Fiction lies. Popular fiction like Mystery, Fantasy and Horror fits out fiction's lies with better hats, longer coats and faster horses. Put another way, it's never about the detective, the King or the vampire. Horror holds truths to be self-evident: beware of strangers, don't overreach and stay away from cobwebby books in locked rooms. Horror desires to deceive before it fixes its teeth and allows reality (the true horror) to set in. Horror is always results-based and there are always stakes.
Writer Rachel Deering, artist Chris
Mooneyham and colorist Fares Maese dress up Anathema
#1 in classic gothic tropes like remote castles, women in distress and the
supernatural. Anathema opens with
consecutive stories in which the past is present in two twice-told tales. Deering
parallels the beginnings of her protagonist, Mercy, and Mercy's bête noire, Count
Aldric Karnstein so that each origin unfurls to reveal a heroine (and a villain)
both bound by bad decisions. At its heart Anathema
is a hero's journey in the most parochial sense, however, Deering creates a
wolf in sheep’s clothing that comments on intolerance, the consequences of
(in)action and the restorative power of storytelling
Mercy does not live up to her name (at first)
as she chooses to run rather than to save her lover, Sarah, when the two are
discovered by Sarah's father. Mercy escapes while Sarah is sent to burn for her
sin. Mercy's escape -- in light of Sarah's capture -- is kept off-stage and it's
not clear where she thought to go as she fled in blind fear. Guilt is a cruel gift
that keeps giving; a tender mercy of the wicked that Mercy must channel if she
is to overcome her desperation.
Sarah's screams call Mercy back from her
flight, but she arrives too late. In a shrewd twist Mercy bears witness to three
unholy acts: Sarah's unjust death, the sudden slaughter of Sarah's persecutors
by a murder of red-eyed crows and the in
extremis reaping of Sarah's soul by those same red-eyed devils. Mercy
breaks and when she does she breaks bad. All the gutters in Anathema take the black with one
exception: the moment Mercy realizes the gravity of her decision not to act to
save Sarah's life. In an unbroken border, Mooneyham and Maese surround a
prostrate Mercy in white. It is at this nadir that she finds her voice, becomes
a storyteller and seeks an audience. ¶ Deering's decision to begin Mercy's story in medias res requires a fair amount of
narrative to explain the goings-on. At first, it's not clear that this is a
retelling of events. Sure, all the verbs are in the past tense, but when the
art is this effective it's easy to overlook grammar. Mooneyham's pencils and
Maese's colors elevate the narrative exposition from only a telling into a
showing. The art is so dynamic that it's easy to miss the two white narrative
boxes of Mercy's interlocutor amongst the champagne colored multitude of Mercy's
narration. Mooneyham and Maese's work possesses a crepuscular glee; silhouettes
and macabre shadows are offset by a luminous moon and the flames of the pyre.
Maese's cool color palette illuminates the story and gives it the look of
stained glass. Mooneyham's figures foreground forests dense with vegetative
verve and leaves awhirl symbolic of a fall. The faces of Mercy and Sarah are
open, void of too much detail, but always split with tears. In the attack on
the sanctimonious mob, Mooneyham backgrounds a grisly moment of a limb being
torn off and hoisted into the air by one of the crows; an indelicate and
emblematic image of Anathema's mark
of horror.
Sarah's screams call Mercy back from her
flight, but she arrives too late. In a shrewd twist Mercy bears witness to three
unholy acts: Sarah's unjust death, the sudden slaughter of Sarah's persecutors
by a murder of red-eyed crows and the in
extremis reaping of Sarah's soul by those same red-eyed devils. Mercy
breaks and when she does she breaks bad. All the gutters in Anathema take the black with one
exception: the moment Mercy realizes the gravity of her decision not to act to
save Sarah's life. In an unbroken border, Mooneyham and Maese surround a
prostrate Mercy in white. It is at this nadir that she finds her voice, becomes
a storyteller and seeks an audience. ¶ Deering's decision to begin Mercy's story in medias res requires a fair amount of
narrative to explain the goings-on. At first, it's not clear that this is a
retelling of events. Sure, all the verbs are in the past tense, but when the
art is this effective it's easy to overlook grammar. Mooneyham's pencils and
Maese's colors elevate the narrative exposition from only a telling into a
showing. The art is so dynamic that it's easy to miss the two white narrative
boxes of Mercy's interlocutor amongst the champagne colored multitude of Mercy's
narration. Mooneyham and Maese's work possesses a crepuscular glee; silhouettes
and macabre shadows are offset by a luminous moon and the flames of the pyre.
