Echoes

Rather than going for gross-out revulsion, this collected miniseries effectively evokes horror as its protagonist’s comfortable life unravels. Brian Cohn’s schizophrenia is safely under control as long as he takes his meds, until something his father murmurs on his deathbed leads the young man to discover a chest full of lovingly stitched dolls made from the bodies of murdered little girls. If his father was a serial killer, does it mean that Brian has inherited that compulsion genetically along with his mental disorder? Is he responsible for the disappearance of the little girl who caught his eye after he found the dolls? Why is the friendly but quietly insinuating policeman hanging around? As Brian tries to hold himself together, his mind recoils, flails about, and stumbles forward; Ekedal’s art communicates this distress with pages of panels that sometimes flow together but sometimes look like non sequitur crazy quilts. The book’s extensive afterward combines rough pencil layouts, along with script excerpts and Fialkov’s commentary, to explain how Echoes successfully creates its mood of gathering dread. (Sept.)