From BOOM comes Maw #1, a highly triggering, trauma-and-drama-filled horror journey.
Writer Jude Ellison S. Doyle gets busy, fast. It’s about rape and sexual trauma. It’s about travelling to a ‘safe’ retreat, where women can go, away from the irritating male gaze. Far from where the male predators graze. Where the deer and the antelope play, and prey. For the means and ways to go on, make peace, revisit the dangerous moments from the cocoon of protection, the safe place.
But what is safety, and is your time of living dangerously going to be healed if you bring the danger along with you wherever you go? it’s in your head, it’s in your approach. It’s a breathtakingly brutal trip along the road to hell, paved with bad and misguided intentions. The cobblestones trip them up, these walkers, the darkness traps and isolates them.
The plot is solid, the dialogue as sharp as a dagger. The visual flow enabled and enacted by artist A. L. Kaplan, (spooky and effecting colours by Fabiana Mascolo, assists by Federica Mascolo) makes this a gut-wrenchingly effective story. The figures are well-rendered, the story beats memorable. The framing and sequential flow of the panels and pages is unsettling and involving. So good, so evil.
This is a horror story, with the good, the bad, and the ugly all interacting, all of their agendas subject to questioning and mental anguish.
BOOM! Studios, Maw #1, $3.99 for 24 pages of content. Mature for subject matter and situations.
Newsdesk