Though subtle this book is not, THE ABORTION is a pretty fine exercise in horror comic booking. Writer Jamie McMorrow offers us a chilling tale of excised unborn retribution as a fetus escapes an abortion clinic and searches for its parents with murder in mind. Though categorizing this one as pro-life would kind of go against what occurs after the abortion here, there definitely seems to be some kind of abortion stance talked about here. I’m not about to bat that beehive, but I can say that the tension leading up to the meeting and the gory meeting itself of the parents and their unwanted spawn is pretty effective. This is a silent tale, so the panels are heavily reliant on the capability of artist Garry McLaughlin’s ability to translate McMorrow’s words. McLaughlin does a great job of doing so, making this uncomfortable little tale all the more wickedly wince-inducing. But horror isn’t supposed to make one comfortable, so by that regard, this book is a success and I’m looking forward to seeing more from these two creators in the future.
A silent one-shot from a couple of guys from Glasgow (that’s in Scotland!), The Abortion (available from Lulu.com) certainly isn’t pulling any punches.
I have to say that doing an entirely silent whole issue of comics is a pretty ambitious move. Every single panel in a case like that has to be portraying SOMETHING active, because you don’t have any dialogue to fall back on to fill in gaps in action, movement, and story.
Anyway, while a little confused as I read this, I have to say that I liked it. Little kids and stuff like that are the ultimate horror lynchpin, along with dolls they’re what really scare the shit out of me. Because they’re tiny and make weird noises and have strange faces, how are they NOT scary?
From what I can gather, an aborted fetus manages to revive itself and “come home”, as it were.
My only complaint here is that the beginning of the story is a little unclear. I feel like there’s supposed to be a time jump of sorts but I don’t know, there aren’t even non-dialogue captions in this book. Also, the end does appear to be a little odd, an almost black humor moment after what was meant to be a very dark and suspensful story.
Other than that though, it’s a pretty sweet horror one-shot that’ll get you looking over your shoulder and at the ground a few times, just to make sure your last-semester-of-college bad decision didn’t follow you home.
Another example of the rough artwork for Abe. This is page 4, and this is where I first had the opportunity to really showcase my bin-drawing abilities… Thanks Jamie. To his credit, he did warn me of this in the script. I suppose I had it coming.
A little bundle of joy slipped through my letterbox today: the first two proofs of The Abortion comic from Lulu.com. And you know what? It looks great. Nice, shiny cover, well printed, looks really detailed. Inside, the black and white’s replicated well, and the art really works well being shrunk down properly. More importantly, though, I’ve had the pleasure of actually flicking through it properly. I had that pleasure when I got my hands on a copy of ‘Phongram vs. The Fans’ which I had a 2-pager in called ‘Keep On Moving’, written by Jules. But that was a fanzine, filled with all sorts of other entertaining stuff. This belongs to Jamie and I alone, which feels really cool. The great thing is, we know we’ve got much better to follow. Like ‘Yellow’. Which is creepy as…
SOMETHING active, because you don’t have any dialogue to fall back on to fill in gaps in action, movement, and story.
