Steeple, Volume 2: The Silvery Moon by John Allison Review

John Allison takes us unexpectedly back to the small Cornish village of Tredregyn for an unheralded second volume of one of his least talked-about titles, Steeple. Billie and Mags are still pottering about, doing nowt much. Brian might be turning into a werewolf. Rev Penrose is still fighting mermen. And a new character, who’s basically Jaco the Galactic Patrolman from Dragon Ball, appears for some more nonsensical whimsy. And well done to you if you remembered who any of those names are!

It’s interesting how Dark Horse is handling some of their less popular titles (ie. everything non-Hellboy related). Christopher Cantwell and INJ Culbard’s second volume of Everything was published as a single volume, rather than as single issues first (the usual route for comics), which is how they’ve handled this second volume of Steeple (Allison’s unused thumbnails for the single issue covers to be drawn by Max Sarin are included at the back of this book).

I’m speculating but I guess it’s because the profit (assuming there is any) of publishing the single issues first isn’t worth the bother so they’re skipping straight to the trade. Which I understand with Everything because the second volume completes the story established in the first; but there’s no story to conclude in Steeple. It’s just another mess of unfunny, pointless sketches.

Billie was in the church of Jeebus but now she’s in the church of Satan and vice versa for Mags - not that this means anything, by the by, there’s no conflict in this series because of this. It just means Billie lives over there and Mags lives over here. Yawners.

The Brian/werewolf thing had an amusing conclusion (what Brian actually turns into), though that makes the great Max Sarin front cover misleading in that regard. Allison’s art in this book is the best it’s ever been, which is to say, it’s fine. The dialogue is as cute as it always is but what worked so beautifully in Giant Days fails to enliven the pages here - maybe because the characters are lacking, the things they’re doing are unengaging, or maybe both.

If you were a fan of the first book and John Allison’s assorted Scary Go Round/non-Giant Days stuff, you might get something out of Steeple, Volume 2: The Silvery Moon. But I found this to be an unnecessary and unentertaining addition to a weak title.