With the quiet desperation of something like No Country for Old Men, Of the Earth #1 is an exceptional series debut that expertly blends southern noir, folkloric horror, and it’s even wrapped up nicely with a warning of environmental catastrophe. It’s a book you’ll want to keep on your radar.
I don’t normally gravitate towards the spookies. There are so many things I’d rather feel than scared or tense, but the cinematic presentation of Of the Earth #1 had me hook, line and sinker. I’ve already referenced No Country for Old Men but it genuinely felt like a Coen-Brothers-esque world, and looked like one too, thanks to the incredible pacing by artist Charlie Adlard and colors by Pip Martin. In fact, Charlie Adlard and Chris Condon talked about the book recently with AIPT.
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Of the Earth #1 focuses on a young woman named Tabby. We know very little about her life, but we know she’s leaving it behind. An intense phone call opens the issue and she calmly tells a man on the other line that she isn’t coming back, and he threatens her in response. At the truck stop she made the call from, some guy comments on the call he overheard. Later on the road, she’s pulled over by a state trooper. He uses his position to intimidate Tabby but ultimately lets her off with a warning.
She finally makes it back to her hometown and her grandma’s house, and this is where the intro really becomes important. Before the story even starts, we’re treated to a two-page excerpt from a book that creates a monster in the closet for readers, and this is where I think the book works for me.
I don’t like gore for gore’s sake, and I don’t like wanton violence, but I do like an order to things, a morality. The two-page intro is from a book called “Oilfield Graveyard: Tales of the Wildcatter Myth”. It examines a folklore of the south that’s a cautionary tale for people hoping to dig for oil and fortune; sometimes when you dig into the earth, what you get isn’t what you’re looking for.
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Sometimes it’s an oily embodiment of your greed and intentions for the land. Sometimes it’s a monster that is kind of a catch-all for people’s fears. It’s big, it’s amorphous, it’s globular, but it’s human, unless it’s animalistic. Many disagree about its exact nature, but it always comes from what’s called a Wildcat rig: a one-off project from someone who hopes to do their best striking out on their own, prompting the local mythology to call these creatures Wildcatters.
When Tabby returns to her Grandma’s house, she sees a new wildcat rig on the property. She scours the house, abandoned mid-meal, and finds her grandma terrified and alone, covered in oil.
There’s a lot going on in Of the Earth #1, from big ideas like Wildcatters being the personification and penance of greed to smaller moments, like the pressure Tabby is put under exclusively by men during her exit towards greener pastures. Every moment feels deliberate and like it’s building to something bigger, a grand commentary wrapped in a horror story.
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Chris Condon and Andrew Ehrich deserve a lot of credit for writing a debut that moves so briskly. Conversations sound natural and real, and the big-bad, the Wildcatter, feels like it’s from a ’70s horror movie created to impart a lesson on those spectating. Tabby feels the right parts optimistic and vulnerable, the man she’s escaping is the right parts ignorant and sadistic, and the state trooper she ran into was the right parts authoritative and untrustworthy. Everyone hit their marks and delivered their lines in satisfying ways that echo the story’s references.
I’m happy to say Image has another strong horror-tinged debut on their hands with a mysterious but likable protagonist set against an interesting backdrop, and the promise of supernatural horror that may be looking for divine retribution or possibly just deserved punishment. Either way, I’m in for a genre that usually doesn’t grab me. You should check out Of the Earth #1.
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