Canary #3: Into The Mine

Horror comes in many forms. In the case of Canary #3, it comes in the form of a mouth. A multitude of mouths, in fact. And many of them in the wrong place. Snyder and Panosian wrap up their horror series with a fast paced and at times disturbing ending that leaves an impression.

Canary #3 opens with a flashback to better times for William Holt. With a gift in hand, he’s headed home to his wife and child only to find them just as dead as Hyrum Tell predicted. Back in the present, long dead miners have become disfigured creatures, their bodies riddled with newly grown mouths, and are attacking Canary. Holt, Dr. Edwards, and Mabel, fresh off an escape from house 1018, ride into town and lend what help they can to drive the creatures off. Edwards is taken back into the mine when the creatures retreat. Holt and Mabel follow, hoping to rescue him before Wovoka and his tribe of Paiute can destroy the mine’s entrance. Holt and Mabel journey far below the mine, to unnatural caverns where they find the creatures’ demonic looking leader: Chester Warren, Mabel’s father.

Snyder played with double meanings for names and terms from the series’ beginning. He continues to pay that off in Canary #3. The six form structure is realized in potentially two different ways. House 1018 proves to have its own double meaning. The background of Holt’s other given name, Azrael, is both explained and then paid off by the issue’s end. Snyder doesn’t waste anything he sets up, and nothing comes across as included just to show off surface level cleverness.

Canary #3’s resolution turns out to be surprisingly meaningful to Holt. To this point, the marshal turned novelist’s development has bordered on generic. He’s the good man broken by the evil he’s seen. Then, going into the series’ resolution, he’s the broken, uncaring man who has once again made a meaningful human connection. Explaining that the death of Holt’s wife and child was the specific event that damaged him adds significant depth to the character. But the way it plays into the issue’s resolution makes the backstory feel overly manufactured, created less to inform on the character than to force a conflict in the final pages. There’s an argument to be made that Hyrum Tell foreshadowed all of this, revealing Holt’s family’s death early in the series. But the series also sets Tell up as an insane murderer, so this likely goes unnoticed by most readers.

The issue races to its end once the violence in Canary is resolved. Snyder still takes time to play up the supernatural elements within the caves beneath the mine, so the series’ overall horror and arcane identity is never lost. But the tension in Canary #3 successfully ratchets up and never slows down. Given how deliberate the series has been for the first two issues, this adds a lot of excitement going into the issue’s resolution.

Panosian’s depiction of Holt in the early flashback scenes is a revelation. His smile is wide, and the good humor is visible across his whole face. After two issues of following a man whose emotions range from impatient to hostile with nothing good in between, this is a welcome new dimension. And because Panosian so effectively sold those emotions in previous issues, his work here is all the more successful. Snyder’s dialogue almost doesn’t matter here because the Holt that Panosian draws is immediately someone you want to get to know.

Canary #3’s coloring tracks a descent into danger, death, and horror. The background color starts in yellow as a happy Holt rides back home. It’s orange by the time Holt comes upon his wife and child’s dead bodies and fiery orange during his family’s funeral. The orange turns progressively red when the issue cuts back to the present as Holt escapes House 1018 and rushes back toward Canary. After the journey through the caves in the dark, the fiery orange returns when Holt and Mabel come across Chester Warren. Strangely, the issue’s most calming environment is the darkness in the cave.

Starkings and Smith’s lettering is largely similar to the first two issues. Chester Warren’s dialogue is the standout. The dialogue bubbles’ fill is black, with a sickly yellow both outlining the bubbles and serving as the color of the text. The yellow makes an effective contrast to the orange, gray, and black that makes up most of these sequences.