It’s a shift that feels more distinctly episodic than the book has thus far – a distinction that has been missing in utilizing a month-to-month format over a direct-to-graphic novel release. Where Ten Thousand Black Feathers felt distinctly like a miniseries –that format spoke to the chapter structure of its story – Tenement hasn’t made use of its issues as distinctive portions; the ends of issues sometimes feel arbitrary, a frustrating withholding of resolution in an already slow-burning narrative.

This larger-picture approach doesn’t diminish the efficacy of the book’s almost droning tone, a seething atmosphere pulled off by Andrea Sorrentino’s dynamic, stylistic layouts and Dave Stewart’s jarring use of color; even in this issue’s relatively safe setting in its peach-colored apartment, shocking uses of red and unconventional circular panels make the reader uneasy, the character’s clear unease ever-present. The illustrative version of jump scares arrives in beautiful two-page spreads. Even without the naked, mask-wearing ghouls or the eternal stairways into the dark, the issue exudes horror.

By the issue’s conclusion, the story rapidly accelerates into the extremely weird as reality breaks down, and the characters are thrown into abstracts. There are bridges between titles forming between the Bone Orchard titles – key visual cues, shared antagonistic forces, and even, in this issue, allusions to The Passageway.

Even as it moves unevenly apace, Tenement is deepening a larger mythology in subtle, clever ways. With every issue, The Bone Orchard Mythos continues to be an unmissable experience.