Gideon Falls #14 Review

Writer: Jeff Lemire / Artist: Andrea Sorrentino / Image Comics After fourteen issues, I’m slowly running out of ways to praise Gideon Falls, but the simple truth is that what started as chilling poignant urban horror story has slowly, but surely pivoted into a multiversal, eldritch abomination inhabiting, straight-up nightmarish landscape that started out great and has only continue to raise the bar every time we find out more about the Black Barn. It’s immediate from the start that this is a comic that embodies all the weird wonderful ways that comics can tell stories that other mediums will struggle to. Sorrentino’s panel work is incredibly trippy, his artwork is chilling and human, and Stewart’s use of the color red continues to be one of the most anxiety inducing things I’ve ever experienced and I’ve been saying this for so long, but it’s no less true after almost a year of following this universe. The visual design team pushes the limits of how much can happen on a page and manages to guide them through a terrifyingly disorienting stimuli that is at the core of all horror.

Gideon Falls has always been a story about how little we can trust our perceptions and with the introduction of the multiverse and time travel, that centric thematic continues to tug at our heartstrings. Lemire is a master of the slow burn that leads to grand conflagrations which makes seemingly innocuous beats much more sinister later, and the worldbuilding and tight dialog is a joy to read, but als…