One of our esteemed compatriots here summed it up quite well when he said he'd have to give it a second read- I presume for the same reasons I've got it pencilled in for the weekend.
Please dont get me wrong- there is a bare minimum of the worst excesses of which perhaps previous Specials have been guilty. The art is lovely throughout, and both stories *promise* much. However, despite thoroughly enjoying the experience of reading them (especially the first, with its greatly expanded page count), neither story really left me with overwhelmingly good thoughts.
And so I must go back and read them again, because I feel I missed something.
Must just say that the cover looks better in the flesh than it did in the pre-publicity, as Misty herself is more appropriately pale than the tanned, just back from holidays, look she did seem to be sporting.
So- a second read is on the cards. But is either story as good as that boarding school one in the Scream & Misty spesh? No.
SBT
I am not 100% convince by this special. Both stories are adequate. I felt the first story drag on too long. The second was much better concerning pace and the art was great by David Roach. Little off a mix bag for me not the worst but not as good as other specials this year. It is also a case that I am not the target audience for this publication.
I'd also like to point out that it is lovely to have strips in a special that actually use an expanded page count. Stories of 'this' type (spoooky) can greatly benefit from extra panels to build atmosphere and tension.
Both strips also had absolute first rate lettering, too.
I felt the last special suffered from pilot episode syndrome and a lack of focus, so I was happy to see these were both properly self-contained efforts and all the cribs I recognised from other things were at least in service to the main plot/theme. This was probably the first special that actually managed the balancing act of being for middle-aged men, but also suitable for younger readers to be exposed to, with none of the occasional excesses that prevented similar consistency of tone and intent in the other specials.
I've already seen griping about the art on the longer story and UGh whatevs. Just pretend it's Mick McMahon reinventing himself again and pretend you like it.*
The shorter strip is a neat update on The Night Gallery's The Cemetery by way of MR James so you can't say they aren't making an effort, but I'm pretty sure there's a more obvious influence that I can't put my finger on atm. The main strip tries to do The Shining in a boarding school and doesn't try to hide it, so fair play.
* /absconds to fanboy-proof shelter
Quote from: Professor Bear on 03 December, 2020, 01:50:41 PM
The shorter strip is a neat update on The Night Gallery's The Cemetery by way of MR James so you can't say they aren't making an effort, but I'm pretty sure there's a more obvious influence that I can't put my finger on atm.
I'll call you in 7 days and tell you.
I kind of liked the first story, the only problem I have is you never see [spoiler]the ghost[/spoiler], which is kind of a missed opportunity. Even though I did really like the final page, and there's definitely a bit of Annihilation in the scene with all the journals in the shower.
In the second story, I think you see too many ghosts. And the ending did feel a bit rushed, I wasn't really sure why things happened. (Wasn't really sure why the phone ended up down the well in the first place, it looks like they get briefly possessed, but the boy's clearly talking to a ghost on the second page - which feels like two very different approaches)
I thought the appearance of the ghosts harmed the second story, but I understand that purveyors of a visual medium like comics maybe figure the money shot is all that matters, and not the spooky atmosphere that the story had managed to build up until that point, which I considered to be very evocative of OG Misty.
Quote from: athorist on 05 December, 2020, 05:37:12 AMI'll call you in 7 days and tell you.
The Ringu references are noted elsewhere, but the "images slowly approaching the observer" thing was what I referred to, as the exact same gimmick turned up in an online comic short many years ago (https://www.imaginarystories.co.uk/p/window.html). The writer says he nicked it from an MR James story, so I guess I unconsciously called that one.
Quote from: Professor Bear on 05 December, 2020, 02:30:54 PM
The Ringu references are noted elsewhere, but the "images slowly approaching the observer" thing was what I referred to, as the exact same gimmick turned up in an online comic short many years ago (https://www.imaginarystories.co.uk/p/window.html). The writer says he nicked it from an MR James story, so I guess I unconsciously called that one.
That'd be "The Mezzotint".
MR James did the ghosts down a well thing too, (more than once), but Ringu seems to have been equal parts influenced by a traditional Japanese folk tale and 1980's The Changeling.
In all honesty, I think that was the best special yet.
A real creeper of a story with a extended page count and then a short belter. Great stuff. More please!
I am giving this away as a Xmas Present ( thankfully it arrived 2 days ago )
It looks really good inside
Really enjoyed Infection. The extra pages really gave this one the time and space it needed to build up tension and mystery before going full on creepy. In a story like this its all about the timing and this one nailed it. I wondered at first as the opening scene when the girls are being mean to Char felt indulgent. As I read on it clear it set up so much and given the page count helped the pacing really work. Art V V Glass was spot in as well. And man it nails the ending really, really unpleasent.
