Haunt You to the End #1 // Review
It’s the 22nd century. The environment has almost completely collapsed. One of the wealthiest men in the decaying remains of the earth is assembling a team to explore its most totally haunted place. He might be crazy, but he can afford to be. A strange group begins its journey in Haunt You to the End #1. Writer Ryan Cady opens a post-apocalyptic expedition into the darkness with artist Andrea Mutti. Depth and atmosphere resonate through the dark future in the opening of an adventure that should be a lot of fun once things really get going in the issues to come.
Journalist Matt Park has been contacted by Callum Shah. Shah wants him to join a team going to a haunted island off the Baja coast. Park doesn’t believe in ghosts, but Shah IS paying him way more money than he makes with his standard work. The island in question is Isla Lodo--the island of mud. On his way into the initial meeting, Park runs into Dr. Maddison O’Connell. Evidently, she was the chief medical officer for the U.N. Disaster Response Corps. Once inside, Shah introduces head of security Suzanne Gershwin. She had been U.S. Special Forces. Served with distinction. There’s a major hurricane coming to decimate the island completely. Shah and his crew have two days. Maybe three.
Cady weaves the opening to the series with a tight, little ensemble of characters. There’s just enough characterization of Park, Shah, Gershwin, and O’Connell to seem fascinating without bogging the opening chapter down in biography. The story needs to advance quickly from the intro to landing on the island. It does so while allowing the characters a chance to assert themselves on the page. There may not be a whole lot of action in the first issue, but Cady puts together more than enough drama and mystery to keep the pages turning from cover to cover.
Mutti coats the visuals in the shadows of heavy ink. There’s a washed-out feeling of decay in the colors. This is easily humanity in and around its end, but there is a certain degree of precision to the art that makes it all feel solidly grounded in reality. The tendency with an opening issue would be to want to amp up the drama, but Mutti keeps it cool, moody, and atmospheric throughout the first issue. There are a lot of stern gazes and silence going on in and around the panels. Cady and Mutti keep it intriguing enough to draw in the reader even if every panel ISN’T begging or shouting for the reader’s attention.
There’s a whole John W. Campbell “Who Goes There?” feel to the series. A group of experts in a few different areas dive into the unknown. Some of the better examples of this sort of thing in pop fiction tend to be sci-fi horror. Cady and Mutti take a group of people who don’t seem to believe in ghosts into the heart of supernatural horror while also fusing the narrative with a post-apocalyptic vibe. It’s a fun mash-up that could easily play with the audience’s expectations. It’ll be interesting to see where Cady and Mutti take it.
