Monomyth #3 // Review
They’re being chased by monsters that lurk deep within the bowels of the castle. One of them has died, which only makes matters worse. They need to escape the castle, but by now, it’s clear that they’ve been abducted on an island with no visible means of egress. If they’re going to survive, they’re going to have to embrace their own magic and find a way to defeat the monsters in Monomyth #3. Writer David Hazan and artist Cecilia Lo Valvo continue to tread into horror with colorist Marissa Louise. The survival horror continues in a shadowy darkness that is stalked by shadowy monsters.
The homunculus could have helped them out, but he is well in the past. The monsters lurk outside the castle, so it would make sense to close the doors to the outside...that is unless...they have already made it into the castle. (They have.) Now, the only way to deal with them is to defeat them, and the only way to do THAT is with magic. (Presumably.) They know that magic is real, and they know that there is magic in their stories, but how can they best tap into them?
Hazan launches the danger directly at the survivors in an issue that also delivers a few tales around the edges of everything as the group deals with the horror and the tragedy of the trap that they have all been pulled into. It’s an enjoyable ensemble horror, but there isn’t enough of a unique spin on the traditional horror tropes to really build much of anything truly new into the series as it slowly begins to navigate towards its inevitable end. The dialogue feels real and urgent, but it’s placed in the service of a plot that doesn’t really do much to engage the reader.
Cecilia Lo Valvo and Marissa Louise pummel page and panel with some powerful force. The perspectives being used aren’t particularly dramatic, but they have a lot of work to do to keep the castle seeming realistic in size while keeping the monsters HUGE. It’s not an easy balance to strike. Relative sizes and distances in the bowels of the castle remain constant, and there IS the occasional moment of truly overwhelming monstrousness, but the art team’s real success in the issue has to come from the drama. Visually, what the issue is delivering is a darkness that can be really difficult to maintain while amping up the drama. They manage to play with light and shadow in a way that makes it all feel so potent.
So much of what the story is doing is delivering a vehicle for the visuals. On the whole, that’s not really a bad thing given the fact that it still manages to feel substantially compelling. It’s a really solid execution of decent action that feels suitably scary for a horror story. Hazan has some novel ideas underpinning everything, but they don’t seem all that prominent in the third issue.
