It Has Always Been With Us: The Empty Man #8 Closes A Chapter
by Josh Davison
[*Mild Spoilers Ahead!]
Langford, Monica, and the Kerry’s are closing in on the headquarters of the Whisper Oracles. Langford is going to shut down the Empty Man signal, even if it means unleashing an apocalypse of sorts upon the world. It will also mean that Langford will have to go back into the Empty Man’s dimension. Meanwhile, the head propagators of the Empty Man are on their way out of their base of operations, but they still can’t agree on who is in charge here.
Empty Man #8 seems to conclude a chapter of the horror saga. Langford and Monica are closing in on the seat of the Empty Man’s power, and his reach has extended around the world.
There is something beautifully macabre about the comic’s explanation of the Empty Man’s origins; it was birthed with human understanding–not despite it. It always existed within humanity, and there is only so far we can stray from it.
The ending is where the comic does take a strange turn. Without spoiling too much, there seems to be a holy war a-brewing, and not from where one would expect it.
The Kerry family has weirdly sunken into the background, with Melissa’s illness seemingly at bay for now. These characters aren’t as important now as they were at the beginning of this run, and that is a little bothersome.
Jesús Hervás once again contributes his great talents to this issue, and he presents the gore and surrealism of this issue very stylishly. The world of the Empty Man has always looked rather disquieting even when there isn’t entrails or entities in the panel, and it still does here. Niko Guardia’s color art is macabre and unnerving in its own way too, and the two make for quite the horror visual team.
Empty Man #8 takes the book in a strange new direction that, despite seemingly coming from nowhere, has me curious as to where the story will go from here. Beyond that, it’s another fantastic cosmic horror comic, and it earns a recommendation. Check it out.
Empty Man #8 comes to us from writer Cullen Bunn, artist and variant cover artist Jesús Hervás, color artist Niko Guardia, letterer Ed Dukeshire, and cover artist Vanesa R. Del Rey.
Final Score: 8/10
