The Creeping Below #1 (written by Brian Azzarello with art and colors by Vanesa Del Rey and Hilary Jenkins) begins a timeless story with a supernatural twist, as an American photographer meets a tragic fate in the ancient forests of Oslo Norway, the first step on her dark journey of transformation and vengeance.
And what a step it is! Brian Azzarello does a great job of putting you in main character Val’s shoes. Anyone who has ever traveled to a foreign country can relate to Val and her culture shock. She can’t speak Norwegian and everything around her, even the food and drink, seems alien.
Vanessa Del Rey’s art is reminiscent of such great horror artists as Bernie Wrightson and Kelly Jones. The scenes toward the end of the issue taking place in the wild forest outside the city are the most powerful of the book, with every tree and branch shaped like tendrils or some amorphous demonic beast. I found myself staring at those pages numerous times after first reading through the issue and each time I gazed at the pages, I saw some new vile creature within the forest’s foliage.
Val never seems one-dimensional. The first few pages of the book give insights into her character, including the fact that she works as a photographer for food books and magazines, taking pictures of the finished creations. And no, as terrifyingly boring as that job sounds, that’s not where the horror comes in the book.
The book feels like a variation on The Virgin Spring, Ingmar Bergman’s classic film of innocence lost and the morality (moral imperative?) of exacting vengeance for a hideous injustice that’s done to you or a loved one. This book has the same atmosphere of dread throughout. You know something bad’s coming for Val, and you’re almost hesitant flipping to the next page to see what happens next.
Like the best folk horror, the book has a primordial feel, as if the very soil and bricks of the city are struggling to keep an evil power at bay that’s just waiting to be explode any moment.
The only problem I had with this first chapter was the death metal band whose members are meant to be intimidating and disturbing but come off as pretty lame. I suppose they’ll serve nicely as targets of Val’s inevitable wrath, but they’re just corny and seem like an overused trope. Back in the 1980s when Satanic Panic was all the rage, these guys were a dime a dozen. Many a church poster warning of the “evils” of Dungeons & Dragons, metal music, etc., had a picture of a band like this, with their generic long black hair, splashes of white theater makeup on their faces and lingering sneers.
I wasn’t impressed by them, but I’m definitely looking forward to Val giving them some Old Testament-style punishment in the issues to come. Long live folk horror!
