Bone Orchard: The Passageway
Jeff Lemire, writer; Andrea Sorrentino, artist; David Stewart, colorist
Image Comics, 2022
The first book in Lemire and Sorrentino's new Bone Orchard Mythos is a brief, atmospheric tale very similar to their previous collaboration Gideon Falls. It has the same visual language, as well as a tendency towards mystical abstraction in the story telling. The central story is about a geologist named John Reed who is sent to a remote lighthouse to investigate strange phenomena. He finds a seemingly endless pit in the rocks. It calls to him for some reason, which may relate to his memories of his mother (a recurring part of the story, which is never fully explained). Something seems off about lighthouse keeper Sal: she admits to not having left the island for decades, despite the fact that the lighthouse is not operational. When she attacks Reed with a shovel and shoves him into the pit, he encounters an impossible mystical landscape before emerging in the ocean by the island banks. Sal and her brother Dougie (who brought the geologist to the island on his boat) tell Reed that he has to go back down to fix the light. Hard to understand what any of it means--presumably things will become clearer as the Mythos expands--but you can't beat Sorrentino and Stewart for visual atmosphere.
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I was impressed enough with the FCBD "Bone Orchard" offering that I ordered The Passageway sight unseen. I haven't read it yet, but my wife did and declared she didn't understand it. (She also finished it, I thought, in record time.) Looking forward to it myself.