Comic Review: Gideon Falls #6

Gideon Falls #6

Image Comics

Writer: Jeff Lemire

Artist: Andrea Sorrentino

Well, well, well…one of my favorite comics of 2018 is closing their first arc…wrapping up Book One…putting the bow on their first volume…capping off their first narrative. I’ll stop. In my review for Gideon Falls #5, it was no secret that I loved this comic series. So how good of a job did the team do on the end of the first arc? My answer is not very good.

When issue #5 ended, we knew we were going to go into the Black Barn for the first time. Father Fred was going in after Sheriff Miller had been drawn into the barn. This rescue mission provides us the ideal reason to see what is finally inside the Black Barn. The problem is what we get is very trippy, vague images with very little dialogue. You can’t even tell what is happening a lot of the time. Father Fred has to face his past in a disturbing way, but none of it was cohesive.

Meanwhile, Norton and Dr. Xu ARE making sense in their world. Norton is drawn to an area where he finds pieces of the door to the Black Barn. He now knows what he is supposed to do. Gideon Falls has been very easy to follow so far. It has a lot of moving parts and interesting characters, but we were always able to follow the stories, and everything made sense.

Jeff Lemire waited until this issue to give us a peek inside the barn, and now that we have, I am no longer interested in going back. I prefer my Gideon Falls to be dark and eerie and comprehensible. It looks like issue #7 will be that way, but it’s a shame that Lemire didn’t have a better idea for what was in the barn. It had been built up so much only to be a mess when we finally get a glimpse inside.

If I can give credit to anyone in this issue, it would be Andrea Sorrentino. His panels and pages inside the barn were precisely what they should have been. You feel like you are watching someone lose their mind. He uses fractured panels and microcells and pulls out all the stops to make sure you are not comfortable here. For all of my gripes about how Lemire handled the Black Barn visit, Sorrentino does his part exceptionally well. The art has never wavered in this series.

Lemire has built up a good story, and Sorrentino is giving us stunning artwork and design. Knowing that this was the end of the first arc, I just had high hopes for what Lemire would do.