Advance Review: Tynion And Hixson Send A Christmas Card In ‘The Deviant’ #1
by Tom Smithyman
Overview
Horror and Christmas don’t overlap much in popular culture, but this creative team has masterfully blended the two here – while throwing in an homage to The Silence of the Lambs. It’s a great start to a holiday story that you won’t want to share with the kids!
Overall
9.5/10A word of advice: If you receive a Christmas card from James Tynion IV or Joshua Hixson, think twice before opening it.
That pair, the creative team behind the limited series The Deviant, deliver a terrific premiere issue of a story about a yuletide-themed serial killer. It’s an absolute page-turner – equal parts horror and psychological thriller.
In December 1973, Randall Olsen is arrested for killing young boys while dressed as Santa Claus. Police find two of them a butchered in Olsen’s barn, strung up by Christmas lights. Tis the season! Flash forward to today and Michael is interviewing Olsen in jail for a comic book he’s writing.
If it sounds meta, that’s not the half of it. Writer Tynion goes full-on The Silence of the Lambs here, only casting himself in the Jodie Foster role. Olsen is Hannibal Lecter, playing a potentially deadly game with the young man. Both are gay – Tynion, who is open about his sexuality, is as well – which adds to the drama and the subtext. To make the story even more personal for Tynion, he went to high school a few blocks from where Jeffrey Dahmer killed his victims.
Olsen berates the writer for not having an angle for his story. When the inmate asks if the story will involve superheroes, Michael responds: “That’s not the kind of comic book I write. Not anymore.” Tynion, of course, wrote for DC for years, including runs on Detective Comics and Batman. Their scene in jail together is a fantastic sequence and helps to lay the groundwork for what’s to come over the next eight issues.
Even the visuals are interesting, thanks to Hixon’s illustrations. It could have been a boring series of pages, but instead he brings the conversation – and the characters – to life with awkward smiles, sunken eyes and teeth picking. The contrast between the faces of the two characters tells more about them than the dialogue lets on.
And that’s only the slow part of the issue. Hixson illustrates a simple but captivating holiday scene in the opening as well as an exciting chase later in the issue. And when we come face to face with the killer – in full Santa regalia plus a bloody ax – it’s truly shocking.
It will be miraculous if this team is able to keep up the momentum they have established in this first issue. But hey, readers would love that kind of Christmas miracle.
The Deviant #1 will be available for purchase on November 15, 2023.
