Creepshow #5 // Review
Kristen found a guy online. Kirsten was about ready to give up on dating apps altogether when she met Jeff. A lot of guys might mention that they like going camping, but Jeff seems really committed to it. He’s taking Kristen all the way out into a seclided place. It IS romantic and intimate until a young woman shows-up looking for help in Creepshow #5. Writer Ed Brisson and artist Kael Ngu’s “Tent Revival,” is accompanied by a “B” story called “Prize Possession.” Writer Kami Garcia and artist Isaac Goodheart deliver an engaging addition to the haunted doll sub-genre of horror.
Agnes and Katherine are turning eight years old. Agnes gets a doll that she absolutely loves. Katherine might feel a bit upset about what she’s gotten, but she’s going to be a lot more upset about it when the doll accompanies her twin everywhere. On one particular tea party outside in the field, Katherine is so upset with the doll that she intends to throw it off a cliff and into the water below. Maybe she’s jealous. Maybe she’s just upset that she didn’t get what she really wanted. Whatever th case, she’s going to confront the doll and its significance. Then things get dark.
Brisson’s story has an admirable simplicity about its progression from one beat to the next. Details slowly and gradually deliver the full reality of the situation as it all expands. There’s no major stinger in the end of the story. Not big plot twist in the final page. It gradually builds from what it is that’s going on as things progress through from the beginning to the end of the story. Garcia’s “Prize Posession” is a clever bit of work that might feel more than a bit predictable, but it’s fun to see Garcia go through the motions of a classic sort of supernatural horror story.
Ngu frames the tension of the story with a great sense for place and resonance. The intimacy of the night is amplified and illuminated by Ngu’s coloring work, which catches. The light from the campfire moodily illuminates the visuals in a way that feels deliciously immersive. In the second story of the issue, Goodheart manages a great deal of depth in what she is putting to the page. There’s quite a bit of detail around the edges of everything. Occasionally there’s some really interesting framing. There’s a very sharp. Layouts involving the cliff along the shoreline are beautiful. There’s a particularly cool panel in which the reader is hanging out with a raven overlooking the idyllic house inhabited by the twins. Very cool stuff visually.
The series continues to show promsie as one of the more reliably good horror anthologies on the comics rack today. Very cool to see how it all comes together in another satisfying pariing of tales that don’t try to cram too mush story into the space allotted. The great horror anthologies of antiquity didn’t always manage the right balance of story and exposition. Creepshow is doing a great job of keeping it simple and primal.
