Nothing really happens – review of the comic book “Night Scream”

Will you say a round sentence …

In addition to the shop, Teresa also runs a zine and publishes her texts, including reviews, mainly there. There is even a legendary, unavailable issue of this magazine. The only client is missing only him from the collection. The balance between the girls seems to be inviolable, pulsating with the same rhythm as their separate, equally monotonous lives. Until! Because something has to happen! So: until there is a demon – she, pink-haired Laura, a genie from an old book.

Say it for yourself, it must be a new beginning! Demonica can fulfill one wish, then returns between the covers. Waiting for her temporary lady’s decision, she wanders around the area, accosts a client who turns out to be Matilda, dreams of Japan. Girls read manga, eat ice cream, drink wine.

The same emptiness and silence

Muted colors with the occasional stain of pink hair or yellow sweatshirts. Lots of shades of blue, it’s the Blue City after all. A warm darkness, from under which terror, a stain of blood sometimes pierces, not so old at all. Sepia interior of a magic store. Even Sailor Moon ‘s posters in Mathilda’s room had faded. Graceful figures flicker through the empty city, as if someone had applied a Japanese filter to the idyllic shepherdesses, thanks to which the uniform patches of color perfectly reflect their smooth movements. Quiet dance of girls in a silent city. Borja Gonzalez can draw Victorian ladies and modern skaters in his own style; it will always be minimalist, realistic and tender.

The sadness and horror that emanate from this subtle, silent comic for any other artist would turn into a horror or fanfic for Twinpeaks Town . Gonzalez, on the other hand, maintains the balance somewhere around the mono no aware style, while showing a completely modern history, even calmer than those by Jan Mazur. Yes, sometimes someone is fed up and cries, someone else sincerely hates the City, finally some will bomb themselves and raise “their barbaric cry over the roofs of the world”. Maybe there will even be ghosts? Or any hope?

And nothing will happen. Till the end

Reading other people’s reviews, I have come across the repeated observation that the end of this comic is … weird at least. It does not give you a feeling that the story is closed or an answer to the question of what actually happened. And maybe that’s what it is all about. A sad city is not a place for epic finals, romanticism must be silent here, heroism unnoticed. And unfinished talks. Maybe it’s wrong. Maybe it means nothing really is happening. Or maybe Borja Gonzalez simply tells stories, and this is where his greatest strength lies in creating an atmosphere that lasts long after the Scream has been put down .

This comic book is good to come back to, as is The Black Holes . These stories do not ask for a definitive closure or a continuation. Someone has already said that novels take place somewhere in the middle of the heroes’ lives, they are only a fragment, a melody temporarily captured on our frequency. The question is whether we will remember her or will there be anything left of the girl who disappeared. And for how long.

Meanwhile, somewhere for sure “it’s 22:00. Slowly but surely, the witches’ hour is approaching. The night program begins, and a young lady climbs up the hill, from where you can see the entire Blue City. Is this the beginning of the story? Its end? Thread?