The Veil

Written by El Torres
Art by Gabriel Hernandez

When this book was first published as a mini-series, I remember it getting some positive attention at the Comics Should Be Good blog, so I figured it was worth checking out. 

Really, this is a strange project.  It stars Chris Luna, a female private investigator (are there comics about male private investigators anymore?) in New York who can see and speak to the dead.  Taking on the cases of the dead is not terribly lucrative, so when she receives word that her recently deceased aunt's home is being appropriated, she heads back to Crooksville Maine, her childhood home.

When Chris was a kid, she was one of the few survivors of a terrible train accident (which caused her abilities to manifest), and she'd had it tough from that time.  Upon her arrival in the town, things quickly start to fall apart, as she realizes that her nightmares of the last twenty years had been visions of what was to come.

At this point, the book becomes a pretty standard horror story, complete with a hideous monster with a silly name (The Slug Man).  From here, I found the book a little less enjoyable, but that's because I'm not a fan of this type of horror.

Hernandez's art is pretty cool.  It looks like a more sedate Ben Templesmith (I guess that's how you know you're reading an IDW book), and Hernandez uses a lot of browns, giving the book a very earthy feel.  It's an interesting read in the first half, but unfortunately can't rise above the dictates of its genre.

As a side note, I don't understand why the writer and artist's names aren't on the cover or on the IDW on-line store entry for this book.  I know they aren't terribly well known, but it seems disrespectful.