Thom is preparing to move his young family from the east coast to the west coast, and hopes that the move will help settle his marriage with Maggie, as well as calm his 4 year old, Jamie. Because Jamie sees a monster in his closet each night - will he be able to leave it behind or will the monster follow him?
Given that this is a comic written by James Tynion IV, a writer I’ve never had much truck with, I found The Closet to be surprisingly decent. It’s not overwritten with huge blocks of superfluous text cluttering up the page, there’s a good balance between his script and Bog Bodies artist Gavin Fullerton’s visuals, and the story is a fairly compelling one.
That is, until you read the entire book and realise that, while only three issues long, Tynion’s written the same issue three times over. Thom talks to someone wherein we find out what a fuckup he is as a husband and a father, cut to poor Jamie being tormented by the monster, repeat - until the reveal of what the “monster” really is at the end.
Still, the dialogue is clever in showing you what a mess Thom is and how he’s caused the problems in his home life, and the mystery effectively draws you in. The monster scenes are made more powerful by being silent and Fullerton’s art is successfully creepy. The reveal was satisfying and I liked the existential horror aspect of it, rather than it being some overt literal silliness.
But I couldn’t help but feel this would’ve been a really amazing single issue if Tynion had wanted it to be. It’s fine as three issues but it is a little frustrating in how it steadfastly doesn’t progress beyond a certain point and then repeats.
The Closet is a decent horror comic about everyday monsters but Tynion, as ever, manages to labour even a short story into something far longer than it needed to be.
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