Review: Memoir #5

Issue 5 of Ben McCool and Nikki Cook’s thrilling horror has been a long time coming, but my goodness, it was worth the wait. Memoir, published by Image Comics, has been hands down my favourite miniseries of the year. It’s creepy, unpredictable and compelling. As each issue unfolds, we’re taken further and further into the mystery of Lowesville, a small community that suffered town-wide memory loss. This issue is the creepiest one so far.
Issue 5 offers more insight into ‘the shadows’, although they still remain an enigma, and Trent meets the mysterious ‘Mary-Ann’. The pacing of the issue is superb - as a reader, you’re always on edge.
I felt slightly paranoid throughout the whole issue, knowing that something bad was going to happen. Even when things slow down a little, there’s this real sense of lingering menace, a feeling kind of like thinking you’re being watched. As we get closer and closer to finding out the dark secrets of Lowesville and its residents, that sense of looming menace gets closer, like storm clouds about to burst.
Nikki Cook provides clean lines and deep grey tones, with composition that enhances the menacing tone provided by McCool. The sequence between Trent and Mary-Ann is particularly poignant, as is the final page. McCool describes the series as Twin Peaks meets the Twilight Zone. I describe it as pure awesome sauce. If you’re into creepy horror like M Knight Shyamalin’s film ‘Signs’, then you should be reading Memoir.