Review – The Eighth Seal #2 (of 5) (IDW Publishing)

Publisher: IDW Publishing
Written by: James Tynion IV
Artist: Jeremy Rock
Coloured by: Nolan Woodard
Release Date: 6th January 2016

I don’t normally tend to go for horror books, but boy I am glad that I was given this book to review.

Just to give a quick recap of the story; Amelia is the First Lady of the United States and has been having some disturbing hallucinations. These are becoming more and more frequent and are starting to bleed into the real world, with the most recent one occurring when she was dancing with her husband in front of the entire assembled press. After retiring for the night, she ends up sleepwalking and scraping a symbol into her desk.

Her aide Brian finds her with weird coloured eyes, hinting that this is something a little more than mental health issues, and helps cover the incident up. Over the next few weeks she dodges her psychiatrist, saying she feels fine, but Brian forces her to see him. It is here that we discover… well… you’ll have to read it to find out, won’t you?

Anyway, this book is truly brilliant from the pacing to the visual side to the strength of the premise itself. The artwork has a familiar yet unique tone with the ‘monster’ having an utterly terrifying and disturbing look that made my skin shudder. I can imagine that as the story continues we will be seeing more and more of this design, which is definitely a welcome prospect — in a slightly disturbing way.

The overall pacing has the feel of a tense political thriller, packed with various secret alliances and subplots. Given the nature of the book, however, I think it will become more horror based as the story continues. No bad thing, especially given what we’ve seen from the story so far. Highly recommended for fans of horror, political drama, and grotesque beasties that will make your skin crawl.

Rating: 4/5.

PREVIEW ARTWORK
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