It’s New York City in 2003, and Vin, a young guy, is pounding on the apartment door of a crummy building. Nope, he is not being let in, though, the rent is due. So outside he goes, to have a smoke in the woods.
Then, danger. This book ain’t no walk in the park, no cakewalk neither.
Writer Steve Foxe starts issue one of the Dark Horse comic All Eight Eyes with conflict. And that’s a good thing. It’s New York City, it’s college dropouts and drifters in hoodies, it’s the strange arrival of giant homicidal spiders!!
As we leg our long way among the webs of horror, the splatterings of character development, and the steady spray of dialogue, we admire, I mean REALLY admire Piotr Kowalski’s art. It’s detailed, but not tiring to look at. Kowalski knows where to show us the goods, and when to suggest the bad stuff. He swings us around the violence, the tattered city crap, traipsing the smelliest stairwells.
Brad Simpson keeps his colours on the pale side, even during homicides and building collapses. It’s restrained, therefore more horrifying. We fill in the blanks, we load our expectations, we careen through the sometimes loose and repetitive happenings. It’s spiders, it’s horror, it’s large spiders, it’s large horror. To be fair, it’s also hypnotic, oddly entrancing, and going somewhere creepy and fun, so leap on this one and drag it home with you!
Letters Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Editor Daniel Chabon
Dark Horse, All Eight Eyes #1, $3.99 for 26 pages of content
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