When I first read the previous page and this one, the technique Jerem used to tell the story fascinated me. The story evolves a bit on these pages, and although I had some ideas about how to do this if we filmed it, I’m not very familiar with comics and I had no idea how Jerem would approach it.

On the previous page, the narrative technique shifts a bit - it’s not just straightforward, panel-to-panel storytelling, as we go inside Jim’s head while he tunes out the conversation and notices the doll. This page builds on the previous one. The top panel, that just focuses on Jim’s mouth, is a little strange - not seeing Jim’s eyes is subtly unusual. As the panels continue, the scene quietly resolves as The Stranger leaves, the doorbell chimes, and it’s six o’clock. The last panel has no movement in it at all, which really made me feel like the scene was winding down.

What struck me about these two pages is how Jerem used one of the basic techniques of horror through subtlety and quietness.

Generally speaking, horror plays a scene one of two ways: either for shock or scares. An example from a made-up horror film: a man walks down the street, when suddenly a masked madman leaps from the bushes and plunges an axe through his back. A huge jolt of music and a loud noise accompany his attack. It makes the audience jump out of their seat - it’s a great shocking moment. Now imagine the same scene where we see the masked madman stalking the man for a few minutes, hiding in the bushes and staying just out of sight. The man, of course, has no idea that the madman is there, which makes it all the scarier for us, because we can see what’s coming but have no idea when. As the tension builds and builds, the madman leaps from the bushes and plunges the axe in the unsuspecting victim as before. The difference is in the buildup to the murder: in the first scenario, the audience taken by surprise, where their blood pressure spikes to 100%, whereas in the second they slowly ramped up to 95% and then pushed over the top with the axe swing. Each technique has its place, and good horror stories - film, books, and comics - know when to use each one.

I like to think of the shock method as a scream: the storyteller relies on the element of surprise, and surprises work the best with loud noises and jarring execution (pun intended). On the contrary, the scare method is a whisper - it takes a subtle hand to slowly build up the tension and pay it off.

Which brings me to these two pages. The odd shift in tone, the unusual closeup on Jim’s mouth, and the quiet end of the scene set the stage perfectly for a horror story. It’s not necessarily scary yet, but the seeds are planted. I’m not going to give anything away - maybe the next page is filled with scares, or maybe it isn’t. I’m going to let you find out on your own. I don’t think that’s any kind of spoiler for this story - after all, you know that this is a horror comic, and something bad is going to come at some point. It’s just a question of when. But it’s coming…