I’m buzzing. I’m sitting here, in mostly dark, my laptop on my lap and the PDF file for Gideon Falls #10 open, and my entire body is buzzing. If a writer were to ever find a muse, it would have to be Jeff Lemire finding Andrea Sorrentino and Dave Stewart.

Gideon Falls is about a mystical black barn. Terrible things come from the barn, including the smiling man – a man made of shadows and red, whose rows of teeth seem to never end, and whose smile is so full of enigmatic malice you pray to never run into him. And yet two pairs of people are seeking this barn out. Their journeys are marked with psychological trauma; however, it’s not just the stories, though.  In reading it, Gideon Falls feels less like a story and more like the book of the Necronomicon – something you should read only at your own peril. It feels like this because of the way Sorrentino has laid the visuals out. Reality wraps, and spins, and twists, and is pressed together and stretched to ad infinitum. It’s like they’ve recreated the first panic attack I ever had in the form of a comic book. That’s high praise. Sorrentino’s work here is nothing short of brilliant. And Dave Stewart has found it in himself to put colors on the page that I didn’t know existed.
I’ve never had color extract so many emotions and tensions from me. It stirs the senses.

The closest thing I can think of is David Lynch’s transformative world of Twin Peaks the Return and Twin Peaks. When you watch, you somehow become different; you don’t feel like you’re sitting in the same room you were only moments ago. Much like that, Gideon Falls reaches into your subconscious and flips a switch.

Issue ten gives us some back story and pushes the main characters into another phase of this series. I like to consider myself clever, but I have absolutely no idea where this is going to go next. I’m freaking thrilled.

Gideon Falls would be in my top 5 comic books from 2018 if I had a list.

Creative Team: Jeff Lemire (story), Andrea Sorrentino (art), Dave Stewart (colors), Steve Wands (letters), Will Dennis (editor)
Publisher: Image Comics
Click here to purchase.