When it comes to New England, a few things are true: The weather is always changing, and the macabre loves to play.
Enter Nectar, a new horror series from Vault Comics and New York Times bestselling author Jeremy Robinson, where the monster is the prettiest thing, but it wants to drink our blood. Set in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1837, science is on the rise, but probably not fast enough to stop an invasion of butterflies!
Something you’ll notice right off the bat is the beautifully detailed art by Annapaola Martello with layouts by Francesco Francini. There’s a level of care and detail here that’s more akin to European comics. Colors by Steve Canon are realistic and a bit dour, so that when butterflies do show up, they pop off the page.
The story opens in a cemetery, where the caretaker is woken by a dead man’s bell and rushes to save, presumably, a person wrongfully buried. What he finds is a rotting corpse of a woman who has butterflies fluttering out of her chest cavity. It’s a shocking opening scene with a beautiful full-page splash to end it before the story shifts to three days later.
How did those things get in there?
Credit: Vault
Set on Misery Island, how apt for a horror story, one can imagine the people living there are few, and also soon to be trapped by the winter weather. The focus is on a town doctor who is far more open-minded than most for the time. He works with herbs as well as modern medicine, while also respecting fine art that many at the time could be burned at the stake for appreciating. He soon notices an orange and black butterfly that shouldn’t be around this time of year, and the ominousness of it grows from there.
Along the way, we follow two young girls, innocent and unaware of the dangers nature can bring, a woman Doctor Amos fancies, and a single man chopping wood alone by his cabin. All of these characters experience the growing danger of the butterflies, establishing that things can only get worse from here in the next issue.
What works well in this issue is the mood and atmosphere. The gothic sensibility is present in the look and feel of the surroundings and the people. Nectar #1 thrives on mood, patience, and a creeping sense of dread. Jeremy Robinson plants his horror in fertile historical soil, letting superstition and early scientific thought collide in a town already famous for paranoia. Annapaola Martello’s intricate linework and Steve Canon’s grounded palette create a world that feels cold, isolated, and primed for disaster. The butterflies themselves are a brilliant visual hook, beautiful enough to draw you in before the horror fully lands. While this debut functions largely as atmosphere-building, the tension is undeniable, and the final impression is clear: something unnatural has arrived, and winter is going to make escape impossible.
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