Horror comic book, published by DC Comics under their Black Label imprint. The series was written by James Tynion IV and illustrated by Alvaro Martinez Bueno and Jordie Bellaire. The first issue of the series was published in June 2021, with the first volume of the graphic novel coming out in 2022.
The hook for this one is magnificent. A group of people -- some friends, some strangers -- are invited for a week's vacation at a beautiful house in the country overlooking a lovely lake in a forest. All have been invited by their old buddy Walter, a burly nerd with thick eyeglasses, a guy they've known for years, some all the way back in high school or college, some much more recently.
All of them get to the lake and are suitably impressed by the opulence of the house. Walter is clearly looking to make this special, even something of a game, with everyone given nicknames and even symbols based on their professions. Everyone settles in, enjoys dinner and conversation, has some drinks, plays in the pool. And someone manages to get a signal on their phone...
And out in the rest of the world, the apocalypse is in full swing. New York City is on fire, China is gone, every city and town on the planet is in crisis. People are catching on fire, their skin sloughing off, their eyes bursting in their heads. Social media is full of panic, disturbing videos, people begging for advice on how to commit suicide painlessly before they also catch fire and melt into puddles.
Everyone is getting ready to leave, to find their families, to find their friends, to find anyone else to lead back to this oasis. And Walter tells them, no, no one can leave. He and his people are the reason the world is ending, but he's going to keep this group of his friends safe. But no one can ever leave. Someone strikes him with a fireplace poker, and Walter's body shifts, like a reflection on water, like a hologram, like a meat vortex, all hands and neckties and teeth and tongues and distorted eyeglasses.
Earth is gone, everyone you knew has died in agony, and you're going to spend the rest of your existence as a prisoner in a beautiful prison with an alien monster as your warden.
And that's the end of the very first issue.
And unfortunately, after that, it mostly stops being scary.
Part of this is because most of the characters get accustomed to being Earth's last survivors much, much too quickly. Only a few people are shown mourning their loved ones, which would realistically take up several issues of the series. Even if you weren't married, you still would've lost parents, siblings, close friends, lovers. I suspect you'd even end up mourning passing acquaintances, just because you knew how horribly they died.
Part of this is because most of the suspense and tension vanishes almost immediately -- Walter is indestructible, omnipotent, and almost completely omniscient, but he isn't in any way hostile to the remaining humans. He even gives them notepads that, if they write anything in it, it'll be delivered to the house the next day. This lets them restock the house's pantry. It also lets them order luxuries and frivolities: weed gummies, Nerf guns, zebra-print cowboy hats, rare comics, Faberge eggs, a stuffed monkey in an astronaut costume, military-grade weapons. He's like an alien genocidal Santa Claus -- but no one fears him enough to push the story properly into horror.
This isn't to say there aren't a number of eerie and creepy moments. There are weird statues scattered across the woods, with one that lets you see how your hometown was destroyed in the apocalypse. Everyone starts to realize their memories have been tampered with. There are plenty of survivor flashbacks where their mundane memories of Walter are made a lot creepier when you know he's an alien. And there's every image of Walter's vortex-scrambled face.
But it isn't horror. Which is too bad, because most of the series' covers are scary as hell. Someone swimming in a lake filled with skeletons, people relaxing with cocktails amid scenes of fiery destruction, someone looking out a bloody window of the house after hundreds of birds have flung themselves to their deaths against it. None of these scenes happen in the comics -- but they should have.
The character work here also leaves a lot to be desired. There are simply too many characters, their depictions are relatively generic and vague, and they're either referred to by their names or their professions, which just generally confuses the reader about which character is which. Is David the Comedian or the Pianist? Is Molly the Consultant or the Artist? It hardly matters. The one truly important character is Walter. And Walter is an asshole.
This makes all makes it sound like I deeply disliked the book, but I had plenty of fun reading it. The first issue rocks, and the following issues are all plenty entertaining. The story is creepy and funny and clever and tragic and bizarre, even if it isn't really horror. Bueno's artwork is spectacular, giving us the beauty of the house and surrounding forest, along with the gruesome images of people melting together during the apocalypse, the odd statues scattered around the forest, and the unique surreality of Walter's alien appearance.
It's a good story, and it's worth reading, even if it's not as horrific as you might be expecting.