Smile for the Camera #2 // Review
Ivy’s got a big gig with one of the biggest names in the fashion business. He’s a photographer by the name of Perry Rickens. He’s a total jerk, but his shoots always make a big splash. And this is Ivy’s first paying gig, so it’s a really big deal that she would be shooting with a guy like Perry. When she arrives in the studio to find a few hungry wolves waiting to model with her, things get a little tense. It’s just another day in the life of a high-end model in Smile for the Camera #2. Writer Hannah Rose May continues an appealingly creepy horror serial with artist Mariana Puglia and colorist Dearbhla Kelly.
What Ivy’s going through is as nothing to what Freja has had to endure. She’s been nervous and withdrawn ever since she walked-in on Cami in the midst of the total horror that was the end of her life. Now Freja’s chewing her fingernails to the bone and snapping at people. The hallucinations are bad enough, but they aren’t anywhere near as horrific as the memories of what she saw in real life. She’s got to hold it together, though. They all do. They’re going overseas to walk a few runways in London.
May does a fairly brilliant job with a large ensemble of characters. The high fashion millieu of the series serves as a perfect glossy backdrop for deep, psychological horror that might be headed over into a more supernatural direction as the series progresses. The deeper mystery of what's going on. Continues to haunt the edges of a world that's already very high in drama and stress. It's a very appealing package set in a world of dramatic personalities that add quite a bit to the overall intensity of the psychological horror.
Puglia works the visuals with a designer sense of style and form. The visuals being conjured from May’s script aren't exactly Ivan guard or anything like that. But there is some sense of almost effortlessly brilliant characterization, and kinetics on the page. Beautiful women are forced to deal with extremely ugly horror around the edges of an industry that come modifies their beauty. The visual end of it is executed with an unflinching respect for the intensity of the horror. Kelly’s colors lend a sumptuously stylish energy to an already well executed second issue.
Smile for the Camera continues to feel like an impressive spiritual successor to Doug Wagner’s clever fashion horror series I Was a Fashion School Serial Killer. There is a public fascination with the concept of fashion and the fashion industry. It's really very compelling backdrop for horror. Fashion-based horror has a great deal of potential that continues to be hugely appealing in this series. An overall rhythm has emerged at the end of the second issue, which might ultimately lead towards a “final girl”-style situation by the end of the series, but there's really no reason why it has to end, does it? May and company could just keep introducing new characters as needed. The first two have been so fun. And even if characters keep dropping out once at the end of every issue, it's hard to imagine the series is getting dull or repetitious.
