“The Evil Within” is an unoriginal, bland and just plain bad tie in to the recently released The Evil Within video game. From what I can tell this is a completely separate story with entirely new characters, just set in the same world. A world that has looked intriguing in the trailers/demo for Evil Within but comes across as anything but in this comic. So with the only similarity between the two being a letdown we have no place left to go but down.
WRITTEN BY: Ian Edginton
ART BY: Alex Sanchez
PUBLISHER: Titan Comics
PRICE: $2.99
RELEASE: October 15, 2014
Reviewed By: Torin Chambers
To be fair the book does start off promisingly, with a beautiful cover by Ben Templesmith but this is the only highlight. Our protagonists are Dana and Paul, both are mysteriously sucked into some strange world. Dana was out putting up missing person’s posters for her friend Kate who disappeared when she found herself lost and with no signal. She comes upon a diner/gas station and goes in to investigate. It’s devoid of life and maybe has plates with strange fleshy chunks on them. I say maybe because I really can’t tell and Dana doesn’t seem to mind them, so whatever.
Next she looks out the window and sees a shadowy figure then suddenly on the following page she’s outside the diner looking over her shoulder running yelling at it. I’m assuming it’s somehow supposed to be her closing the door as she goes back outside but I honestly can’t tell what is happening. The art isn’t ‘bad’ it’s just the lay outs are confusing as all hell.
This continues throughout the whole book, you’re constantly fighting with the layouts to understand what is actually happening. The general sense I’m getting form the world is that things are a bit off and weird stuff is constantly happening, but writing off these insanely difficult to follow sections as being deliberate would be giving the book way too much credit.
It’s a horror book but all we ever see are the protagonists successfully running away. They avoid literally every trap set for them and escape every monster pursuing them. There’s no sense of danger at all. Dozens of monsters are chasing them and Dana has the time to take a good few moments to stare at a ghost of her disappeared friend. Then later they escape the big bad guy from the cover by putting a rolling medical table in front of the door. A ROLLING medical table!?
If you’re excited for Evil Within this comic will kill that excitement. If you’ve already played Evil Within and are looking for more then please look elsewhere. I cannot even recommend this book to hardcore horror fans. Trust me and give The Evil Within #1 a hard pass.
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Torin Chambers is a rad dude from the nineties who does film stuff or something. Thomas the Tank Engine is his favorite transformer. Find him on Twitter @TorinsChambers
