Acclaimed writer Gail Simone is renowned for being one of the most pioneering and influential women in the comics business in the past 15 years. Especially famous for coining the phrase “Women in Refrigerators”, describing the frequent relegation of women characters in comics to plot devices, often involving their brutal deaths (also referred to as “Gwen Stacy Syndrome”), she has since taken on a career steeped in the creation and circulation of strong, developed female characters.
Simone continues this streak in her transition from superhero to horror comics with her most recent project, Clean Room, part of the new line-up for DC’s renewed Vertigo imprint of mature comics. Telling the story of a young journalist investigating the sinister activities of a powerful self-help organization, Simone creates an effectively eery atmosphere as well as a intense, compelling antagonism among her characters, making for the beginnings of an absorbing psychological (and maybe supernatural) thriller.
However, in throwing the reader into the surreal world of her comic, she may have provided a few too many elements at once for a first issue.
The comic begins with a bizarre hit and run incident in Germany, where a pickup driver seems intently determined to strike a couple’s child with his vehicle. The child survives, but awakes in the hospital only to fail to recognize her father. When the mother specifies that her father is right there in the room with them, the little girl replies, “Why is daddy’s face made of snakes?”
This opening scene is skillfully done, creating the proper disturbing tone for a horror comic. Just seeing the passenger of the driver’s van become increasingly horrified as the driver careens towards the child is terrific imagery, and the art of Jon Davis-Hunt of 2000 AD fame powerfully captures those moments of panic. Even the sight of the van as a hulking monster in the child’s eyes is a striking illustration of vulnerability. But even after we learn of the girl’s hallucinations, the single question to her mother in the hospital, without an accompanying image, is wonderfully haunting.
This kind of imagery, as seen throughout the rest of the comic, is just as effectively disturbing and eerie, but at times can be a little hard to follow. The rest of the issue follows the investigations of a young reporter named Chloe, who’s trying to determine why her fiancé decided to shoot himself after reading a new, popular self-help book by a publishing tycoon named Astrid Mueller. After initially trying to commit suicide herself, Chloe wakes up in the hospital and begins hallucinating Philip.
Deciding to solve the mystery of his suicide, she speaks to a former friend of his, a homeless man named Mike. Mike, in a panic, tells Chloe to let it go, explaining that he’s been to Astrid Mueller’s “Clean Room” as part of a self-help program, and that he’s never been the same since. Chloe decides to go straight to the source: Astrid Mueller’s headquarters.
Part of the confusion of the issue stems from who exactly is affected by the hallucinations and why. For example, why are the little girl and Chloe affected when they’ve never read the book or been part of the program? What did the truck driver see that made him attack the girl? What’s haunting those who’ve read the book versus people like Chloe, who haven’t?
While these mixed narratives will likely be explained as the series continues, it makes for a bit of a bump in reading the first issue. Of course, any good horror story provokes questions, but when the question is a confusion in the story’s progression and logic itself, it comes across as distracting. This first issue could have included just a hint more information to distinguish these two types of hauntings for the reader, while still maintaining the intrigue of the story’s mystery behind such hauntings.
The force behind Mike and Phillip’s hauntings, however, is a thematically interesting choice. Chloe refers to to Astrid Mueller as part of the “weird twilight industry between self-help and religion”, an intriguing commentary on popular media personalities advertising their supposed ability to cure their customers, and the arguable cult status of some of these personalities and their products.
The ultimate confrontation between Chloe and Astrid Mueller’s organization is a well-plotted scene. The character of Ms. Reed, Astrid’s assistant, is a particularly daunting villain. The exchanges between Chloe and Ms. Reed feel appropriately heavy and dramatic, in a Sherlock-and-Moriarty-type heft as Chloe sees through the organization’s ploys and threatens to bring them down. It sets the tone and establishes an understanding of the strength and capabilities of both sides, creating an effective set-up for what’s to come, especially with Astrid Mueller’s entrance just as the comic ends.
Clean Room #1 is an exciting set-up to what could prove to be a deep new horror series in the vein of some of Vertigo’s classics, and should whet appetites enough to keep readers’ attention. However, as a stand-alone issue, it leaves out a few too many pieces of information to serve as a clear narrative. Hopefully the next few issues will smooth out a few of these bumps.