Home for Christmas felt like given the same luxury of extra pages it too might have worked just as well. As it is nothing had the space to gell together and it felt like a set of fairly random things happening with out the space to provide a build up of tension, or develop the thread to understand what was linking things. There are a few 'what really' moments - the kids have a terrifying experience, patio doors are shattered, children are very nearly thrown down a well and the baby sitters response is - right folks off to bed! then fire and we're out. It was close to working and given maybe five moer pages and it might.
Mind it that would have meant scraficing five pages from the the excellent Infection it might have been worth it. Bold effort but really a case of a special of two halves... even if one had the advantage of extra time.
Well, that was really good.
With no disrespect to 'Home for Christmas' intended, 'Infection was the standout story. It benefitted hugely from the lengthy page count, and I hope future issues take a similar approach, with fewer but longer stories.
As to Glass's art style, I admit it might not be my first choice for a spooky tale. However, this was a really wordy story (the pages with the headmistress in particular), and Glass's very clean and unfussy style made that work in a way Dave Roach's more detailed style wouldn't have. And despite the clean lines, it's not without its own detail or atmosphere.
I really hope it was picked up by a different demographic, and not just us 40/50-something men.
Regards,
Robin
I feel like a massive idiot with Infection, because it feels like there's something I'm just not getting. I like the broad feel of it, but it didn't fully resolve for me.
Quote from: IndigoPrime on 27 December, 2020, 11:31:27 AM
I feel like a massive idiot with Infection, because it feels like there's something I'm just not getting. I like the broad feel of it, but it didn't fully resolve for me.
I think it depends on how happy you are with ambiguity. If nothing else, we're left at the end with the strong likelihood we've been dealing with an unreliably narrator.
Pretty much all of the story is from Char's perspective. In fact, looking at it again, I think the only bit that happens out of her sight are the panels where the headmistress looks at India's diary. She aghast at what she sees... but earlier she's not affected by the sight of the zombified girls when Char pulls up the blinds. So, she doesn't seem to see them, but she
does see something wrong in the diary. If the girls (and their problem) only exist for Char, but there is something on the diary that is disturbing, is this because Char is the one who's gone mad and has perhaps written something in India's diary?
The chills in this story stem from the uncertainty of what's happening, alongside the girls' increasingly weird behaviour, if it's happening at all.
It's entirely possible I've missed something obvious myself. For example, l started looking for the significance of 1842, since it Char crosses it out in her diary on the final page. It may just come from the 1842 TB outbreak referenced earlier... but I found that it crops up on Mr Mark's mind map on his board. There's a bubble stemming from 'History' that in one panel say's 'Myth' but in another says '1842'. Similarly, another bubble changes from 'Tradition' to 'Jonestown', which wikipedia tells me was a site of a mass murder-suicide. 'Group Therapy' becomes 'Stone Tape', 'In/Out groups' becomes 'Delusion', and 'Haunted' appears from nowhere attached to 'Psychology'. Is this telling us something, and if so is it Char or the author/artist?
When Char first finds the diaries in the shower, she doesn't appear to be carrying her book, and yet she picks it up off the floor after hearing harper thunking her fork in the table. Is this a continuity error or deliberate?
There seems to be more stuff going on this story than is visible on one read.
Regards,
Robin
I got the impression I missed something significant in the photo, which appeared to have the same kids in it, but from many decades ago—and an empty place.
For anyone enjoying V.V. Glass's work here, I'll mention that Vee is currently drawing up a storm on 'The Last Witch' for BOOM, the first issue of which is out in January. You can find a preview at this link. (https://www.boom-studios.com/wordpress/archives/the-last-witch-1-first-look/)
Long time lurker here and I have recently read this and was interested to see how others found it.
I found infection to be a good tale but have also been left with the feeling I am missing something. I can't decide if we have been dealing with an unreliable narrator. The final page doesn't really make it clear if Char is unreliable or not - being affected by the same thing the others were doesn't necessarily mean the preceding pages were untrue?
My steaming hot take, curled out onto the keyboard like I'm proud of it: Char may be narrating, but she isn't actually telling the story, we're merely privy to her diary entries as that story progresses.
The story is - for me - a commentary on boarding/religious schools' insidious, but petty means of control, wherein they often claim to be a "liberal, free-thinking environment" despite uniforms, tiered daily schedules and a log of every thought and action being mandatory requirements for every pupil. The story even overtly mentions conditioning methods and the usual conspiratorial mind-control methods at the off, and as it progresses we see characters acting first in uniform ways, but then their adherence to routine becomes ritualistic and eventually fetishistic, their not questioning why they're doing it or if what they're told as a rationalisation is actually true - their not remembering when things were different to what they're currently being told is pure "Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia" stuff, and we nerds know how that routine goes.
