Horror Comic Double Bill: HOUR OF THE WOLF #1 & THE HEXILES #1

As the year drifts on and summer dissolves into the murky, mist shrouded evenings of autumn, all the demons and monsters start to crawl out of the woodwork. There’s something lingering in the dark, something hanging in the air, something unsettling feeding the imagination of the comic creators the world over. As the year creeps ever closer to Halloween, comic publishers seem to enjoy pushing out horror comics, and I, for one, am not complaining.

Growing up, I used to enjoy staying up on a Friday and tuning in to the late night horror double bills. It was irrelevant what films were actually being shown, because it wasn’t about each individual film. It was about the excitement of watching films that I probably shouldn’t have been watching at that age. It was about the atmosphere that the television channel created around the movies, with a host for the evening acting just like the Crypt Keeper from Tales from the Crypt comics or Uncle Creepy from Creepy magazine. It was about the bubbling anticipation of horror, whether in the form of bloody violence or unsettling jump scares.

Halloween is fast approaching, and Mad Cave Studios prepares to celebrate by releasing two new, separate horror comics a week apart. The first is Hour of the Wolf (by writer Mark London, artist Danilo Beyruth, colorist Fabi Marques, and letterer Dave Sharpe), releasing on October 23rd, and the second, The Hexiles (by writer Cullen Bunn, artist Joe Bocardo, colorist Manoli Martinez, and letterer El Torres), is out on October 30th.

At first glance, these comics seem very different, with only the genre and publisher in common. But like any good double bill programming, the themes of one call out to the themes of the other, like lost souls desperate to reconnect.

Hour of the Wolf #1 introduces the readers to Owen Blackwood, an agent of light who fights the forces of darkness when the “veil between worlds is thinnest.” He is a man trapped in a single hour of the day, but with (as yet unrevealed) mystical powers. In contrast, a brood of half brothers and sisters greet the reader in The Hexiles. They meet for the first time at their estranged father’s funeral, and their lives are about to change forever due to the legacy left to them.

One of the prevailing themes throughout both comics is that of family drama. In The Hexiles, this drama is front and center in the narrative, and is the focus of the comic from the opening pages. On the second page, artist Joe Bocardo introduces the character Romy in a speechless page, illustrating her walk through a funeral home, taking note of the other people in the room. The lack of speech and the shadows cast across the other characters creates an uneasy setting, and the nervousness of Romy is made clear by her cautious glance over the heads of the seated mourners towards two shadows at the back of the room. Bocardo places two white dots for eyes on one the figures, inferring that he is staring at Romy as she is staring at them. The feeling from the page is unsettling, and as a voyeur of this personal grief, you are drawn into the family drama, making the explosion of horror that is to come a shock to the system.

In contrast, Hour of the Wolf starts with a scene of horror before allowing the narrative to  move on. However, this opening scene is directly linked to the family drama at the heart of the comic. The comic starts when a character, Phil, encounters the villain of the piece and is given a disturbing choice. Later in the comic, we see the fallout of his decision, if not the actual scene itself. The reader is introduced to Phil’s wife and daughter in the hours after a traumatic event has befallen them, allowing the reader to get to know them as actual characters and not just victims. This is an important feature in horror stories: the victims have to be relatable. The audience has to root for the victims, otherwise the emotional trauma and horror that the story is trying to elicit will fall flat and the audience will disengage. All the best horror sets up strong characters for the audience to get behind, before obviously putting them through hell. A Nightmare on Elm Street does this, Clay McLeod Chapman’s novel The Remaking does this, and Steve Niles and Alison Sampson do this perfectly in Winnebago Graveyard. If you want the victims to survive, it makes the horrors they encounter much more intense. In Hour of the Wolf, the readers are shown the potential horror and then introduced to the family. As we get to know Jan and, through her, her daughter, we are already full of dread knowing what they are heading into. With The Hexiles, we get to meet the children, but know that something is coming to disrupt their lives. In this instance, it is the unknown that creates the tension and fills the reader with dread.

Two stories, each with a family already suffering from loss, create the same sense of anticipation and dread, but at different points in the narrative. The Hexiles builds the tension from the beginning into a crescendo in the middle of the comic, whereas Hour of the Wolf throws you straight into the horror and then allows that to feed the tension towards the end of chapter one.

