Bone Orchard Mythos: Ten Thousand Black Feathers
Jeff Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino; Dave Stewart, colorist
Image Comics, 2023
Lemire and Sorrentino return for their second full-length entry in the Bone Orchard Mythos universe. Trish and Jackie were best friends and avid gamers before high school, and they bonded over gaming and fantasy novels. Trish returns as an adult: she became a successful fantasy novelist, but her career has stalled out. Trish immediately starts seeing Jackie calling her to another reality. This is confusing, because as far as the world is concerned Jackie is a missing person.
Flashbacks show the pair collaborating on fantasy world building, complete with maps and character names. Once they get to high school things start to change: it's no longer cool to hang out in a basement together. One fateful night they attend a party with older students, and Jackie disappears (but not before accusing Trish of having no idea of what is really going on).
Back in the present, Trish starts to see herself as some kind of magnet for evil, as people around her start dying in violent and mysterious ways, accompanied by the flurry of the titular ten thousand black feathers. She finds herself at the entrance to a dark pipe, which leads her to familiar desolate wastelands with ash-filled skies. There she finds and rescues Jack, and realizes that they do not need to go home: this place is their home, and always was. It's a bleak and mystical ending, but it somehow works. Sorrentino and Stewart's visuals are absolutely stunning. Beautiful, mysterious and sometimes brutal, they keep the story grounded. The collection ends with a gallery of variant covers.
Replies
Elewhere I mentioned that both my wife and I read The Passageway, the first full "Bone Orchard Mythos" story, and we both said "huh"? At the time, I speculated that maybe the second story, Ten Thousand Feathers, would shed some light. But evidently all these stories are going to be connected by the wispiest of tissue, if any. And, judging from the first two, they're going to be standalone horror stories of varying significance and impact. These first two both seem like pretty minor efforts; I've had dreams with more weight.
The Sorrentino art is fantastic, tho.