ICYMI: The Ghostly Promises of Haunt You To The End #1

Ryan Cody and Andrea Mutti’s Haunt You To The End has a lot of things going for it, giving the book an upper hand within a market that’s starting to become bloated with subpar and senselessly vulgar horror comics. The first is its tone, which lies somewhere between the high-stress master of a monster survival story and some of Stephen King’s more moody, character-driven work. The second is the book’s setup, which smashes together different genres of horror and wider fiction to deliver something very familiar yet wildly different. The third is the art, which elevates everything about this book at a writing level tenfold.

The story follows reporter Matt Park, who struggles to make do both emotionally and monetarily after being fired The Guardian. Desperate and out of luck, he agrees to document Callum Shah’s next supernatural expedition regardless of his disbelief in the subject and consistent public criticism of Shah. Alongside a group of hired guns, they travel out to the island of Isla Lodo to document its strange supernatural happenings before it’s wiped off the face of the planet by a growing environmental threat.

This book introduces us to quite a few characters to have everything set and ready for the plot to happen, and it does so in a quick yet extremely informative manner. There isn’t a panel or second wasted in this book, say for the opening. The book’s real hook doesn’t occur in the opening scene, which is an admittedly dry yet building conversation. Instead, how the plot builds ends the issue with a right hook, acting much more like a prologue than it is the start of the book’s true story. While it could have been paced differently, this style of pacing allows the book to flesh out its setup and characters more profoundly. By the end of the issue, you know a lot about Matt as a human being by the end of the issue, the crew around him is set up and fleshed out enough to be interesting, yet the room is left for them to reveal themselves throughout this series. This is done by allowing characterization to occur through purposeful action and dialogue done in a speedy fashion.

The spookiness that this book promises doesn’t fully show itself in this first issue. Hence, it’s difficult to say whether or not this horror title is genuinely challenging the norms of comfort or telling a story rife with disturbance. However, there are two distinct reasons why the book holds the potential to say something scary: Andrea Mutti’s art and the general premise. For the latter, isolation on a haunted island as the end of the world slowly approaches, thanks to human error, is just begging to explore the darkest parts of human nature thematically. Shah’s obsession with the supernatural and willingness to drive people to the end of the Earth is driven by his massive ego and desperation to prove it. The same motivations drive Matt’s drive to prove him wrong, which could squeeze some human messaging out of this book.

It pairs well with the setting, the feeling of isolation and unexplainable horrors mixing for something that can be both loud with themes and terror. Andrea Mutti’s art is to die for. It’s tonally distinct and elevates every page in this book. The atmosphere is essential for horror, as the moment it’s broken, readers are often sucked out and unable to return to the story with full engagement. Mutti’s story presentation makes it believable and tangible, breathing life into this book while remaining stylized. It’s pretty, and it’s atmospheric.