Coffin_Hill_Vol_1_5_TextlessCOFFIN HILL: FOREST OF THE NIGHT
Caitlin Kittredge, Inaki Miranda
2014
Vertigo Comics
COFFIN HILL is the kind of comic that made me fall in love with vertigo comics. With some of my favorite titles wrapping up or already done it makes me happy to see a new series from vertigo that I can’t live without.
It’s a comic about a girl from a family of privilege who leaves whom and returns after becoming a hero cop. It’s a story about a family in a small town with secrets and a dark history. It’s a tale of misspent youth that leads to regrets later in life. It’s gothic, it’s creepy and it’s wonderful.
Here’s the paragraph Vertigo uses to draw readers in: “Following a night of sex, drugs and witchcraft in the woods, Eve Coffin wakes up naked, covered in blood and unable to remember how she got there. One friend is missing, one is in a mental ward–and one knows that Eve is responsible.”
Makes you want to know more, right?
Eve Coffin is of the New England Coffins, an old family with money and influence on the east coast. The roots go back to Salem, and yes the witches of Salem. Eve wants none of it. She is a trouble maker in her teens and she and her friends get into some trouble. Eventually she leaves and becomes a police officer in Boston. New to the job she nails a serial killer but gets injured in the process. She returns home to relax for a bit but discovers that something she did in her teens has awoken something bad and she needs to help stop it. Kids are going missing and something dark has returned.
A wonderful blend of mystery with horror and suspense with a little bit of a punk rock attitude. Kittredge uses some great characters to play out this gothic family drama. The art by Inaki Miranda is spot on perfect for the tale, moody and dark and a bit whimsical when it needs to be. I love the character of Eve as an adult, though as a teenager she was a pain in the ass. I think this first volume has just begun to peel the layers on this family and Eve in particular.  I can’t wait to see what happens next.
 
 
Caitlin-KittredgeCaitlin Kittredge is known for her Nocturne City series of adult novels, and for The Iron Codex, a series of young-adult books. You can follow her on Twitter at @caitkitt