Of the Earth #4 // Review
Thomas Merton is calling the emergency services number for Fossil Oil. He’s an employee. One would hope for a perfectly normal call to their employer if they MUST call emergency services, but Tom doesn’t exactly have a normal situation to report. Things have gotten very, very sketchy and dangerous. And there really isn’t much chance of Fossil being of much help in Of the Earth #4. The writing team of Andrew Ehrich and Chris Condon continues their rural horror story with artist Charlie Adlard and colorist Pip Martin. Though it is pleasantly weird, Condon’s story begins to feel a bit more like traditional zombi/monster horror as the story progresses.
It's perfectly understandable, but the company wouldn't be able to do very much to help out. After all, it's the middle of the night. And then they arranged the fact that that there are monsters and zombies and things like that. The chief concern is that of one Mrs. Elizabeth Winters. She had been doused with crude oil in her basement and now she’s been acting like something of a wild animal...attacking people and such. And there’s another Fossil employee out there who is bedridden and in serious condition as well...
Ehrich and Condon a ratchet up the tension just a little bit more. However, it's all very familiar. All too familiar in the way it's presented. The order is being delivered on a very small canvas. This can be fun as far as exploring the psychic of just a few different characters as they relate to each other under our really extreme circumstances. Who can do a really good job of this sort of thing. And certainly be writing team is doing a good job of delivering of attention with respect to that. However, it really doesn't seem like anything that feels new enough to be memorable in the long term.
It's really just a couple of people and a whole lot of uncertainty lurking around in the shadows. This allows the our team of plenty of room to define the horror with a whole lot of empty space. There’s a tremendous amount of ink on the page. This is perfectly natural given the fact that it's happening at night out in the middle of nowhere. So a lot of the horror that the our team has to work with is being brought to the page in subtle shades of emotional tension on the faces of the two central characters.
It's entirely possible that there could be some major twist or shift in that the basic foundations of the story before it reaches its final panel. It does seem entirely possible that the ending could be very predictable. Thankfully, the creatine has provided enough emotional connection with the characters to keep the pages turning and draw the reader into the final third of the six-part series ahead. There are still a couple of mysteries to be revealed as things progress. If the creative team can hold onto that mystery for a long enough to reach the issue, it could be a really fun series.
