By Zack Quaintance — Since reading the first issue of Coffin Bound over the summer, one of the scenes in the book has really lingered in my mind. It depicts what is, essentially, a literal strip club, in which a dancer removes clothes...and then begins to remove skin. Eventually, the dancer in the scene is stripped down to the insides, raising a powerful visual metaphor about the nature of objectification.

Now that Coffin Bound #4 has concluded this comic’s first volume (doing so with an over-sized issue), I’m happy to say that scenes like the literal strip club have proven to be the rule for this comic, rather than the exception. Yes, Coffin Bound is a singular comic, rich with visual metaphors that are all loosely tied to a plot that starts out as nihilistic as its name implies and doesn’t get (much) sunnier from there. In this comic, visual touches such as eyes and skeletons and bird cages are littered throughout, serving dual purposes as functions within the plot and aesthetic poetry to really drive home the ideas in this comic.

Coffin Bound is the type of book in which readers are best advised to let the ideas and the scenes on the pages wash over them. Instead of searching for answers about what every last image means, or about what the creators meant by this twist or that bending or reality, this is a book that raises more questions, questions about how we live, why we want we want, and what will ultimately make us happy in the end. It’s powerful and poignant stuff, molded into a story in unique fashion.

It’s also the type of book that makes me excited for what comes next. I would, of course, welcome a second volume of Coffin Bound, which is implied by the last page wrapping up with End of Volume One, rather than simply finishing with The End. Moreover, though, I’m excited to see what’s coming from all of these creators next. Writer Dan Watters has had an impressive couple of years, starting with Limbo in 2016, evolving to Deep Roots soon after, and finally landing him as the steward of Lucifer in the Neil Gaiman-curated line of revitalized Sandman Universe books at DC Comics. This type of story, however, indicates to me that Watters remains interested in creator-owned oddities that push the boundaries of the medium, which is a very good thing indeed.

Artist Dani is also headed for some DC work in the near future. Dani is drawing Low Low Woods, which is a six-part mini-series within the Hill House line of horror comics. That book, which is penned by Carmen Maria Machado, is due out in December, and, if you ask me, has moved into place as the sleeper breakout hit for that entire line of comics. After seeing Dani’s work in Coffin Bound #4, I’m even more excited for the ethereal fright imagery bound to appear in this title.

Basically, while the futures of the characters in Coffin Bound are poetically fraught, this comic indicates that the futures for its creators are the opposite, bright and exciting, indeed.

Overall: Very little about Coffin Bound has been literal or straight-forward, and this finale issue (for now) is no exception. A visually-poetic abstraction of a finale, this issue is sure to satisfy readers of this comic. 9.0/10

Coffin Bound #4
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Dani
Colorist: Brad Simpson
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $4.99

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.