THE BOOK
THE HORROR HC
Writer: Lars Jacobson | Artist: Eduardo Francisco
Dark Horse | B&W with spot color | 104 pages | 6 5/8" x 10 3/16" | 14+ | $24.99
Travel with Colonel Kurtz and his family as they enter the “heart of darkness” on a humanitarian mission for Belgian King Leopold’s Congo Free State, opening a trading post in the uncharted interior of the Congo jungle to help promote free trade and abolish slavery in the region. With the help of a local tribe, they establish the post, but to survive in this lawless land, they must contend with murderous slave traders, corrupt officials, psychotic explorers, cannibalistic tribes and the most dangerous threat of all: a primordial evil dwells deep within the jungle, whose origins and mythology date back to the womb to civilization, perverting minds and corrupting souls, while preying on the worst instincts of humanity. The locals speak of this insidious malevolence in fearful whispers, calling it “The Horror.”
The Horror provides a prequel to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, exploring the origins of one of the most enigmatic characters in storytelling while examining one of the worst atrocities and humanitarian disasters ever recorded.
THE REVIEW
This is a beautiful book, and my only complaint is a personal one.
I read Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as an assignment in high school, and since the book I bought included Secret Sharer, I read that too. That's how much I loved Heart of Darkness: It induced me to read literature I had not been assigned.
I have read both books a couple of times since; Heart says something new to me each time I do. It's a book of enigma and nuance, but also a harsh criticism of colonialism and a meditation on the human condition. What separated the colonizers and the colonized? Not a lot, muses the protagonist of Heart of Darkness. On the other hand, you're either on the boat or off the boat, and somewhere between lies the line between good and evil, or civilization and nature, or maybe just one culture and another. Conrad was a master of ambiguity, leaving it to the reader to decide whatever messages lie within his narratives.
One interpretation I had of Heart of Darkness is that the Congo doesn't make you evil. Whatever evil is there, you brought it with you. And it will be revealed. The jungle, like presidential elections, exposes who you really are.
But The Horror flips that on its head. Col. Kurtz's final words — which you know from Apocalypse Now, "The horror, the horror" — are made concrete. The Horror is a real thing. An evil thing. And a supernatural thing at that.
Which makes for a crackerjack horror story. Influenced by The Horror, the principals in the book begin regressing to their worst instincts, and/or relive their worst moments from the past in the present (and sometimes repeat them). Awful things happen. People die in terrible ways. These events are due to the influence of The Horror, following the discovery of an ancient civilization that had apparently given in completely to The Horror, a civilization whose central mission was human sacrifice.
This is yet another interpretation of Conrad, a supernatural one — but one I don't share. I think that bleeds the original of much of its power. One theme I saw in Heart of Darkness is that evil resides in the hearts of all men, and is not the result of lack of civilization, education or breeding, or the presence of too much melanin in our skin, or the influence of the devil. That is the true horror. Mankind doesn't need an outside, supernatural force to make us do bad things. We gleefully do them on our own, and that is the evil we must confront. In short, my interpretation of Conrad is that he was holding up a mirror, not telling a ghost story.
So therein lies my central conundrum with this book. While I enjoyed it, I disagreed with its premise. Does Heart of Darkness need a prequel? Is a supernatural interpretation of Conrad a valid or valuable one? These are questions readers must decide for themselves.
A second problem is the one present in all sequels: We know the fate of most of its characters, because we know the status quo that must pertain at the beginning of Heart of Darkness. The Horror doesn't actually show us the fates of all those who are absent in Heart of Darkness, but it shows some and we can guess the rest. So when we're introduced to Col. Kurtz with a full family — wife, daughter, son — we know that situation cannot continue into Heart of Darkness, where, spoiler, Kurtz has a native wife and no family. Ditto other significant characters to whom we're introduced, who either don't show up in Heart of Darkness, but do and aren't named. And the reverse is true; there's no need to worry about Kurtz, who is central to Heart of Darkness, or historical figures like John Henry Stanley, Major Edmund Barttelot, James Jameson and Tippu Tip, whose fates we know.
All that being said, I enjoy a good ghost story, and not only is The Horror a good one, but its unique and hostile setting gives it more power to unsettle.
And the art is fantastic. At first I thought I was looking at the work of Georges Bess, whose Frankenstein and Dracula I had recently devoured. But it's by Eduardo Francisco, a Brazilian artist I was vaguely familiar with due to some covers he'd done for DC Comics. But The Horror is a far cry from those images. Detailed and polished, Francisco's work sucks you into a world of his creation and doesn't let you go.
Lastly, it should be mentioned that The Horror and Heart of Darkness are both set in Belgian King Leopold's Congo Free State, an ironically named country if ever there was one. If you are unfamiliar with this horrific chapter in African history, then The Horror has lived up to its name by introducing you to it.
Here's some of that bee-yoo-tiful art I mentioned, courtesy of Dark Horse:
Replies
Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness is a book I very likely need to reread. I think (especially after reading your comments) that I was too young to fully appreciate it the first time I read it.