Miskatonic #2

Miskatonic #2

Aftershock Comics 2020

Written by Mark Sable

Illustrated by Giorgio Pontrelli

Coloured by Poppa Bowland

Lettered by Thomas Mauer

Miranda Keller has been sent to the Miskatonic Valley to investigate a series of killer bombings targeting the community’s elite. She’s convinced that radicals are to blame. But her partner, Tom Malone, a retired Brooklyn detective, sees connections to a supernatural event in his past that left him scarred and scared, leading the pair to an occult conspiracy that pits them against forces from beyond this world..

I love this for a myriad of reasons. It reminds me of something that we’d see on Supernatural, a very specific episode comes to mind, and that would alone would be worth the price of admission. Yet that’s not all there is either there is so much more to this that lays within the layers within the story that continue to play out before our very eyes. Very often when we see a male and female co-lead a book there are going to be correlations with other franchises for me it feels akin to Warehouse 13 and honestly that isn’t a bad thing in the slightest. So with so much familiarity swirling around our heads it’s what we see within these pages that is what sets it apart and makes it something all it’s own.

I am a huge 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 extremely well rendered. With the way that this is structured and how we see the layers playing out alongside how everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow is what takes us through these pages setting it’s pacing. So that the information we see and learn has a proper place and time within the story and it just runs smoothly like a swiss timepiece. The character development that we see is superb and as we see the characters act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter we are continually getting to know more and more about this pair as well as those in their peripheral.

There is a reason the supernatural has had such a profound effect on people throughout history, look at Hitler and the department he founded, Ahnenerbe for one example. Not to mention word of mouth stories passed down through generations before writing even started which also led to the formation of the gods around the world.

The interiors here are really rather nicely rendered. When we see backgrounds being utilised it’s utterly glorious! I wish we’d see them more regularly especially when they are in the library or on campus. Those are moments that are perfectly placed for them to be utilised to enhance the moments, I only wish they’d been taken advantage of. The linework is beautifully rendered and there is some really nice detail work that we see. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkable eye for storytelling. The colour work is really well laid down as well. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work really is rather beautifully rendered. Also it really is nice to see the creativity and imagination on display within these pages and with the subject matter at hand that’s one of the key elements of this book.

​

There is so much going on here that keeps the readers mind engaged in what we see and takes them off the page and into their own minds and imaginations. Mark is weaving such an extraordinary tale that mixes fiction, horror, the supernatural and history to create such a stunning display of what a world might have looked like if open minds were allowed to prevail.