Maese's cool color palette illuminates the story and gives it the look of
stained glass. Mooneyham's figures foreground forests dense with vegetative
verve and leaves awhirl symbolic of a fall. The faces of Mercy and Sarah are
open, void of too much detail, but always split with tears. In the attack on
the sanctimonious mob, Mooneyham backgrounds a grisly moment of a limb being
torn off and hoisted into the air by one of the crows; an indelicate and
emblematic image of Anathema's mark
of horror. 
Mercy laments her woeful account to Henrich,
a hermit, who lives on the bayou; think of Merlin having Yoda's gibbous posture
and male-pattern baldness, but with hair by Paulie "Walnuts." A lore
master, of course, Henrich knows the evil that men do and knows from where
soul-sucking fowl fly. He tells Mercy the story of Count Karnstein aka the soul
harvester, a former plague doctor who goes mad when he cannot protect his own
family from the Black Death. Torches blaze, sacred chants praised and Karnstein
becomes more monster than man. Secreted away within his keep he sustains
himself on his victims dying curses of God before taking their lives and their
souls. In time, his own sloth and avarice causes him to be hunted down, killed
and his heart quartered and spread to the four corners of the land. Mercy's
eyewitness account leads Henrich to believe that the darkness gathers again and
that Karnstein's toadies now labor to see their master restored to his former soul-eating
glory. Henrich finishes the history lesson as the imp of the perverse seizes
Mercy; she decides to reconcile her initial cowardice and save Sarah's soul be
it by blessing or by curse.
Mercy goes to Henrich for help -- his name is
the first word she says after the narrative white-out -- and in spite of his
poor cuticle health and the many skulls he keeps at hand, Henrich seems
benevolent enough, but Horror has a funny way of making fiends of friends. Deering
mirrors Mercy's story of the events of Sarah's death with Henrich's recalling of
Karnstein's legacy as a way to foreshadow how actions have consequences when
the black arts get invoked. By setting each story back-to-back, Deering draws a
connection (intended or not) between Mercy and Karnstein. Mercy is not evil
like Karnstein (not yet anyhow), but the two do share a bond when it comes to the
fortitude required to make a personal sacrifice which makes each one more equal
than adversary. Is it unreasonable to think that Karnstein could be a fork in
the road that Mercy may one day choose to take? Deering knows her horror and it
will be curious to see how close she hews to heroic customs or if she decides
play more fast and loose.
Anathema
is punitive to the point of being puritanical. Words like 'sin,' and 'innocence,'
'suffering' and 'persecution' all find their way into the script and a
narrative that calls for an innocent to be burned at the stake and another
woman to be tortured until she curses God is nothing if not medieval. It doesn't
take a seer with Henrich's faculties to notice that Deering has something to
say about intolerance and ignorance. The blessing of Horror, after all, is its
ability to work within an outmoded milieu
that reflects current social anxieties. In the story's prologue Deering writes:
''In the hearts of those few, the fires
of hatred still burn, and not a soul is spared their unyielding wrath.''
How much farther Deering develops this angle seems at odds with the choice
Mercy makes at the end of the story. Unless, of course, Mercy believes as
Bassanio does in The Merchant of Venice:
''To do a great right, do a little wrong
[4.1.213].'' That's not to say that Deering has to temper her attack on
prejudice, but by the end, she has set Mercy's course, she is dealing with
different animal and there is no going back.
There is nothing to keep the wolf from the
door in Anathema. Deering, Mooneyham
and Maese craft an ageless horror story that finds purchase in today's social
climate. Mercy is power. As any comic book reader knows with great power comes
great responsibility; it's the blessing and the curse that makes Anathema such a charm. _________________________________
Anathema #1
is available as a free .pdf download at http://theironrachel.deviantart.com/
Issues #2 - #6 were
successfully funded through kickstarter.com. To read more about Anathema visit http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/theironrachel/anathema-keep-the-lesbian-werewolf-epic-alive
Great in-depth review, Keith! A lot of us are looking forward to the next issue, and were very glad when Rachel's second Kickstarter was successful.
ReplyDeleteDavid,
ReplyDeleteThank you! I backed Rachel's second Kickstarter funding issues 2-6. Now, I want, need, must read the rest! So glad to have discovered this series.