Forest and Orson Innman find a legendary director in a rest home to ask him about his last film and discover more than they bargained for in Night Of The Ghoul #1, by writer Scott Snyder, artist Francesco Francavilla, with letters by Andworld Design. Synder and Francavilla build the perfect atmosphere for this wonderful horror tale.

Synopsizing this issue is pretty easy. The first line of the review tells enough about it, as it switches between the Innmans at the rest home, Forest speaking to director T.F. Merrit about his last movie, The Night Of The Ghoul, Orson in the waiting room, and the movie itself, which is a true story about a group of American soldiers in WWI scouting out an Italian town, where they find dead people, both civilians, and Germans. Merrit reveals to Forest that the movie is all true and what’s more, the rest home is involved in the whole thing, and they’ll be dead by morning.

Atmosphere is the name of the game in this story, and Francavilla knocks it out of the park. He handles pencils and colors and just kills it with the art. This story really needs that kind of thing, and Francavilla delivers. It starts with the way he colors everything. The movie segments feel like a black and white movie. The scenes in the present have a lot of grays and colors that light up scenes. Things in the rest home are dark and spooky, while the one scene of Orson’s mother at work doesn’t have the same darkness. It all works so well. His pencils are sensational and really bring it all home, giving the whole thing the exact right feel.

Snyder gives Francavilla so much to work with. Snyder is great for set-up, and instead of doing an info dump like he has elsewhere, he finds another way to do it with this issue. There’s certainly an info dump, but he uses the movie to do it, setting up the lore a bit before letting Innman and Merrit describe the rest of everything. It works very well, and he even throws a bit of family drama in, something to play with when things hit the fan.

This feels like it’s going to be a more run-of-the-mill horror story, and that’s okay because Snyder and Francavilla are working well together. This is the kind of story that really works because of the team, and they’re working so well together. Snyder is playing to Francavilla’s strengths, and it shows. This is a horror movie, and it’s working very well so far.

Night Of The Ghoul #1 works very well as the beginning of a horror story. Snyder sets it all up and then lets Francavilla run away with it. The atmosphere of this story is what it lives or dies by, and Francavilla delivers in that respect. As usual, Snyder does his onion style of storytelling- there are layers here that readers won’t be able to wait to get to.

Grade: A-