Written by Rick Remender and Seth Peck; Art by Francesco Francavilla; Lettering by Ed Dukeshire; Published by Image Comics
Continuing a look at this vintage Image series, we find more twists and turns than the road that led our protagonists to a barren, backwoods town in issue # 1. One of them compares the town to something out of the Twilight Zone, and that’s true enough, but there are also odd ripples of Lovecraft moving through the narrative as well. The book opens with three of our hapless – and hopelessly stranded – main characters – Matt, Sheryl, and Dani – being shown where to bed down while they contemplate their ruined car and a fourth member of the party, Dalton, who’s been unjustly jailed by the town’s lunatic lawman.
Right away, things get weird(er) as Matt and Sheryl settle in for some wine and lovemaking. This plan is rent asunder by Matt changing form as they make out, and declaring, after Sheryl shouts, “Who are you?!”, “I am your true love… I am your familiar”. Matt’s new look is the same as that of the demonic apparition he glimpsed when he lost control of the car causing his car to be totalled. Dani, after beholding a rather Lovecraftian idol, is riled by Sheryl’s screams. Dani comes in on Matt attacking Dani, though Dani still sees him in the demonic form he just shifted into. Matt comes at Dani, who takes him out by slugging him with a brick. Sheryl thinks he’s dead. Dani tells a distraught Sheryl that at this point self-preservation is the top priority.
Meanwhile, the town’s deviant-looking mayor comes to observe Dalton in his cell, after which the sheriff is alerted that Dani and Sheryl have “gone and run off”. The sheriff sends the mayor and a woman named Alva to the town church’s basement, where apparently some kids are locked up. Things just keep getting stranger as Robert, a character also drawn like a leering inbred sex offender, is left to watch over Dalton, who threatens to tear Robert’s throat out if Robert intends to rape him. This leaves the sheriff and the lumbering “Dog” to find the two girls.
On the way to help Dalton, the young woman come across a man in a wheelchair who someone merely touched and caused to go limp. Dani begins to believe the entire town is part of “some crazy cult”. Elsewhere, Dalton feigns a seizure to gain the upper hand over Robert. Dalton learns of the children in the church basement and arms himself, keeping locked up Robert, who begins begging some unseen force for mercy, a force that turns his head all the way backwards, snapping his neck and ending his days as the sheriff’s whipping boy. A stunned Dalton literally trips and bumps into the returned sheriff, while Dani hides Sheryl in a shack, planning to return, but not seeing the encroaching axe-wielding Dog…
Sorrow succeeds on several levels. As an entry in the time-honored “off the beaten track kids against aberrant backwoods fiends” archetype I referenced in my review of issue # 1, it hits it right out of the park, filling the reader with that familiar sense of dread. A whiff of the supernatural permeates the story, but it’s not full-on yet and has thus far no explanation. The incidents we have experienced would definitely land this one under the “weird (or strange) tales” banner. The beauty of the storytelling here is that minimal intimations are effective at conjuring far more grotesque images in the reader’s own imaginations than from what is shown.
In closing, once again I must rave about the lush, Joe Kubert-esque illustrations of the uber-talented Francesco Francavilla. Talk about an underrated contemporary comic artist; this gentleman is amazing. I’ll be cracking open Sorrow # 3 in the near future and sharing my thoughts about that one as well.
