Review – Goners #1 (Image Comics)

Publisher: Image Comics
Writer: Jacob Semahn
Artists: Jorge Corona, Gabriel Cassata
Release Date: 22nd October 2014

Goners is one of those books that I’ve pored over at least three times now, and I kinda have a mild urge to go over it a fourth, just to make sure that I didn’t miss anything. It’s positively brimming with detail, along with some absolutely terrific imagery, and seems to me to be the perfect Halloween comic.

The story goes that in an alternate reality, the mythical live alongside the mortal on Earth, and one family, the Latimers, has been responsible for defending humanity from extra-human threats for centuries. We open with the grown-ups of said family facing off against some nebulous cult called the Brotherhood of Anubis at the local governor’s mansion (how very Monkey Island of them!). Suffice to say, the phrase ‘What the shit?!’ is bandied about, and that’s what kicks off the rest of the book’s mystery.

The art’s gorgeous – almost as if Corona is the sordid lovechild of a union between Matteo Scalera, Rob Guillory and Humberto Ramos, with sinewy bodies and exaggerated faces for the human characters, and some pretty creepy distortions on the less than human ones. Bold, pulpy lines are further enhanced by Cassata’s wonderful colour work, and this gives the creature design a creepy quality that in turn gives the comic a beautifully unsettling tone, that gels well with that of the dialogue.

Speaking of which, Sehman’s writing is pretty great as well – artfully treading a rather fine line between wittily written mystery and slightly disturbing horror. His characters possess sly wits when appropriate, but he also manages to nail a depth to them that makes that far more than initially meets the eye – one scene where the mother of the Latimers explains why she cried on the day her daughter was born is particularly touching.

There’s a lot of fun ideas being tossed about in this book, and honestly… do you remember the first time you watched an episode of Scooby Doo? This’ll give you that precise vibe – it’s fun, it’s engaging, it’s beautifully drawn and I for one am excited to see where it goes from here. One to add to the pull list, certainly.

Rating: 4/5.

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