Echoes #4

Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov
Art by Rahsan Ekedal

I'm finding Echoes to be a very tightly plotted thriller, and each issue seems to be better than the one before it.  The plot of this series is that Brian, a schizophrenic, learns from his father on his deathbed that he had murdered a large number of young girls, and had made effigies of them out of their skin.  Upon learning this, Brian investigates some and discovers the box full of dolls, and promptly starts to crack up.  Soon enough, he's beginning to wonder if he is doing the same thing, especially once a young girl goes missing, and a new effigy shows up on his doorstep.  The problem is, he has no memory of this happening.

What makes this book so interesting is the way in which the reader has to question each of Brian's perceptions, since we don't always know if he is seeing something real.  With this penultimate issue, the police start actively looking for him, showing up at his house with a search warrant while he is out, and Brian finally starts to piece together what is going on.  The issue ends with a pretty big revelation that helps confirm some of the suspicions I had (I don't want to spoil anything), but with a few twists that I didn't see coming.

I really like the way Fialkov is writing this series, keeping Brian and his questionable understanding of his environment in such a tight focus.  Ekedal's art works very well here, and I am very much looking forward to the end of this series.