The other major link between these two comics are the villains: demons of the creepiest order. However, the way that each comic depicts these creatures is interesting, and highlights the possibilities available in the comic book format. Danilo Beyruth’s art style is quite traditional for comics. He uses strong, defining lines to shape the characters and scenery, and manipulates the page layout to emphasis elements of the character. For example, to illustrate the importance and inherent power of the demon, Beyruth draws him crossing the gutter, breaking out of his panel and seemingly pushing the panel below him out of line. However, in Hour of the Wolf, it is the actions more than the visuals that defines the demon. One sequence has the demon slicing into his own flesh in a menacing and stomach wrenching scene, while the demonic children are depicted as threatening, hovering over the characters with intent. These actions make the characters scary as they unnerve the reader with their creepy and sadistic behavior.

Bocardo’s approach in The Hexiles is different, however. His visual style is much more intense with heavy shadowing across the page and a series of uncomfortable viewpoints, changing from panel to panel. Bocardo also uses the layout a lot more to create an overpowering sense of fear. The gutters are mostly black, and there are numerous occasions where the panels are distorted or lose shape altogether. In The Hexiles, the environment itself is unwelcoming and used as a source for unsettling the reader. Hour of the Wolf wants you to be afraid of the characters, The Hexiles demands you to be scared of the situation. Read side by side, these two different approaches resonant with each other; their end goal is the same, but the journey is pleasantly different.

One comic is visually subtle, the other in-your-face brutal. The coloring for each plays a large part in this, as does the lettering. Fabi Marques’ combination of bright and soft colors in Hour of the Wolf give different moments different emotional impacts. There is a clear distinction between the healthy, normal world, and the supernatural world where the horror dwells. You could describe it as straightforward, but it is exactly what this comic needs, in the same way that superheroes wear primary colors and villains wear secondary colors. The colors act as signs for the reader to know which world they are in, in the same way that A Nightmare on Elm Street used different lighting effects to highlight the dream world over the real world. Manoli Martinez, on the other hand, leans into the chaotic world that the team has created in The Hexiles, and they splash the color around like an expressionist painter. Some panels are soaked in a single blood red wash while others are a cornucopia of unsettling hues. Martinez is not interested in making a distinction between different worlds because, in this comic, there is only one reality for the central characters, and it is not a pleasant one.

Side by side, the coloring in these comics is like comparing a Superman comic to a Hellblazer—the worlds these characters live in are vastly different, but ultimately they are both superhero stories with a central character doing what they believe to be the right thing. Both Marques and Martinez have captured the essence of the story being told in their respective comics and used this to help create the same level of tension in the readers. As you move from one comic to the next, the different pacing of the narrative is refreshing, however, you cannot escape the constant threat that hangs over the central characters. It’s equally there in each book, just realised in a different style.

So, if you are asking yourself “which is better?” then you’ve missed the point. Both are successful introductions to their stories and both include outstanding visuals that set the tone and build the characters. They are just visually different. You wouldn’t say a JMW Turner landscape was better than a Monet, although you may prefer a particular style. Each has merits, and each successfully obtains its goal, just as Hour of the Wolf and The Hexiles do.

The beauty of these two comics coming out so close together is that you can pick them up and read them both in one sitting, indulging in an extended moment of horror. The difference in visual style between these two comics just goes to highlight the similarities in theme and intent. Just like watching those horror double bills in the early 1990s, having two groups of creators trying to elicit the same response from you is a thrilling and enjoyable experience. The highs and lows of the first story can be flipped to lows and highs in the next, but there is a momentum that takes you from one to the other and the contrasting approaches keeps the momentum going. If these two comics looked the same, natural boredom would set it and the one we read first would be the one we liked the best, but, because they are so visually different, our interest is maintained throughout them both. We enjoy the differences; we need them to keep our imaginations entertained. If we didn’t, everything would look the same, and everything would have the same form and meter. We might as well be living on Cardassia Prime (or another, non Star Trek related, world where art is controlled and bland).

Hour of the Wolf and The Hexiles are two new horror titles that both create something exciting and disturbing in equal measure. How they do this is different, which is why reading them side-by-side is so enjoyable. You can see what the comic format is capable of and be entertained at the same time. I recommend picking up both of these titles, finding a quiet place to curl up under a blanket, and enjoy being terrified by some of the best talent in the comics world today. There is a reason why so much horror comes in the form of anthologies or portmanteaus. It’s because horror can take on a number of different forms, but the end goal is the same: our screams of terror. And igniting the perverse pleasure of being afraid is an insatiable desire and one that we must constantly feed.