The beauty of the Ghost Machine imprint at Image Comics lies in its diverse range of comics, each in its own distinct genre. Hyde Street is pure horror. Geiger is a post-apocalyptic epic that’s taken on a superheroic flair. In the case of Rook: Exodus, Geoff Johns and Jason Fabok chose to tell a sci-fi action adventure. Rook: Exodus #8 changes that, as the book begins to lean more heavily into a horror aspect.
Part of that’s due to the presence of the Warden known as Arachnid. Though he doesn’t fully appear, his spiders do, and they’re the stuff of nightmares. Bright purple with glowing green marks, they’re the size of basketballs and number in the thousands, crawling over greenish-gray webs as thick as carpets. The reason why I’m going all in on the poetic language, other than the fact that I really like writing about comics, is that Jason Fabok puts the same level of effort into his artwork.
Besides the horrifying image of an army of spiders, Fabok draws an apocalyptic landscape that’s forever changing. In the first arc of Rook: Exodus, he drew a massively overgrown jungle and a landscape resembling the desert wasteland of Mad Max: Fury Road. This arc is taking the opposite approach, coating everything in a thick layer of snow and ice. Dots of snow fall over everything, coating Rook and his fellow Wardens as well as their respective animals. The first page also shows just how bad things got, featuring Exodus as the glowing paradise it once was – a sharp contrast to the wasteland that Fabok depicts.
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The action sequences in Rook: Exodus #8 are brief, but badass. Most of the action takes place in a shadowy bunker, with Brad Anderson lighting up the page with bursts of gunfire or the eerie green glow of the spider’s nest. It’s also here that the horror imagery begins to take hold, as Fabok places images of a crow struggling in spider webs or Bloodhound roaring in fury. If the first arc was paying homage to Blade Runner, this arc is no doubt giving love to Alien.
Rook: Exodus isn’t just a collection of pretty pictures, though. It thrives when Johns gets to explore the character dynamics between Rook and his fellow Wardens, as well as the balance between man and nature. Rook and Dire Wolf’s relationship takes center stage, as he’s determined to help her save Bloodhound while she’s struggling to come to terms with the feral monster that her father has become. We also get some moments with Materhorn, who has all the subtlety of a brick thrown through a window, and more of the mysterious samurai Stag (but not nearly enough, as he only shows up on the last page). Even the animals have a page or two to themselves; there’s no dialogue, but their snorts and grunts could be their own language.
Rook: Exodus #8 takes a hard shift into horror territory, as it continues the quest to save Bloodhound from himself (and other forces). It’s only going to get creepier, as the next issue will bring Arachnid fully into the fray. If you hate spiders, open this comic with caution.
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