By Clyde Hall — Fear. As Thom, the main protagonist in The Closet #1 observes, it comes in classic forms. Fear you’re the weaker link in a relationship and not pulling your own weight. Fear of leaving youth behind and taking on the responsibilities as parent and partner. Fear that you won’t fulfill promises made. Fear that a brand new start in a brand new place won’t work any better than the last one.

Oh, yes. Also the classic fear of the literal monster in your closet. Thom’s dealing with those other fears while his 4-year old son, Jamie, is struggling with fear of the creature he claims has taken up residence in his bedroom closet. It’s a horror trope often played for laughs, but Jamie’s not amused. He’s afraid and his parents’ reassurances aren’t very.

If you’ve enjoyed James Tynion IV’s horror opus The Nice House on the Lake, you understand his mastery when it comes to charting complex personal relationships between characters. Especially when those characters are thrown into even more doubt and confusion by introducing fantastic horror elements. In that ongoing work, he has a very large cast. Here, things are kept to a much more personal focus, a story shared mainly between a family of three, gauging by the first issue.

Thom expresses many of the above listed fears to a sympathetic bartender in The Closet #1 and we understand why he’s racked by uncertainty. He’s expressing shortcomings while adding to his list of transgressions; he’s supposed to be getting packing tape for securing boxes his wife, Maggie, has prepared for their move to a new home. Instead, he’s tossing back a few cold ones instead of returning home with tape in tow.

We understand some of the familial frustration regarding Thom from details he provides to the barkeep. Their son, Jamie, is fearful of a monster in his closet and Thom promised to consult a child psychologist. Instead, he reasoned it was unnecessary because in their new location, Jamie won’t have a bedroom closet. Problem solved. Except that he didn’t do as he promised, and that Jamie’s problems may not end with lack of a closet.

We also witness Thom’s family life first hand upon his late and boozy return. This includes the Maggie’s frustration with her husband and a view of the closet creepiness from Jamie’s point of view. It’s a slow burn of household tensions and lingering things-in-the-shadows which may or may not be real.

Tynion is in top form presenting Thom and family as flawed and relatable human beings. Their grappling with life’s pressures builds dread because, if rigors of everyday relationship put them into such a quandary, how will they deal with supernatural interference? His correlation between the family conflicts and the appearance of the closet dweller keep us wondering: Is this an infernal, unclean thing feeding on the unrest and emotional turmoil, or is that turmoil a catalyst for what Jamie believes he’s seeing?

Gavin Fullerton’s art presents Thom’s world in its realistic, unglorified form. A pleasant enough yet unremarkable watering hole. An apartment bare, contents packed into generic pasteboards. A decorated closet door the only warm, creative remains of the life the family has had there. A creature of pitch and childhood dread, phobias regarding aliens, dark elves, or anything child-sized and yet somehow, menacingly, Other.

Chris O’Halloran keeps the colors in accordance with the unremarkable, from the subdued lighting of the bar to the bare-walled, lampless interior illumination of the apartment. He punctures the envelope of normalcy at the same time practical reality is challenged, and with nothing more remarkable than a bare overhead light bulb, slowly dimming.

Despite Thom and Maggie’s agitations, their disagreements are largely kept quiet, owing to Jamie’s presence. Not less stressful for anyone involved but expressed in frustrated and accusing whispers rather than screams or shouts. Disappointment and failure are often accompanied by restless, uncomfortable silences, not outbursts. Letterer Tom Napolitano understands this.

The Closet is described as an existential familial horror story in the solicit copy, and one can’t help thinking the four givens of that philosophy will make an appearance. There’s focus in issue #1 on meaning as it applies to Thom and his family members. The nature and meaning of their fears, those contained in a haunted closet, and those apart. If that’s the case, can isolation, freedom, and even death be far behind?

Overall: The Closet #1 serves up subtle unrest, the sort experienced when viewing old closed-circuit footage and gaining intimate insights strangers weren’t meant to see. Nothing sordid, nothing unseemly. Except for that disturbing, indistinct shadow staring back at us from the depths of a murky closet. 8.5/10

The Closet #1

The Closet #1
Writer: James Tynion IV
Artist: Gavin Fullerton
Colors: Chris O’Halloran
Letterer: Tom Napolitano
Publisher: Image Comics/Tiny Onion Studios
Price: $3.99
A tale of existential familial horror by JAMES TYNION IV (THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH, RAZORBLADES) and GAVIN FULLERTON (BOG BODIES, Bags). Thom is moving cross-country with his family and dragging the past along with them. His son, Jamie, is seeing monsters in the bedroom closet and will not let them go.
Release Date: June 1, 2022
Buy It Here: The Closet #1 Trade / Digital

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Clyde Hall (He/Him) lives in Southern Illinois. He’s an Elder Statesman of Geekery, an indie author, a comics fan/reviewer, and a contributing writer at Stormgate Press. He’s on twitter at: (@CJHall1984)