Company #1

Posted: Tuesday, February 1, 2005
By: Darren Schroeder

Cover of Company #1 Writer(s): James Reddington
Artist(s): Jag Lall
Publishers: Portent Comics (Self Published)
From: UK
Price: £2.50 (GBP)

Alice and her family have moved into a new home. Her two daughters have displayed some strange behaviour in the past: hearing voices and and other mysterious comments. Alice has been having the same bad dream for a while, and the house they now own seems to have a tragic past that may be about to be repeated.

The artwork in this comic is quite unique. Jay uses very loose, nearly scribble like lines to construct vague characters and settings. Much of it looks like it has been scratched on the paper, or perhaps is has been scratched on a surface an then printed in some way to create the original art. There is also a lot of use of large areas of smudges ink to create in-distinctive forms that spark the imagination with their ominous darkness. The use of very thin, straight lines for the panel borders seems out of place alongside the other artwork, as though the were added to the drawing in the editing process.

James' story is very spooky and unsettling. Bad things are just a round the corner for Alice and her family, with a minimum of information used to delineate the characters, but readers are still made to fear for there safely. The book is filled with a real sense of sadness.

Artwork and story are combined well in this book. If readers can overcome the initial messy impression they might get of the artwork they will find a quietly effective and subtle comic that does things differently.

At the time of writing James Reddington was a contributor to SBC.

In a Word: Expressionistic.



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