Review – The Evil Within #1 (of 4) (Titan Comics)

Publisher: Titan Comics
Writer: Ian Edginton
Art: Alex Sanchez
Release Date: 15th October 2014

Another month, another big game released, and an almost inevitable comic book tie in following quickly in its footsteps.

Telling the story of Dana, who’s searching for her missing friend Kate, who in turn disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Dana finds herself in an abandoned old town on her flyering route, when suddenly she meets Paul, a local hospital worker who’s being chased by zombies with stakes through their eyes. Then all hell breaks loose.

It’s a little bit abrupt in terms of chucking us headlong into the story – there’s not too much build-up, and the back story of Dana and her search for Kate are drip-fed to us throughout the course of her paddle-less progression up shit creek. It’s decently paced otherwise, and manages to crack along at a good pace, flitting through various stages of nightmare before landing with a sickening crunch at the bottom of it.

Sanchez’s art and layouts do a pretty great job of recreating the hazy, disjointed nature of nightmares that the concept is trying to channel, and an undeservedly unnamed colourist accentuates this rather nicely, with palettes shifting and swirling as the protagonists tumble deeper into the hell they’ve found themselves in.

Unfortunately, whilst the above is more than admirable, it lacks the oomph of the likes of other great horror comics coming out right now – and I believe that this comes down to the fact that this is a horror concept that was specifically designed to be delivered via video game, relying on the jump scares, and tension brought on by a survival mechanic to deliver scares and jumps, rather than maintaining a creepy atmosphere. All this means that it hasn’t translated particularly well into sequential art form, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying on the part of the creators here.

It aims pretty big, and there’s some vaguely interesting stuff going on here, but at the end of it all, the only shock is that it’s Titan, rather than Dark Horse, that’re putting it out. Sadly, this ends up being skippable, unless you suddenly become a massive fan of the game and are desperate to find out what happened before it.

Rating: 2/5.

The Writer of this piece was: Ross Sweeney
Ross tweets from @Rostopher24