The television is on. It’s the news. There’s talk of something awful that’s happened. The TV plays to a largely empty home. There’s a cat lapping at the floor next to the Christmas tree. It’s blood. There’s a dead body wrapped-up under the tree covered in lights. Things aren’y going to get any better in The Deviant #8. Writer James Tynion IV continues a crime/horror series with the shadowy work of artist Joshua Hickson. The series continues to gradually explore the edges around a series of killings set in and around Milwaukee in a snowy December. 

He was expecting to meet with his lawyer. Turns out that it’s someone doing and investigation. He’s asking weird and strangely angled questions about Etsy. The investigator is asking whether or not he’s got a P.O. Box. It’s quite casual for a conversation between a cop and a prisoner. There is nothing sinister about the questions, though. If anything, the investigator seems to be pretty sympathetic. The investigator telling him not to give up hope. It's not much consolation to someone who's been put behind bars. there's no telling how long it could take to get his name cleared. He doesn't seem too terribly optimistic about the whole situation.

Tyrion’s dialogue continues to feel very natural. There is a moodiness captured in the scenes that seems to be animated and run entirely on exhaustion. There is an a character in the entire ensemble who doesn't seem profoundly tired. Everybody seems to be tired for different reasons. Not that there's really a whole lot going on with respect to that. The writer seems to be pounding the mood and the form into the page with a sledgehammer. It's totally overpowering anything else that might be going on. And that's not a bad thing. The mood lends the 

Hickson seems to be fusing the visuals of the story around all of the empty space. There's such a beautiful stillness about it. Nearly every panel feels like it might as well be an Edward Hopper painting. there's this gorgeous sense of silence about it. It's almost reverent. Everything seems to find its space on the panel without making too much of fuss about being anywhere at all. Hickson also manages a really good sense of wintery shadow about the darkness in the night. It all feels so very resonant and soulful. There may not be a whole lot going on on the surface, but Hickson’s moods speak volumes in and around every slump and shrug in the issue.

It’s weird that the indicted murderer would have mentioned that he had had a P.O. Box at a pack and ship place off of North Avenue by the Oriental. That’s strangely specific for something that would also be...wrong. There’s no such place in that neighborhood. Tynion’s dialogue feels natural enough about it, though. He’s done such a convincing job of making the thing seem convincing on so many levels that it’s easy to take that kind of detail for granted. It’s just that good.

Grade: A