The ambiguity is in whether or not the school is knowingly going further than is usual in its methods, but I think the principal's response to actually reading one of the diaries shows she hasn't been reading them at all until that point, and the level of psychosis has surprised her. This is a woman just going through the motions rather than enacting some long-term evil mind control plan, and she overreacts in quarantining the school, but it's the only thing she can think of doing because despite claims to be a reformer and trailblazer, she's never thought outside the box. She's as trapped as the kids are - at first figuratively, then literally - by the means and methods of the school.
So basically: it's a story about mass hysteria in a boarding school, caused and then compounded by institutional dogmatism.
The stuff about a disease outbreak and vaccinations and the school gong into "lockdown" is just topicality and/or red herrings, but if you wanted, you could read it as someone going bananas in lockdown, because Current Events. I guess you might get hung up on "yes, but why is it happening in that school?" but I don't know what to tell you - why does Jack Torrence go bananas in the Overlook?* If it didn't happen, there wouldn't be a story. Maybe it happened because the kids were left to their own devices? I dunno.
* I gather Doctor Sleep answered this question, so maybe the writer of Infection will write a stupid and unnecessary follow-up in 35 years' time.
Quote from: Professor Bear on 28 December, 2020, 12:52:16 AM
The story is - for me - a commentary on boarding/religious schools' insidious, but petty means of control, wherein they often claim to be a "liberal, free-thinking environment" despite uniforms, tiered daily schedules and a log of every thought and action being mandatory requirements for every pupil.
Yes, at the start I also thought it was going to be the usual tiresome stuff about private education, but it quickly became something much more interesting than that.
Your points about the headmistress's reaction to the diaries sounds as reasonable as any other, as does your take on the whole story. I don't think it's realistic, in the sense that you can't get away with that kind of thing, but that hardly matters in this kind of story, and just adds to the disturbing wrongness of it all.
I read the article in the Meg last night, and Glass says, 'It's a ghost story about tradition and unspoken social mores growing out of control'. If there's a ghost in the traditional sense, I missed it.
Regards,
Robin
FWIW, I got all that about the basic theme of that story. That's the abstract. I still have trouble with the conclusion (presumably, the lead thinks she's fine but has also been infected). Also, there are the dates and the very old photos showing the same characters (unless that's an art flub or my memory playing up).
I love the ambiguity and for me that's what works about the story. Its spooky - the mystery adds to the tension and feeling of unease generated by the story. The photo, is it the same girls born again to relive the same horrors? Is it the dead coming back to haunt? When did Char become infected / haunted and so for how long is her narration true?
The fact that we're talking and pontificating suggests there's more than enough to grab our attention hold our interest and the lack of singular clarity just adds to the sense uneasy that permeates the story for me.
Quote from: Colin YNWA on 28 December, 2020, 09:27:59 AMThe photo, is it the same girls born again to relive the same horrors? Is it the dead coming back to haunt? When did Char become infected / haunted and so for how long is her narration true?
I suspect some things - like referencing
The Shining in your story about a writer going mad in an old building in which they are trapped for several months - are just reliable tropes.
I think the first time I read through this I was not really paying too much attention and just going along with the events. It's easy to just follow Char's diary entries - is it this, is it that and then it just seems to end. That doesn't do it much justice and I can now appreciate more what is going on.
There is a reference to the works of M R James and The Haunting of Hill House (which influenced Stephen King's The Shining) in one scene so I think that's what we are dealing with here - a haunted house story that also leaves the reader questioning if we are just dealing with psychological issues.
We never see the 'ghost' but there are enough references to the terrible of events of 1842 to make me believe there is something supernatural that was born from those events.
My take on the ending is that Char has vigorously maintained that she is OK throughout all of this but we see that might not be true. I don't think that negates what the others are doing but rather that Char is falling under the same influence.
Those are just my thoughts on it and I could well be completely wrong! I still think its a very good tale that has more depth and a much more traditional ghost story at its heart, than you might first think.
Personally I think that it shows a strength of the strip that it is still being talked about here. If the strip was poor it would simply have been dismissed.
I thought the first story was outstanding. One of the best short stories I've read in a long time and an interesting exploration of class signifiers. I'd be very happy to read work by this team again and will be checking Jim's link.
The second story was more conventional and I enjoyed it too. David Roach was excellent, as always.