North 40 # 1-3
Wildstorm Productions
Writer: Aaron Williams
Artist: Fiona Staples
Reviewer: Bryce Holland

Most people would agree that one of the key ingredients in any horror story is ambiance. Films, when done right, are able to craft it very directly through the use of setting, lighting, sound, and a number of other things. Books have the luxury of describing ambiance in as much or as little detail as the writer chooses, and of course the reader gets to fill it all in with their imagination. Comics, on the other hand, have it pretty rough. Usually, the writer of any given book is only directly putting dialogue on the page, with maybe a little expository narration, and the artist has to visualize all the action, but is limited to what they can fit in a given panel. Readers really aren’t able to let their imaginations run like in books, but they don’t have the entire picture spelled out for them either, like with films. The writer and artist have a huge burden on their hands when crafting a really great horror comic. Then there’s the originality factor. While there are a number of great horror comics out there, much like with horror films, there is a ton of shit you’ve got to sift through to get to the good stuff. Most horror comics are either stale vampire stories, or immensely cliched zombie tales, with the occasional gore-fest slasher-type narrative thrown in for good measure. It’s a really amazing thing when a comic comes along that is the perfect fusion of storytelling and originality. In those cases, you get classic books like The Walking Dead or 30 Days of Night, and joining those series now, North 40.

North 40 takes place in Conover County, in an unidentified part of the Midwest. Two hapless souls sitting in a library start reciting incantations out of a very Necronomicon-ish looking book, and as fast as you can say “Cthulhu”, a strange force is unleashed that engulfs the entire county. Each and every resident in the area is knocked out by this mysterious power, only to awaken some time later to find that everyone is either dead, transformed into some kind of weird creature, or has gained superpowers. To top it all off, monsters and all manner of other supernatural creatures are now roaming the land, leaving chaos and destruction in their wake, and some strange energy is preventing people from leaving the confines of the county. The region quickly descends into anarchy, and it is up to the local sheriff and few newly super-powered locals to try to bring some peace to the situation and figure out exactly what is going on.

Writer Aaron Williams really has created a unique beast with this book. The whole concept is a great combination of H.P. Lovecraft mythology and the average people gaining superpowers concept that made the first season of Heroes so enjoyable. Williams is able to take a mishmash of ideas that seemingly don’t fit together, and blend them into a highly engaging tale that is far more than the sum of its parts. He’s also able to impressively handle a large cast of characters, each with their own unique place in this universe, without any of them fading into the background. The set up Williams has created here has the potential to carry on for a long time, with any number of directions he could go in. If these first three issues are any indication, I’m definitely willing to stay along for the ride.

The art on this book is fantastic. Penciller Fiona Staples’ approach is very stylized, but never wanders into cartoonish territory, which would prove a great detriment to this book. Having grown up in the Midwest, it’s great to see an artist that has been able to so thoroughly capture the region on the page – from the washed out, dusty color schemes, to the pitch-perfect landscapes. She also gets to really cut loose design-wise on this series, and cut loose she does. Vampires, overly-muscled rednecks, zombies, strange earthen creatures, ghosts, witches, and tentacled monstrosities: all are deftly rendered here. Staples’ visual style perfectly suits this hybrid horror tale, and I’m certainly interested to see what other kinds of grotesque aberrations she’s able to cook up.

For all intents and purposes, it’s hard to classify this series as a horror story in the traditional sense. I found that it was pretty light on scares, but at the same time, I don’t really consider that a bad thing. This a very distinct kind of story that fuses a lot of different elements, and weirdly enough, it all feels right. The atmosphere that Williams and Staples have created here is very evocative of the things that made the Buffy the Vampire Slayer television show so enjoyable at its best. I know that I’ve dropped a ton of names in this review, but look at the caliber of them: when a book can take the feel of creations like these, blend them together and come out with a product that still feels organic and readable, can it really be a bad thing? If you’re looking for a decidedly different kind of horror comic, check this one out.