The Me You Love in the Dark #1 // Review
There's a hell of a lot to distract an artist in a bigger city. Ro knows this. There's a hell of a lot to distract any creative team working on a big ensemble book. The people behind Middlewest were well aware of this. Writer Skottie Young and artist Jorge Corona were well aware of this. So Young rented a creepy, old house, locked himself inside, and didn't walk out until he had a story. It's the story of one artist. And it's the story of one home. And it's the story of a little bit of spectral activity between the two of them that takes place in the course of five issues of The Me You Love in the Dark.
Ro is a quiet artist. She's been living in the city. The city disagrees with her. Looking to do something about it, Ro moves into a big house. Her real estate agent wants to pull her away from moving into the place, but Ro is insistent. She wants to move in. And she wants to settle in and get a little bit accomplished away from the grind of the city. But there's this house...and this house has a past that just might have generated a ghost.
In the past, Skottie Young has worked with some massive ensembles. The complexity of what was going on in the Middlewest kept him from focusing on any one character too long. There's a kind of comfort in that to some writers. Spend too much time with a single character, and it can't feel far too slow. With The Me You Love in the Dark, Young spends a long, thematic slow dance with a woman, her work, and the house in which it happens. There IS a little bit of establishing background with an associate in the city, but for the most part, it's just Ro and the house and the ghost. It's gentle, intimate, and moody.
Corona did wonders with the huge, sweeping shots of large, angry crowds and big, sprawling cities and carnivals and things in Middlewest. Still, there was also a genuine appreciation of the stillness in and around the corners of that series. With The Me You Love in the Dark, he's given long, lingering moments to develop moody shadows and still moments that feel quite beautiful in so many places. It's the type of thing that works so well in cinema and video. That slowness and stillness finds a unique home under the pen of Jorge Corona that feels powerful and resonant in quite a few places throughout the first issue.
With the plot and tone firmly established in the first issue, Young and Corona have a chance to move into great complexity in future installments. The big problem with Middlewest was the creative team's difficulty in juggling so many different characters, events, and conflicts. Streamlining that to Ro and the house and the ghost should cut down on that complexity enough to really allow for something beautiful if they can keep the mood rolling into interesting emotional locations and varying paths of the heart.
