The Horror of Small Towns Revealed in BOOM Studios' The Neighbors #1

When Janet and Oliver Gowdie move to a quaint mountain town, their daughter Casey becomes part of a horrific chain of events revealing that their neighbors are anything but what they seem. Soon an unsettling old woman fixates on Janet and Oliver’s other daughter, 2-year-old Isobel. It becomes clear that it’s impossible to know whom to trust … or who is even still human … in The Neighbors #1, written by Jude Ellison S. Doyle, drawn by Letizia Cadonici, colored by Alessandro Santoro, lettered by Becca Carey and published by BOOM Studios.

Some folks find small towns comforting. The ease of not having to reintroduce yourself is a blessing. Knowing that if your car breaks down, the next person who passes by will help you out is a safety net. Having a phone tree of folks ready to pitch in when disaster strikes is a relief.

But for me, it felt like a suffocating pressure. Everyone knew my business before I’d had a chance to share it myself. Eyes were constantly on me, ready to support or condemn my every move. The idea of stepping even one toe over a line of “acceptability” I couldn’t even see was terror inducing. It took me years to unpack myself from that paranoia.

In that vein, BOOM Studios’ The Neighbors felt horribly familiar, even if my first thought after finishing it was “What the hell did I just read!?” Writer Jude Ellison S. Doyle doesn’t make much clear in this first issue. It feels a little Pleasantville and a little Midsommar with a dash of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and completely like living in a small town.

“The truth of anything lies mostly beneath its surface,” goes its opening line, and we’ve barely scratched it. In a haunting opener by artist Letizia Cadonici and colorist Alessandro Santoro, a burnt body lies in the middle of a fairy ring, but as the men who found it prepare to move it, it turns into a bundle of grass and foliage. They didn’t know what they were looking at, and I’m not sure I did, either!

But we don’t have much time to linger on that scene before we move on to a little girl meeting a creepy hag in black kneeling in some mushrooms.

In due order, we’re introduced to our cast: Janet the divorced mom, Oliver the transdad, Casey the teenager and Isobel the toddler. They’re new to town and maybe feeling in over their heads. There are a few signs that indicate things aren’t quite adding up. The old lady has plenty of saucers of milk, but no sign of cats. Isobel says she wants to eat the kitties. Casey asks “who?” when Janet calls her by name in her room under a stained glass window of two women who vaguely look like the two different versions of Cinderella. Casey is clear she doesn’t intend to make this new place work and she’s not calling Oliver “Dad.”

As fond as the townspeople are of insisting they’re good neighbors, we get very little evidence of that. The diner is unwilling to accommodate Casey’s vegan diet. Later that night someone who says they’re Tom Shuck insists Casey’s mom asked them for help around the house. After a scream, Oliver comes running down to see Casey being carried away into the woods. Oliver almost catches up to rescue her as she tells him that “It’s underneath us” before she disappears. As he runs back to get help from Janet, Casey appears to have never left, sitting there on the floor, calling him “Dad.”

The Neighbors keeps its unnerving edge through every panel. Cadonici’s sharp lines and Santoro’s jarring colors are the ideal complement to Doyle’s writing. Even when neighbors aren’t in the panel, you still feel their eyes burrowing into this new family, waiting for them to step out of line. I was a teen very similar to Casey and often toyed with just how far I could push that line between being noticed and gossiped about for being different, and being reprimanded in the most backhanded ways for it.

Doyle captures that feeling here, leaving many threads unraveled in just enough of a way to leave the reader desperate for more and endearing us to the struggles Janet, Oliver and Casey are dealing with in their new town and in their identities. What else will be revealed below the surface? We’ll just have to add The Neighbors to our pull lists to find out.