‘The Displaced’ #2 builds the mystery with heart, horror, and philosophical heft

‘The Displaced’ should be your new favorite horror story.

March 19, 2024

I think the path to great comics isn’t just about gimmicks and razzle dazzle. It’s about taking an idea or concept that feels familiar and adding just enough newness to make it fresh and exciting. That concept is clearly at the heart of The Displaced, as the creative team (writer Ed Brisson, artist Luca Casalanguida, and colorist Dee Cunnife) use issue #2 to extend this existential horror series about home, society, and what happens when it all goes bust.

With issue #1, we were introduced to “survivors” of Oshawa, Ontario, including Emmett and Gabby, who happened to be out of the city limits when their hometown got swallowed up by a sinkhole. But as we learned at that issue’s end — thanks to another, more mysterious survivor named Harold — Oshawa never existed in the first place.

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And, yeah, I get it: it’s mostly the premise of some forgotten episode of The Twilight Zone (even as the team nonetheless did it with more humanity and depth than such a comparison might otherwise elicit). But then it’s not about doing something new but doing it with gusto and creativity, and what we got was a “predictable” enough gimmick humming with interesting angles/ideas. There was such a slow, subtle build to that reveal in issue #1, and it landed in a generally goosebump-inducing manner because the creators respected this gimmick and did their best to bring us into this world. (Which was helped by the art style as well as the character work, as the look of this place nailed those strange small town vibes a la The Mist.) The issue, then, would be what happened beyond that big moment.

And, without revealing any actual mechanisms or whatnot, issue #2 does a damn fine job in further pushing the gimmick into new and interesting ways. It structures this group in a way that they’re now officially in survival mode, and we get to see them work as if they’re in the early parts of Lost or something (which is to say, all that tasty interpersonal conflict in the face of certain, looming doom). Plus, there’s some greater stakes and forces at work that really complicate their new community-building, making it not only feel all the more dire but extending this book’s thematic interests in ideas of home and community, societal memory, the nuances of grief, and how do we rely on one another as the world grows ever bigger and convoluted.

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It’s this inventive enough angle that spins a slightly familiar enough overarching story in a way that we get to explore some really poignant human drama that feels alive with a significance and depth. It’s about, as I’d mentioned earlier, making the best sort of version of this story, and The Displaced hums with a comfortable shape and form while making the right decisions to push the story in new territory and still avoiding too many layers and hokey additions. It’s a story about surviving the odds, yeah, but with a modern spin and relevance as well as a kind of directness and vulnerability that keeps our focus where it needs to be. (That’d be these really interesting sub-groups and the general arc of emotional theatrics.)

Maybe the Lost comparison feels a little unfair (oof, those later seasons), but it’s done to get at how exciting that series was early on. How it took this thing we all knew and made it feel fresh because it forced us to care deeply as it inflicted heaps of psychic and emotional damage on its characters. And The Displaced isn’t just operating in that same vein, but it’s doing so in the confines of comics to bring us into this story in ways only this medium ever truly could.

And speaking of comics, it’s when we consider the art even further that we see just how effective The Displaced is in balancing its many goals and interests in a way that feels refreshing, effective, and altogether unnerving. I’d mentioned already the general style/aesthetic here is a dream for a properly multifaceted urban survival horror story, with lots of emphasis on human emotions and faces to laser-focus on our feelings amid this slow build of psychic terror.

The Displaced

Issue #2, then, introduces elements that I’d say are a touch more supernatural and/or metaphysical. Again, though, it’s very much line with how the “gimmick” of the Oshawa survivors has developed, and yet it’s still very much an infusion of some wholly alien energies. But I think the way the art team handles it makes all the difference. It’s definitely a shock to the system given the pedestrian nature of this book (that’s very much a good thing), but it’s layered in such a way that it echoes a lot of the sentiments, feelings, and general energies of surrounding world.

So while it does feel shocking to an extent, I think it also creates the same kind of discomfort and overt connective potential that you’d also see in, say, a reaction from Harold or the face of another survivor who learns what their new fate really affords them. Which is to say, everything feels fully aligned and still powerful in its own right, and the layers of this world are peeling away in such a thoughtful, deliberate manner that we’re locked in fully as all is revealed in glorious, brain-shattering fashion. It’s another way this book tries to balance old and new, familiar and foreign to strike at the same kinds of nerves and sensations while pushing this story forward in ways that actually matter.

And so far, The Displaced has done just that and then some. Issue #2 ends not with a mega reveal but a moment of startling truth. It’s a quietly unsettling event that reminds us just what this book is going to be capable of as it starts extending its path forward (and preparing to sink its claws in ever deeper). Yet that endless human drama and stark horror is never once removed from this book’s list of thematic interests, and it all works together to shock the system in several exciting ways. So, no, don’t expect a lot of obvious comic “magic” from The Displaced, but do expect to be strung along and confronted in the best ways possible.