Boom! Studios presents a brand-new original series in The Neighbors #1. Blending horror, surrealism, folklore and small-town paranoia into a nightmarishly miasmic read. With art by Letizia Cadonici, colors by Alessandro Santoro and letters by Becca Carey, The Neighbors #1 is the second comic venture of writer Jude Ellison S. Doyle, acclaimed for his feminist theory writing and Maw — also published by Boom! Studios. A deft combination of queer motifs, blended family struggles and looming occultism, The Neighbors #1 speaks to the fears of parenthood, childhood and the vast unknowns of small communities.
The Neighbors #1 opens with an eerie flash of tragedy yet to come riddled with mysterious images before introducing its central characters: the blended family of Janet and Oliver, as well as their two daughters, Isobel and Casey. Tensions are evident in their new home, as the family try to settle into their new neighborhood. During the night, Casey has a run-in with a neighbor that leaves Oliver trying to rescue his reticent stepdaughter, but he returns home to a version of her unlike the one he was chasing.
Doyle creates strong foundations for the series going forward, introducing the characters and the setting in a way that feels natural and perfectly paced. The characters themselves have a raw authenticity about them, built masterfully through their interactions and a palpable undercurrent of subtext. The dialogue is charged with a real feeling of history that reflects the strained and loving intimacy that binds the family. Doyle also does incredible work constructing a distinctive vibe: the comic is deeply unsettling from the outset, creating a unique feeling that slots somewhere between uncanny and unnerving. This oppressive tone only escalates to being outright chilling in the final pages, which feel like the plot beginning in earnest.
Cadonici’s illustrations are fantastic throughout, cultivating a novel and idiosyncratic style that unlocks the truly disturbing potential of The Neighbors #1. The art itself is disconcertingly soft, with very few harsh lines but lots of texture, composed of thin hatching, which creates an unusual scratchy depth. In a different comic it could feel odd, or entirely half-baked, but it demonstrates Cadonici’s profound understanding of tone, and does beautifully reflexive work channeling the themes and spirit of the comic within the medium itself. The illustration is also laden with small, meaningful details, all of which invest The Neighbours #1 with a feeling of aesthetic density.
Santoro does stunning work in the colors of The Neighbors #1, using them to crank out the maximum visual impact of each page. There is an impressive mastery of color schemes at play, imbuing each page and setting with its own distinctive wash that complements the complex atmosphere that the writing and illustration is constructing. The colors themselves also have a variable texture to them, almost mimicking watercolors in places, which is visually gorgeous as well as adding to the holistically dreamlike quality of the comic. Carey’s letters are excellent, doing a lot of the initial work in establishing the tone of The Neighbors #1 in its opening pages. Slightly off-center and irregular in their dimensions, Carey’s letters are perfectly clear, but far enough outside the generic constraints of comic lettering to make a reader uneasy.
The Neighbors #1 is a powerful opening issue that commands attention, alongside setting up the outset of a chilling mystery. Tremendously effective in its limited scope, this issue does all the groundwork getting its reader invested in its setting and characters, leaving you hanging with a chilling final cliffhanger which sends all the lingering intrigue into overdrive. A debut comic that deserves to be read twice over in the first sitting, The Neighbors #1 is complex, heartfelt and endlessly eerie, an omen of great things to come.
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