Opinion

Strangehaven

Creator: Gary Spencer Millidge
Published by abiogenesis press

Life in the geographically-challenged (it doesn't appear on any maps) Devon village of Strangehaven, is very like life in every other English rural village: Mysterious women cause drivers to crash their cars then vanish; the local flower-seller talks to her pets, who talk tight back; an alien from another planet is trying to re-establish contact with his homeworld; the police officer is secretly photographing people's activities; a South-American shaman-in-exile teaches a local boy his art; and a mysterious brotherhood watch over the village according to the stricures of their possibly-lethal secret rituals. The everyday story of country folk, in other words.

I'm cursing that I've come to Strangehaven so late in the day, as I have a feeling that having watched it develop and evolve over the last few years would have been the kind of long-term enjoyment that comics don't often provide. As it is, I owe its discovery to a random remark on a comics site and spotting the first collection (Arcadia, collecting issues one-six) one day in Comics Showcase. It didn't take me long to go back for the second (issues seven-twelve, Brotherhood). There aren't many comics, in these days of endless superhero retreads, that truly deserve to be called 'unique', but this is unquestionably one of them.

Black and white, self-published by the man whose baby it entirely is, and using an apparently-photo-based art style which creates a level of extreme realism, it's almost impossible to say what Strangehaven is actually about. The stories of more characters than it would seem possible to keep track of are followed and interwoven to create an ongoing picture of a world, rather than the story of an event, or a person. Romance, intrigue, weirdness and simple human confusion in the face of other human behaviour all form part of the overall picture, as does the village itself, which, especially in the second collection, begins to become a character itself.

Potentially, to some readers, Millidge could be accused of self-induldgence; the story does unfold at a very leisurely pace, taking time to draw the world rather than be constantly concerned with 'events', but this only adds to its uniqueness. An entire issue is given over to the village's celebration of Christmas (in August, admittedly), and something approaching the kind of dramatic incident that most comics feel they can't do without doesn't occur until the end of issue twelve. Yet every single panel of every single issue is absolutely compelling, and pulls the reader further and further into the world of Strangehaven.

Structurally, for the first twelve issues, Millidge stuck closely to a nine-panel grid for his pages, with occasional full-row panels to emphasise certain points. The combination of this layout and the preponderance of close-up images (especially of faces), creates an extremely intimate feeling to the book. The photo-realism helps this of course. From issue thirteen onwards, he's been making the pages looser, and shifted the art style to one using ink washes, which softens many of the edges. It's an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, change, and it will be interesting to see where he goes with it.

It's impossible to know where Strangehaven is going - I'm not even certain Millidge himself knows - but wherever it is, it should be an interesting journey.

Millidge's Strangehaven site