Filed under: Comic Reviews, Indie Comics | Tags: And Then Emily Was Gone, Boogeyman, Colin Bell, Emily, Fiona, Greg, Iain Laurie, John Lees
With John Lees title “The Standard” making waves in the worldwide market of the comic book world (Issue #4 reviewed here) it’s good to see that his other self-published titles are coming thick and fast with this one also available at this year’s Glasgow Comic Con.
With “And Then Emily Was Gone #1” though we have a darker mystery on our hands as the disappearance of Emily Munro sees her friend, Fiona, track down famous ex-police officer Greg Hellinger. Although in the years that have passed since his days in the Police, life has gotten rough for Greg with his tormented mind playing tricks on him as he fights his inner-demons to get some sleep and get through the day.
The mystery deepens as Fiona fills Greg in on what happened and we tie in an old Scottish folk tale about the boogeyman resulting in plans for the two friends to runaway. All goes well except Emily doesn’t show – the talk of boogeyman and Greg’s own inner-demons bring the case a little closer to home for the ex-cop and that’s a sure fire sign he’s on-board. There’s a brief break in the tale as we see the hardware section of a local store (“D.I.Y. HARD” is a great name for a store) and new characters Louise & Vin picking out what turns out to be weapons to carry out their next job – murdering a stranger. All very surreal but these glimpses of other characters are surely showing us how multi-layered this tale is going to be.
Greg and Fiona return to the Merksay, in the Orkney islands, where Emily disappeared from and while she has her head wrapped in bandages to hide her identity from the locals – I may try that myself next time I head to the shops 😀 We switch to the final scenes of this 1st issue as Emily’s father Gordon brings his wife, Claire into their basement to see the contents of a mysterious box, something Gordon can’t explain but thinks may have sent him mad and the repeating of “What’s in the box?” in those last few panels has my brain tormented in trying to figure out where the story is going…..although thankfully I’m not seeing demons.
A GREAT opening issue and after me initially not being keen on the artwork from Iain Laurie I can’t really think of a better way to stage it and depict the story – Laurie has a new fan in the space of one issue. Great work from Colin Bell on the lettering too as a winding tale and a twisted plot from Mr Lees plays out but with enough quirky characters and mystery to pique your interest and sustain it…..almost willing the story along to reveal more key pieces of the plot. One issue down and the countdown begins to that second issue coming out and helping to answer some of those questions that have started gnawing at my head.
7/10
G-Man
Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment
Comics Anonymous 