Advance Review: Complex Images Complement Straightforward Script In ‘Bone Orchard – Tenement’ #5
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
Jaw-dropping images of simple objects – a door, a bathroom drain – bring this issue to life in a spectacular way. The complex imagery elevates the relatively straightforward story of people trapped in a mysterious world. If you’re not into the Bone Orchard Mythos, you should be.
Overall
9.5/10Early in the latest issue of Bone Orchard: Tenement, amid some relatively mundane pages, comes a double-page spread that will rip the breath out of your lungs.
It’s neither graphic nor provocative, but it has the stopping power of a horse. It’s an apartment door seen through the eyes of a young boy who is trapped, along with several other residents of the tenement building, in some strange world. The apartment belongs to Felix, who died in the first issue. It seems to be a safe haven for the survivors, but young Isaac sees this world through a different lens.
The image, masterfully created by artist Andrea Sorrentino, shows the door against a blood-red wall, bookended by black demonic faces about to devour the portal. It’s a powerful image, made all the more memorable by Dave Stewart’s colors.
Similar visions – again, spectacularly presented by Sorrentino and Stewart – return sporadically through the issue. A simple shower drain becomes a gaping red and black hole. Bathroom walls begin dripping with blood. The visions spread to another character, just as she starts to uncover more of the Bone Orchard Mythos that this limited series is a part of.
Writer Jeff Lemire wisely chooses to tell a relatively simple story – at first anyway – of strangers coming together in a strange world. That allows the visual artists to pull readers in. And they do it with aplomb.
Up to this point, Lemire’s characters have largely been unsympathetic, with the exception of Isaac. With this issue, though, he spends a bit more time fleshing them out. There’s the young woman dying of cancer. The junkie whose addiction has subsided while in this mysterious realm. It’s a smart move that should heighten the tension and raise the stakes in the series’ second half.
This run from the Eisner Award-winning team has been spectacular, which only drives expectations for the future even higher.
Bone Orchard: Tenement #5 will be available for purchase on October 18, 2023.
