Skybound’s Universal Monsters: Invisible Man #4 has been the best psychological horror I’ve read all year. With the big finale out this week, anticipation is high and expectations even higher. Jack Griffin has accomplished invisibility in a human – not himself, but in a street urchin with good reason to seek revenge. It’s an issue that’s equally a race for a solution as it is a further loss of humanity in his own ego.
Picking up where we left off, Universal Monsters: Invisible Man #4 takes us back into Jack’s mind, now certain the boy he turned invisible, Tommy, can’t find him. That said, knowing he’s invisible makes him even more paranoid than he was before, knowing that if Tommy finds him, he would have no idea if he was there. It’s a haunting thought, and one that shows Jack can’t handle not having full control.
From that motivation, Jack concocts a plan while also improving on his serum. This issue takes us through that plan, enacts it, and then takes things to a far more dire and violent place. This makes the issue satisfying in its own right, with its own beginning, middle, and end.
The variant covers have been amazing.
Credit: Skybound
Much like previous issues, James Tynion IV’s captions draw you into Jack’s head and make you feel almost dirty to be in his thoughts. Some pages may have a lot of captions, but paired with Dani’s art, you’re right there with him, thinking like him and seeing how disturbed he can be.
Meanwhile, Dani’s art continues to impress, especially when she conveys the Invisible Man as starkly white. We know he’s invisible, but it makes the visual more monstrous. Dani also captures interesting ways to show the Invisible Man using snow and flour. It’s a cool way to show invisible can look stylized and cool.
Outside of Jack’s obsession to be in control of the situation, Tynion also plucks at the curse of being invisible via Tommy. It’s conveyed well, and a type of living one can only imagine is hellish. Why Tommy never thought to cover himself in clothes isn’t explained, nor is it explained why Jack doesn’t ever consider it a curse. One can assume he thinks a cure is within reach, though it seems rather short-sighted that he never tried to find a cure in all his experiments. He has to be smarter than that.
Universal Monsters: Invisible Man #4 is a chilling, claustrophobic finale that cements the series as one of the year’s strongest psychological horror achievements. Tynion and Dani push Jack Griffin further into madness while delivering haunting visuals and a tight, devastating conclusion. Even with a few logical gaps, the emotional and thematic execution is pitch-perfect horror.
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