Read our review of Houses Of The Unholy from Image Comics, written by Ed Brubaker with art by Sean Phillips.
We reviewed the book on the Stack podcast. But in the interest of highlighting more about the title, here’s a summary of the conversation with our thoughts. And if you prefer the longer audio version, that’s below as well!
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Houses Of The Unholy Review:
In Houses of the Unholy, the new graphic novel by Sean Phillips and Ed Brubaker, we’re following a woman who was once part of the Satanic Panic in the ’80s… Now once again caught up in it, decades later.
“This creative team [is] just masters of making comics, so anything they do is worth the read,” said host Justin Tyler. “Satanic Panic is something that so many people in our culture are using as their creative springboard… And what I want to credit this book with is they take the Satanic Panic and actually draw a line to what it is now. I don’t think everyone’s using Satanic Panic as a whole meal the way they do here.”
Continuing, Tyler noted the way that the movement was “something far more insidious now that is affecting people at a lot of different levels… This book really explores that from a couple [of] different sides. There are some great twists and turns, as always, a great main character.”
“Given that they are masters of the form, [but] it’s so different from Where The Body Was,” added Alex Zalben, referencing the team’s previous book. “It’s [one of the] most romantic and one of the more hopeful books that the pair has done. This is not. This is very much the opposite of it. It’s nihilistic, it’s sad. It is an indictment… of online culture.”
Clarifying, Zalben explained that the book draws a clear line between what used to be “online” culture — a phone chain, newspaper articles, TV reports — to now, dark web forums, social media posts, and more. He also lauded the team for even taking a “step up” from their seminal work on Criminal with these last two books. “These essentially one-and-done graphic novels are giving them such a sense of focus and such a chance to play around with different tones… They’re really bringing it to a new level.”
Tyler agreed, adding that they are taking the noir storytelling from Criminal, and putting it in different genres.
And continuing to laud the book, Zalben highlighted Jacob Phillips’s colors, which play an integral part in the storytelling. “This vacillates between the main sections which are generally colored, and flashback sections, which are almost entirely colored in red and black. It provides such a counterpoint… It plays out in a story way in the book as well. So smartly done.”
Houses of the Unholy is in stores everywhere now.
Houses Of The Unholy Official Synopsis:
An FBI agent from the cult crime beat and a woman with a past linked to the Satanic Panic are drawn into a terrifying hunt for an insane killer hiding in the shadows of the underworld. Can you ever escape your past, or are all your bad decisions just more ghosts to haunt you, wherever you go?
HOUSES OF THE UNHOLY is a riveting horror thrill ride from bestselling creators ED BRUBAKER and SEAN PHILLIPS, the award-winning team behind CRIMINAL (soon to be a TV series on Amazon Prime), RECKLESS, NIGHT FEVER, and WHERE THE BODY WAS.
