A Sickness in the Family

Written by Denise Mina
Art by Antonio Fuso

This is one Vertigo Crime book that ended up being pretty creepy.  In A Sickness in the Family, a British family of means disintegrates utterly and completely.  The Usher family (a little heavy-handed with the naming) is full of the simmering resentments that most families have, and just about everyone in the family has a secret, but as the book opens during Christmas dinner, they are more or less functioning.  Sure, the parents are in counseling for the wife's extra-marital affairs, the daughter is unhappy that her father isn't funding her business venture, and the older brother is hiding a pretty big secret.  The youngest son is adopted, and has not ever been fully welcomed by the whole family.  The aging grandmother is mellowing nicely, but everyone else remembers what a terror she used to be.

During this dinner, the couple that lives downstairs get into a massive fight that culminates in both their deaths.  After that, the father decides to open a huge hole in the middle of his house to build a staircase to the recently acquired ground floor, and things start to go weird.  One by one, the members of the Usher family meet accidents and have their secrets revealed, as the dwindling number of survivors turn on each other.  There may be a supernatural element to what's going on, or the explanation may be more pedestrian than that.

Mina does a great job of ratcheting up the tension with each new chapter, and as the list of suspects shrinks, everyone begins to look more and more guilty.  The story is told through the perspective of the adopted teenage son, who is pretty much the only nice person in the comic.  Fuso's art is serviceable, but doesn't really stand out.  Still, this is a pretty impressive piece of work from an imprint of an imprint that keeps improving.

Fear Agent #27

Written by Rick Remender and Macon Blair
Art by Mike Hawthorne, Tony Moore, John Lucas, and Antonio Fuso

I'm really pleased that Rick Remender and Tony Moore have found such success at Marvel. They are two of my favourite 'independent' creators, and I'm very happy to see that they are reaching wider audiences, and one would assume, making more money. I have been following both of their efforts, and must say that titles like Punisher and Ghost Rider have never been so readable.

That said, I'm sad that Fear Agent has had to suffer for it. This book was supposed to be out in November, but it's all love. I am happy to see that there is one more story arc after this one, even if it's going to take a while to appear.

In this issue, Remender wraps up a lot of plots and issues going back almost to the start of the title, and then does that thing he always does in this comic, and screws Heath over right at the very end, again. It is that quality that has made this book so enjoyable, and I'm glad that things are going to stay unpredictable right until the very end.

The art team of Hawthorne, Moore, and Lucas gives the book a rougher, more scratchy quality than is usual when Moore's on the title, but it still looks good.

The 'Tales' story by Blair and Fuso has all the elements one expects from 'Tales of the FEAR Agent' - it's witty and well-drawn.