Review time! with ‘After the Rain’

“I’ve felt the coldness of my winter … I never thought it would ever go”

Yes, those are disembodied hands braiding that woman’s hair on the cover of After the Rain, a comic written by John Jennings, drawn by David Brame, lettered by Damian Duffy, and based on a short story by Nnedi Okorafor. It’s published by Abrams ComicArts under their new imprint called Megascope. Fret not, the hands are relevant!

This is an interesting, if not great, book. I haven’t read the original short story, so I don’t know how much is changed, but maybe the story works a bit better. I don’t know, I can only judge this on what’s in front of me, and while it’s a pretty good book, it’s not quite great. A Chicago cop named Chioma is visiting her relatives in Nigeria and one night, a horribly wounded boy shows up at her door … during a rainstorm!!!! Apparently she is now cursed, and weird stuff starts to happen to her. She starts having visions that mostly terrorize her, and eventually evil spirits – we think – cut her hands off (hence the hands on the cover). Her grandmother and grand-aunt seem to know what’s going on, but it’s also unclear if they’re evil because they don’t do a lot to help her. She kind of has to go on a vision quest, and so she does, moving through the history of the area, seeing all sorts of creatures and spirits from her past, until she comes out the other side. I won’t tell you what happens to her, but it’s clear that she has to reconcile her past with her present, her life as an American with her heritage as a Nigerian. That part of the book is interesting.

The problem with the book, however, is that nothing much happens. Plot-wise, a lot is left obscure, and while that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it is in this case, as the story could use more depth. I’m always annoyed when people in stories who claim to actually like each other don’t talk to each other, and Chioma’s grandmother and grand-aunt are complete jerks to her, because they let her deal with this by herself. I mean, she probably wouldn’t believe them if they told her she was cursed, but they tell her nothing and are even somewhat cruel to her, implying that it’s her fault for being cursed because she opened the door in the first place. I mean, why the hell wouldn’t she? I guess if they’re hurt and far from home and they knock on a door for help, the people inside should ignore them, too. Sheesh. I get that keeping things vague can work, but we really don’t find out all that much about what happened, even though it’s implied that Chioma’s relatives do know quite a bit. There’s also an emotional root to Chioma’s issues, but it’s introduced way too late and so doesn’t really have much effect on her travails, plus it doesn’t seem as dire as the story makes it out to be. Yes, it’s an emotional moment, but it doesn’t seem like it would haunt Chioma as much as it’s implied it does. It makes the ending make sense, so I get why it’s in there, but it still feels disjointed from the rest of the book. There’s a lot of interesting stuff in the book, but it doesn’t quite hold together as well as it could.

The problems do not extend to Brame’s art, which is very keen. He has a cartoonish style, which serves him well when the story gets a bit weird. He gives us a good sense of the town where Chioma is staying, even though she doesn’t spend much time in civilization – we get just enough to understand how close to the riot of nature the people live, which makes the “crossing-over” of spirits work a bit more. Brame does a terrific job using the entire page, as he lays panels in the middle and creates weird shadows and creatures lurking in the background, showing Chioma’s state of mind. As she becomes more unhinged, his panels start to slide across the page, disorienting the reader as she becomes more disoriented. Finally, the spirits burst through the panel borders into the “real world” of the comic, freaking Chioma out even more. Brane is excellent at the beautiful stuff, too, as Chioma begins to understand that the spirits – at least not all of them – might not be purely evil. He uses double-page spreads well to immerse us in what Chioma is going through, and while the creatures are generally dark, the coloring is vibrant, contrasting nicely with the brief flashback Chioma has to a drab and dull Chicago. It’s still a horror book, to a large extent, so Brane has to do monsters, but because it’s in a culture unusual to many of us, he’s able to make it different enough that it’s far more intriguing than a regular horror book might be. There’s a wonderful sensuality to his work, which aids both in making the setting more alive and also a bit more foreboding.

This is an enjoyable, fascinating, creepy, and hopeful book that, even though it doesn’t quite cohere, is worth a look. In the front, we discover that Megascope, the imprint, is dedicated to publishing works of speculative fiction by and about people of color, which is a fine thing. If we get more like this comic, I’m sure I’ll be reading them! And, as always, if you’re interested in doing a little shopping, use the link below!

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆ ☆