Originally posted on Irish Comic News (21/Feb/2017)

Review: Epilogue – a ghost story.

Written, illustrated and coloured by Stuart McCune.

Epilogue is the latest comic from McCune which he produced as a result of a successful Kickstarter campaign (Epilogue being his fifth campaign in the space of about 12 months).  I like that Kickstarter is giving comic creators the opportunity to get their comics out into the world, especially with creators like McCune who get a new comic out every couple of months.

The Kickstarter pitch for Epilogue was: “Epilogue is a stand alone graphic novella. It is a ghost story like no other and will certainly remain with you. In tone it is equal parts Poe, Conrad, and Fitzgerald. The plot revolves around four people who return to a house on a deserted island and then things get… well you’ll just have to read it to find out.”

Even if I hadn’t previously backed McCune’s other campaigns, that pitch would have piqued my interest. A ghost story set on a deserted island? That’s the sort of story that could easily appear in the reading pile. That it was produced by an Irish comic creator made it a certainty in this case.

The story is narrated by one of the four characters which builds on the story that is experienced by the characters.  Some of the narration had a lyrical quality to it which I enjoyed greatly. It added another dimension to the comic that the reader could enjoy.

The art is really interesting. At times it has a dream-like quality to it and at some points moves almost into the abstract. And even in the more straight-forward panels, there are designs layered on top of the art that look like glyphs of some sort. The use of colours is well used to set the tone of the various scenes throughout the comic. I liked how some of the panels had no black lines and are composed by colour alone. There’s also a nice effect at one point in the story where the page layout changes to amplify that moment in the story.

Epilogue is an interesting ghost story that is a welcome addition to McCune’s ever growing comic catalogue. If you want to read an engaging ghost story with a distinctive visual style, this may be the comic for you.

You can buy Epilogue on Bigcartel.

To keep up with McCunes comic output, you can find him on Twitter.