Going Indie: Twisted Dark vol. 1
Posted By Forrest C. Helvie on September 3, 2013
Written by Neil Gibson
Art by Atula Siriwardane, Caspar Wijngaard, Heru Prasetyo Djalal, Jan Wijngaard, Ant Mercer, Heru Prasetyo Djalal, Olga-Mila Gots, and Dan West
Twisted Dark collects eleven comic short stories from independent comics publisher, T Publications out of the U.K. It provides readers with a variety of tales set throughout the world as it explores the dark and twisted underbelly of the human condition. Readers who enjoy narratives that bounce between the tragic and perverse will find themselves right at home in each of Gibson’s stories.
Like any comic anthology, the aesthetic does shift from story to story as Gibson brings in a number of different artists to help. That said, I found the quality of the work was generally quite strong and consistent. Caspar Wijngaard’s line work and inks stood out for the roughly hewn look he applies in “Routine” that played well to the rugged environment depicted therein. In “Cocaína,” however, he uses softer lines, which belie the brutal world of the drug trade in which his protagonist operates. Of the whole collection, these two were the ones I found to be the strongest in terms of the character development, panel composition, use of light and overall ability to deliver the unsuspected twist that characterizes each story in this collection. Heru Prasetyo Djalal’s work on “On a Lighter Note…” also offers one of a number of examples in Twisted Dark where, in spite of being a black and white collection, the shading used creates a sense of depth and shape in the stories. These comics might be in black and white, but they do deliver a dynamic reading experience.
Although the eleven stories differ in terms of their scope—some grand while others are more personal—Gibson and his co-collaborators are telling some really good stories in Twisted Dark. And at nearly two hundred pages in length for only $0.99 on Comixology, this horror-suspense anthology is a great deal well worth downloading.
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