THE STRAIN #2 (Cover Date: January 2012)
Story by: David Lapham, Guillermo del Toro and novelist Chuck Hogan
Art by: Mike Huddleston
Colours by: Dan Jackson
Letters by: Clem Robins
Cover by: Mike Huddleston
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Cover Price: $3.50
Book Summery: As an eclipse covers New York City in midday darkness, Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his team from the Centers for Disease Control struggle to find an explanation for what happened to Flight 753. But when the symptoms don’t add up to chemical warfare, and bizarre circumstances unexplained by modern medicine arise, Ephraim begins to entertain the ramblings of a Holocaust survivor who knows too much about this unknown threat.
The first issue of this great new Dark Horse series arrived to almost universal critical acclaim. It boasted top drawer talent on all aspects of the production and the final product was a hugely entertaining introduction to the series. As the plot moves forward here it is quickly apparent that the introduction was no fluke and this series could turn out to be something a little special. It appears that the cross over from novelisation to comic form story telling may be somewhat seamless.
Set against the back drop of a solar eclipse we find Dr. Ephraim Goodweather hard at work with his team in trying to determine what was the cause of the deaths of those on board the doomed Boeing 777. With just a few survivors he is frustrated to find little in the way of explanation but may have something in the way of a good luck swing when he is seeked out by a pawn shop owner at a time where some of the corpses are beginning to show some changes in the morgue. What is striking about reading the opening scenes of the issue is how Lapham is able to subtley raise the tension almost unbenownst to the reader until you reach a point where you realise that a payoff is soon ineveitable.
That payoff comes with a chilling final age that is one genuine WTF! moment. The story itself is quite fast paced with not a whole lot of breaks in the story to slow things down which is fine actually as it leads to multiple readings of the book which you can’t complain about. We find ourselves two issues in and Dark Horse appears to have a hit on their hands.
Mike Huddleston does a great job on art. His style in the book is almost deceptive. There are some wonderful panels and pages that harkens back to the hedonistic days of the old horror books with the tone and hints of worse things to come and some more subtle almost clean cut images that would find in non horror books that almost throw you off before the mood darkens again. The pages are packed with detail and he plays his part in ramping up the tension by working perfectly in tandem with the writing to give real sense of unease. The final page has its impact purely on the visuals of the three panels leading up to the reveal and it was great!
The book is the epitome of entertainment. Even if you don’t count yourself a horror fan usually, I would imagine that you would appreciate great comic story telling as much as the next person and you would do yourself an injustice by passing this little gem by.
Story: Overall 4/5
Art: Overall 4/5
Overall 8/10
