Houses of the Unholy is the latest offering from writer Ed Brubaker and artist Sean Phillips—a longtime creative pair who've been cranking out captivating crime graphic novels for the last decade or so. Like the duo's renowned Criminal series, Houses of the Unholy feels like a classic story of seedy street-level criminals with heartbreaking histories, and the awful authority figures who love to follow them. It's an art form of archetypes, of which Brubaker and Phillips have demonstrated a deft mastery over the years, offering just enough of a new insight or fresh take to keep these kinds of crime stories feeling compelling enough to return to each and every time.
In the case of Houses of the Unholy, the duo decide to visit the Satanic Panic era. But rather than creating a period piece like Bad Weekend, Houses of the Unholy uses that era as a background character, with a direct line to the modern world. The protagonist, Natalie, was one of a group of kids known as the "Satanic Six," who found themselves wrapped up in an elaborate group delusion about a Satanic cult in their community. That innocent childhood mistake left a lasting impact not just on Natalie and the people she accused, but also on her family, including her younger brother, Brendan.
Roughly 25 years later, Natalie is now a private investigator who specializes in finding kids who've gotten wrapped up in cults. The job is clearly personal—but it's not necessarily cathartic, as evidenced by her hefty marijuana habit and general cold attitude. Her trauma gets even harder to leave behind once she's contacted by an FBI agent who informs her that someone has been killing off the rest of her childhood friends from the Satanic Six.
There are plenty of other twists and turns to come, of course. But that's the basic gist of the story, which is carried along on the strength of Phillips' perfect flat color palette and moody pencils. (Seriously, the man deserves an Eisner Award for Best Lighting Design in comic book format.)
Despite being created and released a single completed graphic novel—like most of Phillips' & Brubaker's work—Houses of the Unholy is broken up into chapters, not unlike a serialized comic book collection. I actually found this to be a rather refreshing approach to graphic novel story structure. In the absence of clear story breaks, it can be tempting to cram through an entire 150+ page graphic novel in a single sitting. That can be great! But it can also be a lot. Even if you do choose to finish this book in a single sitting—which you may very well want to do, because it is such a good thriller—the brief breaks will at least give you a chance to breathe and digest what you just read before pushing on.
Beyond the use of the Satanic Panic as a formative trauma for a present day story, Houses of the Unholy doesn't really do much to re-invent the wheel. It's just a really fucking solid thriller story, which is what Brubaker and Phillips do best. A few of the twists may be foreshadowed a little too heavily, but that's also very much within the mode of crime storytelling that they're working in. If you're in the mood for a good horror-thriller any time soon, stop searching endlessly through Hulu, and check out Houses of the Unholy instead.
Houses of the Unholy [Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips / Image Comics]