Intro: Long time ago I set out to regularly review comics on Steem, now Hive, but it didn’t feel as if comics and the platform were a true match. At least not beyond comics and the internet always being a fit. Neither had I myself found the appropriate angle I wanted to approach my comics reviews from.
Thanks to communities there seems now more opportunity for comics reviews to find an audience. At the same time, after more than two years, I have decided that I will focus mostly on reviewing past trades (finished chapters, published as full story arc of 6 issues usually). I will select mainly great titles published by Image Comics and Dark Horse, with probably the odd Top Cow publication thrown in as well. The aim of this focus is to provide newcomers to comics with a regular selection of (past) stories to explore, without needing to navigate the vast web of continuity titles published by the two main publishing houses.
As reviewer my main focus will be on trying to tempt the reader without giving anything about the story’s evolution itself away. Consider any title and author mentioned in a review a subject for a potential future review.
Warning: I like my comics gritty. You better do too.
“The House of Penance” by Peter J. Tomasi
Located at 525 South Winchester Boulevard, San Jose, is Californian Historical Landmark #868. The landmark is the Winchester Mansion, popularly known as the Winchester Mystery House.
Originally owned by Dr. Caldwell, the farmhouse had 8 bedrooms in a sprawling estate of 161 acres of farmland. Towards the end of the 19th century, Sarah Winchester (born Pardee) purchased the estate and hired a crew of around 20 carpenters to start developing it. Development went on non-stop until she died 38 years later, in 1922.
During development, the mansion would in places be built up as high as 7 stories but in 1906 an earthquake reduced the estate to 4 stories and further development wouldn’t go higher.
Folklore insists the labyrinth which the house became, encompassing of 500-600 rooms(*), rooms within rooms, and even stairs to nowhere, was because Sarah Winchester had started to think she was cursed(**) after the loss of her daughter and husband. To escape her curse, she had to construct a labyrinth, all while taking orders from the ghosts about the architecture of the house, every day at midnight. Folklore also perpetuates the myth that the house is haunted by the ghosts of those fallen to Winchester guns, the company Sarah was the heir to. The house even became a feature in a MythBusters episode (Smell of Fear), after which host Kari Byron declared having had nightmares after her first visit to the mansion and that the house is “still creepy”.
It is this folklore one-time Superman author Peter J. Tomasi builds upon in his marvelous “House of Penance” thriller — or should we say gothic horror?
While there are moments where Tomasi’s writing lacks, from the first moment he excels at dropping the reader in an almost claustrophobic environment thanks to his power, and the supporting art of Ian Beltram, to surround the reader with lots of creepy weirdness. A haunted house, a weird crew of 24/7 working carpenters and then as if it all wasn’t enough yet, the addition of a just as weird and creepy assassin, Warren Peck, joining the crew.
Did we even mention Sarah Winchester, who, of course, doesn’t disappoint in weirdness and creepiness either?
It must be said too that Ian Bertram’s art is not merely supportive to Tomasi’s story but, also thanks to Dave Stewart’s coloring, could stand on its own just as well. Bertram definitely does add the creepy to the story and he does so without making his panels overloaded with details as you would expect from for example Greg Capullo. In Bertram’s art the details are in plain sight.
In “House of Penance” it all adds up to a perfect, almost hallucinatory reading experience.
While normally we don’t pay too much attention to sales pitch references, there is something to be said about the excellent and totally relevant reference from one of the masters of the genre, and author of Wytches, “House of Penance” opened with.
“Tomasi and Bertram have crafted something truly special with this book”
— Scott Snyder (Wytches, American Vampire, Batman)
Tomasi revels in the art of capturing the reader - pun intended - by the haunted house all while leading readers to warm to both main characters which in the earlier chapters seems to spell nothing but trouble. Bertram’s compelling art and Stewart’s as haunting colors take over when Tomasi falls through the redwood cracks.
“House of Penance” is a solid — read: great — stand-alone story, enhanced only by knowledge of the folklore around Sarah Winchester and the Winchester Mystery House but the biggest failure of this title is without a doubt that there is no second arc. Sometimes the reader just deserves more than 6 issues. Tomasi and Bertram’s “House of Penance” is one of those times.
“House of Penance” (2016) TPB is available from Dark Horse for $19.99 in print format, or for $16.99 from Comixology for the digital version.
Past Comic Reviews
- The Black Monday Murders, by Jonathan Hickman
- Plastic, by Doug Wagner
Notes
(*) The Winchester Mystery House has currently 161 rooms. And 17 chimneys.
(**) The folklore around Sarah Winchester and the house is easily debunked by her intellectual interest, also in cipher. Hop over to The Truth About Sarah Winchester if you want to learn more about one of the then richest women in the world.
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