Fall of the House of Slaughter #2: The Bare Minimum

Fall of the House of Slaughter is just as much of a political drama as it is a horror series. The comic deals with the infighting within the election process. An effective political drama requires nuance and subtlety: characters making long-term plans that often don’t make sense at the start; manipulation disguised as companionship. Very little of that is here. Each character clearly has their own motives and incentives, but the story does very little to give clues into their plans. Readers aren’t left feeling intrigued; they’re left feeling aimless.

Around halfway through the issue, a conversation between two characters occurs. This conversation is framed as a lore reveal; however, it comes off as an exposition dump. There is no flashback to what the characters are talking about, no visual storytelling to add weight to their words. Objectively, it is one character rambling to another. Painfully, the story makes the reader sit through the rambles as well. 

This lack of visual storytelling is a major problem throughout the book. The art does its job: it shows characters on a page for text bubbles to appear next to them with words. But it never goes beyond that. There are no panels where the art stands out and captivates the reader; on the contrary, there are some genuinely baffling panels in here that almost look unfinished. 

To highlight a positive with this story, each main character is distinct. Cecilia, in particular, stands out in this story as the most interesting protagonist. She receives information and then drives the plot forward. Not passive, but actively participating in the story; Cecilia, as a character, has inertia. Maxine always seems to be slightly unaware of what’s happening around them: characters of higher authority drag Maxine from one place to another. She’s younger and less significant, and the other characters highlight that throughout the story.