THE BOOK OF EVIL #1
Writer: Scott Snyder
Artist: Jock
Design: Emma Price
Publisher: ComiXology Originals
Release Date: October 5, 2022
Cover Price: $3.99
Homer has only known a world of madness. Every year, more and more of his friends reach the age where they become full-grown psychopaths, an epidemic that has plagued the planet for half a century.
But when a rumor circulated that there's a safe haven somewhere out there, he and his friends must set off on a path paved with terror around every corner...
Score:
★★★★ 1/2 (4.5/5)
'The Book of Evil' #1 is the latest Comixology Original from Scott Snyder. This time with artist Jock, this frightening futuristic horror story is written in prose with minimal art but told in first-person by the young man awaiting to evolve into a psychopath, the norm that humans become in this world. If you're cynical like I am, the age of unempathetic and callously selfish society is already upon us. Well, in this eerily unnerving book, the main character Homer, named along with his circle of friends after poets found in a book, is in search of his brother while describing his day-to-day life and the world around him. It's a bleak future where people are cast into certain categories which inevitably will seal their fate.
Snyder is a great storyteller and he's been known to write extremely long monologues for characters and exposition so using prose here is a natural extension of that and is very effective. Everything is seen from Homer's point of view and his descriptions of daily life and history take a matter-of-fact tone as this is the only life he's known. It's not until he speaks about missing his brother who's gone missing that we hear the urgency and pain in his voice. The evolution from "animal" - the unevolved - to "human," the psychopath normality, is demonstrated in the people Homer encounters and its bone-chilling.
Jock and Emma Price designed a beautifully minimalistic but haunting book and even created their own font that really infuses the story with the creepy look it deserves. Ominous backgrounds, emphatic highlighting of capitalized words, and the occasional illustration adds layers to the story. Snyder's words resonate from scene to scene vividly capturing this backward society that threatens Homer and his friends' futures. They think there's a hidden method of escaping their fate but will they survive.
'Book of Evil' is probably Snyder's most atmospheric slow-burning goose-bump-inducing horror story yet. Without a lot of art, the prose elicits horrifying images and situations that feed the worst interpretations of the mind. It's a tense journey through a heightened world not too far off from our own. Jock and Price establish an eerie landscape through minimal art and manipulations of the text. 'Book of Evil' is the kind of story you read out loud in the dark.
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