Basilisk #2

Basilisk #2

BOOM! Studios 2021

Written by Cullen Bunn

Illustrated by Jonas Scharf

Coloured by Alex Guimarães

Lettered by Ed Dukeshire

Who Can Stop The Chimera?

Five individuals bound by a cult-like hivemind, they terrorised small towns with their horrifying supernatural sense-based powers, leaving death and destruction in their wake.

Regan, one of the Chimera, escaped and has been in hiding, with her murderous eyes bound, overcome with guilt. Until now... when a victim from her past forces her to hunt down the other four of her kind.

The more I see of this the more I like it, of course that’s supposed to happen right? This issue has all the creepy factors playing through it and we get to see and learn so much without ever once learning about where the five of them came from. Sure they each control one of the five senses to horrific degrees but that’s as much as we know about them well that and Regan seems to have a conscious because she’s will to stop three of the other four with her new travelling companion. I’d say captor but Regan is along willingly and all she wants is her revenge for the opening of the first issue. Who can blame her really? If that were my town and all the people I knew and loved where killed in that fashion i’d be out for blood too.

I am such a fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction and how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter is just bloody brilliant and impressive. The pacing is perfectly done and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of the story and the characters themselves the more we want to see and learn.

I am a fan of the way we see this being structured and how the layers continue to grow, evolve and open anew. The avenues that we’ve seen and the ones that are freshly opened are a real treat. Within the layers where we see the twists, see most of the characterisation and more interesting bits than I can recount here and whether they work with the main arc or simply swirl around it they add this great depth and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is brilliantly achieved.

These interiors are sublime! How we see the linework with its varying weights and techniques being utilised to bring out this kind of detail work is astounding to me. While we may not see a ton of backgrounds those we see are brilliantly rendered. How we see the composition within the panels bring us this great depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The creativity and imagination we see is utterly delightful and often grotesque which makes it all the more interesting. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show such a stellar eye for storytelling. The colour work equally and brilliantly laid down. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work, plus that blue face covering Regan wears yeah it really makes the moment pop like the fourth of July.

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Psychological horror with the full on nasty creepiness that we’re seeing is what makes Cullen such an amazing writer. This is so intelligently written and amazingly illustrated that it uses the readers brain in conjunction to the words and visuals so brilliantly.