I was familiar with
Emily Carroll’s name, but not with her work.
Until this year. I read her
collection, Through the Woods, and was terribly impressed with it. So when I saw she had done the most recent
issue of Youth in Decline’s quarterly monograph series, Frontier,
with a story titled “Ann by the Bed,” I decided to check it out. Am I ever glad I did. This is easily my favorite comic of the year.
Since reading “Ann by the Bed” a few weeks back, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. Horror is tough to do in comic form. There are no musical cues, as with film and
television, to enhance one’s emotional reaction and add dread or discomfort to a
scene. Any use of gore within the comic medium can never
be as visceral as that found in film, and the scare tactics utilized within
those other visual media are almost impossible to replicate in comic form. So, despite rare exceptions, horror doesn’t
work in comics. But if a creator chooses
to attempt a horror comic, one is often left with creating a moody, atmospheric
narrative as the best approach. Emily Carroll
achieves that brilliantly.
“Ann by the Bed” revolves
around the grisly murder of a young girl, Ann Herron, and her family in early
twentieth-century Canada, and the urban myth that has come to surround this
heinous act. In later years, it has
become a parlor game, of sorts, similar to the Candyman myth or a Ouija board,
utilized by older children to scare themselves and their friends. Carroll interweaves the “true” history of Ann
Herron (I place the word true in quotes because I am uncertain about whether
Carroll created the history of Ann Herron for this tale, or if it is, in
actuality, a true historical happening) with various instances of children
playing Ann by the Bed, and the odd happenings that follow these games – often embodied
by Ann Herron’s spirit visiting them.
Presenting these
disparate scenarios – Herron’s history and the varied children playing Ann by
the Bed –adds a sense of gravity to the tale that insinuates itself into your
psyche, as you read, ratcheting up the tension slowly even as your mind shifts
from reading this as fiction and begins treating it as non-fiction. Carroll capitalizes on this shift in perspective
with the final page, a full-page image that burns itself onto the back of your
brain as it lurches the breath from your lungs, leaving you wondering: Will
Ann visit me tonight, or will I be able to avoid dying in my sleep?
Carroll’s art, and
the way she deftly teases out the narrative in this story, is phenomenal. She creates a looming sense of unease that it
is hard to shake off. This is one of the
most successful horror comics I’ve ever read.
Not only has the impact of the narrative remained with me, but I have
also been pondering the craft encompassed therein. This is a book I want to study a bit more, to
try and fully understand how she pulled off this amazing feat. It’s a rare creator who can imbue a narrative
full of static images with such emotion and dread, and Carroll needs to be
applauded for that. She is a serious
talent, and one whose work you should seek out (I know I’m going to be keeping
an eye out for her comics and do a little digging to find what she’s done
before). I don’t think you’ll be
disappointed.
Highest
recommendation.
-chris
