Synopsis:
A gothic sword and sorcery epic graphic novel that’s Conan the Barbarian meets The Wizard of Oz. From Tom King and Bilquis Evely, the Eisner award-winning, bestselling creative team of Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.
Review:
By turns Conan The Barbarian, Turn of the Screw, and an Isekai adventure, Helen of Wyndhorn shouldn’t work but it does.
Oh, does it work.
Helen of Wyndhorn reunites the team of writer Tom King, artist Bilquis Evely, and colorist Matheus Lopes from Supergirl Woman of Tomorrow, an instant modern classic (and upcoming movie). Now available in a hardcover collected edition from Dark Horse, it’s a portal fantasy laid over with the paranoia and suspicion of Gothic fiction, all packed inside the tidy box of sword and sorcery. The degree of difficulty here is immense, but like Supergirl, which was essentially True Grit in space, King mashes genres like few others. Evely creates a dynamic partner who renders beautiful imaginary worlds with scrupulous and scrumptious detail. Her intricate work evokes Mobius, but it’s far more fluid.
Evely’s sublime, immaculate art immerses you in a dense, layered mystery that counts among King’s most complex narratives, playing with literary structures to create a story constantly questioning its own authenticity.
The story begins with a young man named Tom interviewing Lilith, an elderly woman who was once a governess in the 1930s. Lilith is right out of a Henry James novel, as is Wyndhorn Manor, the Gothic estate where she delivers a young, brash, and wayward Helen Cole to rehabilitate after her father’s passing.
Helen’s absent grandfather owns the mansion, and a good deal of the mystery early on, but the focus is on Helen. She drowns her grief in cigarettes and alcohol, though it’s clear that she and her father led something of a reckless, carefree life.
Her father was C.K. Cole, the author of a fantasy series called Othan The Conqueror, very much in the vein of Howard’s Conan works. He’s the void in the center of the series, utterly absent, but omnipresent.
The payoff for sword and sorcery fans is worth the wait as Helen’s grandfather finally returns home and saves her from a hideous monster he may have brought with him. The door swings open on the series to reveal her father’s stories may have been inspired by a real secondary world, and Helen’s grandfather is himself Othan. Maybe.
In the end, the truth doesn’t matter in Helen of Wyndhorn.
As the strange tale of Helen Cole and Wyndhorn Manor unfolds, passing through successive narrators and mediums, it becomes less about whether any of it actually happened. The value of the story is what matters to Lilith, Thomas, or the kids collecting comics based on Othan decades later who have no idea the history of the character.
The volume ends with what feels like the promise of more adventures in this universe, and it’s exciting, as for me the value is in what lies beyond. As much as Evely depicts of The Other World, much of it is only scarcely glimpsed, and often only related secondhand. Helen’s journey feels increasingly secondhand as well, as she transitions from the prodigal daughter to a somewhat standard hero archetype. She trains, she grows, she fights, she succeeds and fails. She follows in her father’s footsteps literally, it seems, fulfilling her grandfather’s need to heal his broken relationship with his son and her need to fill the void he left in her life.
The personal dynamics are compelling, especially the ones left largely to the imagination. The butler is an enigmatic figure, certainly from The Other World, but essentially a mystery. Lilith teeters, depending on your reading, between a maternal figure for Helen to a romantic one. Helen spends an enormous amount of time in Lilith’s bed, which Lilith is often determined to get her back to, and it feels a tad Carmilla at times, though the mood is so drenched in Gothic that overanalysis is almost demanded from the reader. Who these people really are, what their true connections might be, is like everything in the story entirely subjective.
Objectivity is not King’s interest. The story is, and the story sweeps you along, even as the art forces you to wallow on each glorious panel, making for a truly enjoyable reading experience. Highly recommended.
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