HORDE (Aftershock Comics, October 2019) Marguerite Bennett,co-creator and writer. Leila Leiz, co-creator and artist. Guy Major, colorist. Marshall Dillon, letterer. Hardcover, 72 pages. $19.99 ISBN # 978-1-949028-34-8.
Beyond the clever play on words of the title - - HORDE is one of those works that makes you pause to reflect on what you’ve just finished reading and stop to consider the importance and value of “things” (both tangible and intangible) in your life. Hold that thought. I’ll return to it at the end of this review.
HORDE is part of an initiative at Aftershock Comics to publish original graphic novels in the European format, oversized hardcovers printed on premium paper of heavier stock. It’s a beautiful format, and HORDE really benefits from this style of presentation.
The expressive art of Italian illustrator Leila Leiz is fully realized in the oversize panels, taking full advantage of her ability to covey emotions and moods through facial expressions and body language. There’s an innocence and warmth to the more sensitive moments, that when contrasted with the eerie elements of the more horrific scenes, grants them both more impact and punch. The color and shading choices of colorist Guy Major help convey both the underlying emotions as well as the severity of the threatening moments.
The back cover blurb and image lets readers know exactly what HORDE has in store: “All Ruby ever wanted was her mother’s love. Her mother’s house had other ideas.”
Following the unexplained death of her father, Ruby Ando visits her estranged mother in an effort to reconcile and start anew. What she encounters is a house full of souvenirs, trinkets, odd objects and artifacts - - all personal treasures that her mother surrounds herself with in an effort to define her own importance. Her father was also a collector of strange art, which caused Ruby to often feel more like an object rather than a young daughter. However, a flashback to a horrifying incident with a broken vase indicated that his priority was the well-being of his family. When mother Mia’s preoccupation with accumulating things began to conflict with her attention to family, Ruby’s father took her and moved away.
When Ruby tries to free Mia from isolation and release her from the home, the home objects like a thing possessed as the collection of material things throughout the house take on supernatural properties and threaten them both. Mia’s obsession has brought them to life and both she and her daughter become possessions that the house is unwilling to relinquish. It refuses to give up its’ treasures and manipulates parts of the house to trap them within.
HORDE is a horror story of multiple levels that deals with things that disturb and cause dread, dismay and disgrace: isolation; feelings of low self-esteem and non-importance; obsessive possession; the pressures and fears of claustrophobia; mind-numbing inner parasites and internal demons; and the horror inherent in our modern reality of twisted value systems. Yet there’s an uplifting undercurrent of the importance of family and love that runs throughout the story.
While I haven’t read author Marguerite Bennett’s work for DC, Dynamite and other publishers (Bombshells, Red Sonja, etc) and can’t refer to it, I’m very familiar with the series she’s done for Aftershock (Insexts, Animosity). I’ve often suspected that she gets ideas from occurrences and observations in her personal life and injects these into her stories, twisting and morphing them into fantastic tales with underlying messages.
That was confirmed in an August 2019 interview with The Hollywood Reporter where Bennett was asked about HORDE: “Is there a personal closeness to this particular story for you as a writer?”
Her response was succinct: “There always is.”
Bennet's comments on HORDE also clearly summarize the importance of this work and what makes it so powerful: “I think the great evils of the world have always begun with the treatment of people as things.”
Back to that thought at the beginning of this review:
i’ve been reading comics since the age of four and reflecting on HORDE made me feel a little guilty about my comics collecting hobby. While many of my earliest comics weren’t retained, I’d begun to save my comics from the late 1960’s and onward, requiring more and more of my occupied space to store them.
A barrier was broken through when 17 years ago I sold many of the most valuable comics in my collection in order to help finance a travel opportunity for my son. Once I got over the heartbreak of departing with those treasures, I considered the rest of my collection. Neither one of my sons wanted to inherit these books after my eventual passing. So, I decided to keep selling, trading and sometimes donating in order to help fuel my continuing comics-reading obsession. There are only a few books that I won’t part with, those that I consider classics and plan to read multiple times. It’s worked out fairly well, but I still have what most would consider an excessive amount of comics.
While visiting the Aftershock Comics booth at Baltimore Comic Con this past weekend, I purchased the Convention Exclusive copy of HORDE. I definitely wanted to read it but I thought it would increase in value in a few years and reward my investment. No longer.
This book is one of those I consider to be “Keepers”. I’m going to hang onto HORDE and share it with friends and acquaintances as an perfect example of the heights to which graphic novels are capable and the power of this art form combing images with text.
