The Low, Low Woods #1 is published by DC Comics under their Black Label imprint, presented by Joe Hill’s Hill House Comics. It is written and created by Carmen Maria Machado with art by Dani and colors by Tamra Bonvillain.
This story makes me feel like I should be wary since I live in PA. I mean, obviously “Shudder-To-Think” isn’t a real place (that I know of) but the way Vee and El talk about it, it might not have always been called that. For all I know Shudder-To-Think is the town I live in. Which is both cool and creepy. Anyway, the set-up is pretty familiar to anyway who grew up in a more rural environment (I live in PA but I’m from WV, so this comic hits me on several levels). Shudder-To-Think was once a coal mining town but the mines were abandoned following a strange phenomenon where the ground began to heat, people were dying, young women would wander the streets without recollection – something weird was happening. But when the mines closed, things seemed to return to a semblance of normalcy. That is, until Vee and El wake up in a movie theater unsure of what they were doing there in the first place, which is strange enough but then on the way home they see a deer-woman-creature and they seem…relatively calm about it?
The Low, Low Woods introduces us to a town shrouded in mystery but it seems that the people aren’t as creeped out by it as we, the reader, are. Vee and El see this terrifying deer human and El’s response to it is “maybe someone fucked up a spell or something”. They even decide not to tell anyone because they don’t want a curfew set off again. Which tells me this isn’t exactly an abnormal occurrence, and that only adds to the mystery and makes me want to learn more. What is happening here? Why aren’t they scared? It isn’t until the final page where it seems something even the girls can’t ignore happens.
This issue is definitely a set-up issue. We see some really weird things, we are told the odd backstory of the town, and we get to know Vee and El, but the true mystery is going to begin in the next issue. Carmen Maria Machado does a great job of giving us an entire town’s history in a non-boring way. It definitely helps that Dani’s art and Tamra Bonvillain’s colors provide such fascinating depictions of what happened and their combination adds to the eeriness of the story throughout.
OVERALL SCORE: 9.5 / 10
Make sure to pick up The Low Low Woods #1 from your local comic shop!
Happy reading!
