Review: ‘All Eight Eyes’ #1 Crawls Onto The Scene From Dark Horse

Welcome to the table.

I hate spiders.

That’s it. That’s the story.

I could talk about having them crawl across my face and arms while I was in the hospital as a little kid hooked up to machines in a way that I could not move to brush them off. I could talk about how I was bitten by one on the back of my hand while working at a summer camp and it felt like someone drove a nail all the way to the bone for weeks after.

I could talk about how there is just something unnatural about the way they move, or too natural about the way they move, or just freaky about the way they move. I could go into all of those stories but to simplify things in a way that is easily digestible.

I hate spiders.

All Eight Eyes #1 by Dark Horse Comics was a little nerve-wracking to read because as I have stated previously, I hate spiders. The fact the book deals with giant spiders that hunt, kill, and eat humans just adds a whole new layer of uncomfortable to the situation. Written by Steve Foxe, illustrated and lettered by Piotr Kowalski, and colored by Brad Simpson, All Eight Eyes is a weird trek through the intentionally unseen places of New York.

The story follows a young man named Vin who seems to make one bad choice after another. After getting denied entry to his apartment by his irritated roommate, Vin drunkenly stumbles upon what he thinks is a homeless man murdering someone with a hammer.

However, he quickly learns that the homeless man, Reynolds, is actually slaying a spider the size of a pony. The next few hours see Vin pulled into a world he never wanted to know about, a world where humans are not at the top of the food chain like they think they are, and how willing ignorance of things we don’t want to see can lead to us ignoring dangers that lurk all around us.

The writing feels a little basic at times, this could be due to the main character being drunk or me just wanting a little more than “Hey, fuck you man!” and “You don’t know what I’ve given up to be fucking alive today.”

While I really dig that it seems the protagonist may be representing a marginalized voice and I will carry the flag of “representation matters” until I draw my last, Vin is just kinda unlikeable. As a reader, I may not know enough about him yet. There could be more to him that will come out in future issues, but right now he feels like one of those guys who complains his parents don’t understand him and the world is constantly knocking him down.

Rather than try and do something about it, he gets trashed, picks up walking red-flags in bars, and does not pay his rent for four months, leaving his roommate to shoulder the burden. He’s like the guy who asks you for half your pizza because “I have no money for food” but somehow has money to buy top-shelf liquor and the newest video games on launch day.

The concept of  All Eight Eyes is interesting though. In the same way, I loved The Invisible’s use of hidden truths and factions just beyond the veil of our own perceptions the idea of giant spiders lurking in shadows and under bridges and we just willfully don’t see them is a unique and uncomfortable one to think about.

The art is rough and feels at home in the dark and unwashed spaces that the story inhabits. The colors really stand out for me in this book. The palette is well thought out and balanced and the changes in saturation and tone really sell the shifting environments going from muted browns and tans in fire-lit tunnels, to rich greens and purples under the light-polluted night sky of a New York City park.

All Eight Eyes is cool. It’s not my flavor of cool but it’s not bad by any stretch. I think it has some cool concepts with great colors and art that sell the environments well enough to pull it all together.

Until next time, if you are supposed to pay rent and you spend your money on beer and cigarettes and leave your roommates to shoulder the weight of that burden… you should maybe rethink your life choices.

All Eight Eyes #1 hits the stands tomorrow.