THE BOOK
WHEN I ARRIVED AT THE CASTLE TP
Story/Art: Emily Carroll
Silver Sprocket | Mature | 72 spot-color pages | 8” x 10” | $16.99
Like many before her that have never come back, she’s made it to the Countess’ castle determined to snuff out the horror… but she could never be prepared for what hides within its turrets, what unfurls under its fluttering flags. E.M. Carroll has fashioned a rich gothic horror charged with eroticism that doesn’t just make your skin crawl — it crawls into it.
Originally published by Koyama Press, this beloved E.M. Carroll erotic horror comic is back in print with Silver Sprocket, featuring a new foil-accented cover.
"A beautiful, innovative horror comic. E.M. consistently presents us with perfectly cartooned, elegantly constructed characters and environments. Then, just as masterfully, she proceeds to squeeze them, maim them and burn it all to cinders." – Michael DeForge, Heaven No Hell
“This gothic encounter between a lady vampire and a catwoman may be a lesbian love story or a gory revenge tale… But either way, it’s a bloody good tale.” – Jacob Anderson-Minshall, The Advocate
"A monster talent in the startling arts of genre-bending, trope-shredding, badass body horror." — Karen Walton, screenwriter on Ginger Snaps, Orphan Black
“When I Arrived at the Castle feels like slipping into a rich velvet robe only to find that its red color is from centuries of bloodstains.” — Melissa Brinks, Women Write About Comics
THE REVIEW
As the solicitation says, the protagonist has come to kill the vampire. She is some sort of a werecat, or maybe just an anthropomorpic cat. Maybe everybody in this world who isn't a vampire is some sort of anthropomorphic animal, like Duckburg, Calisota. We never see anybody else, so it's hard to say. And there's a story at the end about a cat and a girl switching places, which may pertain or not, depending on how you interpret it.
And I don't care either way. The point of the book is its otherworldliness, of strange stories that may or may not be true, which may be important or may just be stories. I chose to feel the book rather than engage intellectual faculties, and that served me well.
Because Carroll brings us a narrative, sure, of a someone who has lost a loved one to the vampire and is coming to kill her. But it's a chimerical story, a Gothic romance intertwined with a nightmare. The story supports this, with its dreamlike, digressing narrative. The artwork supports this, with its dreamlike fluidity.
In the end, the vampire is slinky and seductive, the castle is Gothic and dangerous, and the heroine is desperate and outmatched. That's fun. But Carroll goes a step further into the theater of the mind, where what one thinks is true is almost as important as what is true. One can't help but think of that other Carroll, and his protagonist Alice, in a wonderland no less dangerous but certainly more Gothic. If you choose to explore that route, as I did, you conclusions can only be your own.
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