Written by: Ray Fawkes
Art by: Ray Fawkes
Publisher: Image Comics
In a way, Underwinter reminds me of The Green Room. You have a group of musicians who play a gig they shouldn’t be playing, and someone witnesses something he really shouldn’t have witnessed. Pretty simple. However, the two relate in a third way:
Both are so tense that they’re almost hard to get through.
Ray Fawkes is a masterful artist, which is an odd thing to say if you only catch a panel or two of this comic. The artwork is bizarre as hell; everything is surreal and distorted—sometimes to the point of being kaleidoscopic—the drawings range from beautiful watercolor works to what look like childish crayon drawings, facial expressions don’t often make sense, and every panel is surrounded by a pure-black sludge.
Taken as parts, it might be a bit much, a bit too out there or hard to follow, but combined it’s absolutely perfect.
Let’s examine the first page. We’re looking at a house and some trees. The trees are green pines, childish in execution, and the house is an off-white pink. The surrounding area is white. The place looks pleasant if not a bit empty, but otherwise one I’d like to visit for a glass of wine and some nice company. Except the border is a thick, dark black, less a border and more like lines to a prison cell, and the text reads like apocalyptic serial-killer poetry.
The nice house and childish trees are a ruse.
The entire book is like this in one way or another, distorted and offputting. It jumps between the four players from the first issue and some other, abstract sequences that I’m still not sure I’ve grasped, and those dark prison-bar borders remain. None of the characters are what I’d call good people, and I have to wonder if they’re trapped here. Given a few incoherent word bubbles about fate, the book might be wondering that too.
That is to say, we get character interaction and development, but it’s very subtle. You have to pay attention to find it, though that’s not a bad thing. I appreciate a book that respects me as a reader like that. A quick conversation can say a lot, and what isn’t said can say even more. Underwinter is that. It’s a book that prizes mood and the best bits of cosmic horror. It’s a book that wants to talk about something unspeakable, but the mind cannot quite grasp it, and the artwork mimics that. It saves us from what’s really there. It’s why Corben’s nightmares are fractals and not specific horrors.
As to the plot of the thing, well, all you need to know is that the four players have been invited back, and the money is just a little too good to turn down. Everything else is, well, fractals. We are protected. For now.
