Aces of Weird: House (Josh Simmons, 2007)
How the wordless graphic novel by Josh Simmons finds both chills and beauty in liminal horror
Cover art by Josh Simmons
House? It’s more of a mansion, really. Maybe even a chateau, a palatial country estate fallen to ruin among the trees. It seems to grow an extra storey of broken windows every time you look up at it. Turn a corner and you’re walking down a row of boarded doorways, more like an abandoned street than a single residence.
This is no gothic cathedral with graves on the lawn and bats in every belfry. It’s just some curious shamble of New England brickwork, its dripping beams and gaping roofs barely held together by cobwebs and ivy. Less house of horrors, more oasis of intrigue.
You can’t see any roads around here. What was this place? How did it come to be huddled among these trees, like the wood itself sprang up to protect this place from civilisation?
Art by Josh Simmons
To all such questioning House (Fantagraphics, 2007) remains perfectly silent, a pervasive hush that is key to the eerie pleasures of this wordless 80-page black-and-white graphic novel by American writer/artist Josh Simmons. The book plays narrative Will-o’-the-wisp, keeping its secrets juuuuuust out of reach and thus luring readers into the blackest pits of Hell…
