A couple of young girls become friends over their shared love of fantasy. But as they grow older, they grow apart, with one friend choosing partying and boys, leaving the other behind. And then the party girl disappears. Years pass, the surviving girl grows up, moves away and becomes a bestselling horror author, haunted forever by her friend’s unsolved disappearance. Now that she’s back in her childhood town she’s starting to suspect… maybe her friend’s somehow still alive…?
Ten Thousand Yawns is the latest addition to the Boner Orchard Mythos and it’s about as good as The Passageway was: excellent art, weak horror story. Yay…
(I was initially going to say that this is Book 2 of the Boner Orchard but I found out recently that there was a comic that came out before The Passageway called, appropriately enough, Prelude, so this is technically Part 3 in the series. Prelude was released for Free Comic Book Day 2022 but if, like me, you missed it, then you can download a free copy from Jeff Lemire’s Substack - just scroll down a bit and you’ll see the links. It’s about as good as the non-free Boner Orchard comics - well, Lemire’s consistent at least…)
So even though this book is more than 50% longer than The Passageway, it feels like it has about the same amount of story - that’s how little there is to this one. The main character has an ominous horror-y voice in her head because this is a horror comic and I think we’re meant to suspect she may have murdered her friend in a jealous rage and blocked it out but Lemire’s just not a capable-enough writer to blur the lines convincingly like that, especially with the ending revealing what most readers will have suspected the entire time (ie. it’s obvious in another way).
I didn’t find the flashback scenes very engaging and the present-day ones were similarly flat and uninteresting. Some typical horror scenes are thrown in and that’s a wrap. It’s never very clear what’s happening or why - it’s atmospheric horror really only thanks to Andrea Sorrentino’s superb art. Basically, the Boner Orchard Mythos feels like a rehash of their previous abysmal series, Gideon Falls.
Nothing really connects this book to The Passageway besides the tone and the same imagery at the end of that book appears in this book. Even though we don’t know what it means. And it’s just generic horror imagery anyway. Ho hum. Lemire used to occasionally write good comics but all he seems to produce these days is underwritten pap.
So it’s a shame that Sorrentino’s excellent artwork is in service to such bad, underwhelming storytelling. The shading in the present-day scenes is perfect, some of the imagery is striking, and the visuals overall are very evocative of menace. Add Dave Stewart’s colours and it only looks better - combined with the horror tone and you feel like you’re reading a classic Mignola/Dark Horse comic. The choice to make the flashback scenes more colourful and lighter provides a nice contrast to the grimdark present scenes too.
Lemire/Sorrentino have said they plan to make a ton of books in this series over the next few years so I can see why they’re taking their time over explaining what any of this is, how it connects and why, etc. But I feel like they should at least be trying to tell compelling stories to make up for this lack of substance, and that’s not happening either.
I like horror comics and Andrea Sorrentino’s art but this series has yet to produce anything even halfway decent unfortunately. If you liked the previous Boner Orchard stuff, you’ll probably enjoy Ten Thousand Black Feathers - if not, then you’ll remain as unimpressed with this bland offering.
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