Avatar Press

For a comic whose publisher regularly bills it as “the horror event of the year,” Providence has until this point been rather light on the scares. Sure, it’s had its close encounters.

In ‘Providence’ #4, Alan Moore and Jacen Burrows take a step back from the previous issue’s intensity to let issues of bigotry, bias, and privilege intermingle with Lovecraft’s ‘Dunwich Horror’ in an altogether more nuanced and human, if no less thoughtful, entry to the series.

Providence #2 continues the cycle of using a pastiche of Howard Phillips to comment upon the man’s works, and then turning around and using a pastiche of his works to comment upon Howard Phillips, the man. It’s literate and it’s dense, but it knows how to tell a classic horror story, as well. Burrows draws a damn horrible monster, and Moore knows how to indulge a horror cliché — here the “you must have bumped your head and imagined some monsters!” — to masterful effect. Providence #2 keeps the series in its place as one of the best new titles of 2015, and is putting up a good fight for some of the best stuff of its creators careers — it’s just that good.

Comics can touch our lives in interesting ways. A college kid has an epiphany: the rapper he’s listening to while reading The Fantastic Four just made a Doctor Doom reference. Or maybe a young adult comes to terms with a previous attempt at ending their own life – through a comic’s creator coming to terms …

Finally, we are caught up with the storyline. This was my favorite issue of the series thus far. Not only was it scary (I expected no less), but it sheds some light on just what the hell the crew of the Caliban has gotten into. I hope the remaining issues will live up to the standard set by this one.

Now it is starting to hit the fan. That’s a telling statement, given that the opening issue of this comic has the Caliban crashing into an alien ship. Now, however, the crew knows that somebody is going around squishing people’s heads, and it’s one of their own.

Caliban #2 has the group taking stock of their situation and realizing how little they know about what they’ve gotten themselves into. Ennis teases us with several possibilities before we see the real danger confronting the crew, or at least a hint of the danger’s true nature. Even when it only has a few fleshed out characters, something about this story manages to be engrossing and disturbing all at once.

Caliban #1 Written by Garth Ennis Art by Facundo Percio Published by Avatar Press I’ve been really digging on this comic the past few months, so I’ll be running through the first four issues to get readers all caught up with it. Caliban is written by Garth Ennis and is a horror story set in …