Previously on Briar: a bottle episode of sorts, as our fearless adventurers were reeling with the fallout of Shadow Village’s destruction. This time around (issue #7), though, the gang find themselves actually trapped — Spider and Briar in a seaside prison, Captain Bly in the ground, and Roop in the tedious life of a farm boy. Talk about feeling pent up, amirite?!
But this especially depressive and even more confined/intimate issue (depending on your perspective) was another achievement. Because in typical Briar fashion, we didn’t need much room or space to really get some important insights and developments as this book continues to grow as robust and thorny as a proper briar/brier plant.
There’s been some really solid set pieces across this arc. But this time around, the art team (artist Alex Lins, colorists Luis NCT and Mar Silvestre, and letterer AndWorld Design) hit us with lots of dreary prisons, bland farms, and actual graveyards. And not only is it sort of fitting given the gang’s dire situation, I think it’s a strength of the art team to provide something so obviously depressive. They’re capable of capturing so much life and emotion within these grey, dying places — the prison stuff, especially, beams with a certain depth and emotionality that captures the struggles of our brave heroes.
And in these spaces, they can inject just enough color — the sharp reds when the gang each wake up for another day in hell — that throw us off guard and really create some powerful textures and comparisons. And through that, we see how they battle to keep themselves going in these places, and how they keep their personal flames lit just long enough to make it through these nightmarish ordeals.
Variant cover by Christian Ward. Courtesy of BOOM! Studios.
From there, color becomes this really important thread across this whole issue. There’s the appearance of Grendrid, for instance — her vivid greens and psychedelic horror vibes are perhaps the most lively thing in this issue. That really raises some big questions for Briar, including questioning her resolve against the nasty godmother and what it might mean to really let the sorrow win out. Similarly, Briar has an especially violent outburst toward the issue’s end, and it’s a splash of vivid blood that will make you feel uneasy (unless you’re a body horror weirdo like myself).
That moment comes when Briar may be at her lowest, and it’s an expression of brilliant, stupid life against all odds that affirms the strength and resolve of our hero in a way that might be just a touch uncomfortable. It’s just another small but mighty way this “new” art team has responded to this second arc, and embraced some key ideas and themes to tell a vital part of the Briar journey, and one focused on great loss and suffering before things (hopefully?!) turn around.
But despite all that robust suffering across this issue, writer Christopher Cantwell felt as joyous and adventurous as ever. The use of the pseudo-bottle episode structure in Briar #6 saw Cantwell really leaning into his TV bag of tricks, and this time around he pulled out some threads and tidbits of a sitcom to really weave some magic for Briar Rose and company.
Variant cover by Ariela Kristantina. Courtesy of BOOM! Studios.
By that I mean, the issue started with a kind of back-and-forth between Briar and Spider. Yes, it was quite serious, but it also felt a little playful in its tone. The kind of serious discussion you’d see in a sitcom that’s undercut by brevity and humor. Not to take away some sense of emotional power but to contextualize it and maybe even lend a little hope that these two friends were going through a rough patch. And that dynamic, across a bleak and pain-filled issue, really extended the humanity and showed us how much the crew’s whole shtick (a slightly wonky found family with issues and zany tendencies) can still hum even in the worst of times.
And we got something similar with a really potent and important convo between Roop and Bly. I won’t reveal too much about that, but suffice to say it was like every father-son sit down in every sitcom you’ve ever seen, and it’ll leave you feeling warm and cozy. It maybe felt a little out of place (the Roop-Bly relationship isn’t quite as solidified and initially compelling as Spider and Briar), but it was nice to see the group’s dynamics grow more robust and for us to get more face-time with various configurations.
At the same time, I think the Spider-Briar and Bly-Roop dynamics told another, doubly important tale across this issue. The former dynamic was really about how we all can snap under pressure and lose some level of humanity when the -ish hits the fans. The latter, meanwhile, really saw the two engage in a way to try and understand themselves and each other when things were clearly bleak. And so through that, we see how important the idea of fighting is, and how we must retain our passion and vigor to survive life’s onslaught. Add in the slightly sitcom-y sheen, and this was really about the hope of humanity against the odds. How we use heart and humor to survive the worst of it and keep ourselves going when everything inside us wants to give up.
Variant cover by Ejikure. Courtesy of BOOM! Studios.
The ending of the issue even reflects that, and that fantastical choice leaned into some sense of sitcom magic (while still feeling in line with the Briar universe) to show us what can happen if we persevere. Or, what happens when we remember that which matters most when it’s not always so easy to see.
It was a powerful lesson not only for us readers, but how Briar continues to tell this massive story about ourselves and how we move through the world. Maybe we’re all really cursed — with feelings of inadequacy, the mistakes of our past, our blind spots/deficiencies, etc. But the thing that makes the burden a little lighter is remembering there’s still a way out through friendship, belief, etc., even if it’s only mostly fleeting. Briar brought things down to their lowest and had us looking at the stars for relief and more massive story wonders.
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