Hyde Street #11 // Review
It’s the Camp Manzonar War Relocation Center. There’s a woman who is being taken off the bus. There’s a kid there, too. The kid in question recognizes the woman as his mother. She doesn’t seem to notice him, but that’s understandable...given the fact that she’s currently pregnant with him. It’s a long and confusing sort of a situation for the kid in Hyde Street #11. Writer Geoff Johns continue to explore his little horror universe with artist Ivan Reis and inker Danny Miki. Color comes to the page courtesy of Brad Anderson.
The kid calls himself Pranky. The street is showing him something that he never would have been able to see. It happens to be his mother. And it happens to be his mother, giving birth to him. It's not a pretty sight. He's being pride away from his mom. His mom doesn't have the kind of rights that a mother should. And so he doesn't really have a chance to connect with her. The street is giving her the gift of a moment. Such a gift is likely to come with complications.
Johns explores some of the backstory behind one of the most sinister characters in the series thus far. What had been easily one of the biggest monsters in the book had slowly been revealed to be something much more complicated than that. The script is definitely moving away from the basic concepts of good and evil. There is a powerful complexity about this particular horror that seems particularly satisfying. Johns certainly seems to be entering some very interesting territory. There are still a lot of ways that this thing could go wrong. But for the time being, it really seems like it's a firm grounding for something that could become deeply immersive.
The Bernie Wrightson-esque rendering of Ivan Reis continues to be deeply appealing for the horror genre. This one lead is pretty heavily into the dramatic end of the horror. There is some essence of supernatural going on here, though. But the heart of it really is the crushing drama of a son and a mother, he never evidently had a chance to really know. That drama is brought breathtakingly to the page in a very appealing visual sweep. Quite an accomplishment.
Having explored quite a few individual stories from Hyde Street, Johns and company get a bit further into the lore of the street itself with a look back. The larger picture begun to become a little bit more clear as some of the backstory of some of the characters becomes a little bit more clear. There's a larger, more sinister element that is animating everything. It really is a very compelling structure for a universe of horror. Johns and company have had a great deal of patience delivering the complexity to the page as the story progresses. It’s taken the better part of a year to really show the larger picture of Hyde Street. This is really starting to look interesting...
