I Walk With Monsters: The Complete Series

I Walk With Monsters #1-6

by Paul Cornell, Sally Cantirino (Illustrator)

In her past, the Important Man took away Jacey's brother. Now Jacey has David, who is sometimes a monster. Together, they hunt those who prey on the vulnerable. But the Important Man is still out there.

MONSTERS WALK BESIDE US ALL, AND SOMETIMES LURK WITHIN.

In Jacey’s past is the Important Man who took away her brother. Now Jacey has David, who sometimes transforms into a terrifying beast. Together, they’ve found a way to live--and to hunt, sniffing out men who prey on the vulnerable. But Jacey and David are about to run into the Important Man again. From Paul Cornell (Wolverine, Doctor Who, Elementary) and Sally Cantirino (Last Song, We Have To Go Back) comes a haunting story about the monsters that walk beside us all, and sometimes lurk within.

Collects the complete six-issue series.

Genres: Horror, Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Fantasy, Comic Book, Graphic Novels Comics

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published October 26, 2021

About the author

Paul Cornell is a British writer of science fiction and fantasy prose, comics and television. He's been Hugo Award-nominated for all three media, and has won the BSFA Award for his short fiction, and the Eagle Award for his comics. He's the writer of Saucer Country for Vertigo, Demon Knights for DC, and has written for the Doctor Who TV series. His new urban fantasy novel is London Falling, out from Tor on December 6th.

via Wikipedia @ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cor...

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 3 out of 5]

After escaping a nightmarish home life, teenage runaway Jacey meets shape-shifter David and the unlikely pair become wandering vigilantes, hunting down child molesters. Until one day they come across a political campaign, triggering traumatic memories in Jacey. Her brother Jake was abducted years ago by this very politician and never seen again. And now she will have her revenge…

I Walk With Monsters starts really well, gets shaky in the middle and eventually falls apart by the end. It’s still a decent comic though with a lot to recommend it.

The storytelling style is very clever and creative. Word balloons are blocked out by text boxes summarising the conversation, ie. “well-rehearsed charming details”, glossing over banal speech for the reader’s benefit, which is definitely appreciated, and it’s also fun to see this playful approach.

Names and faces are blurred out in red scratches to underline Jacey’s repressed memories. The politician looms much larger than he really is, his exaggerated size underlining Jacey’s fear of him and what he represents as well as showing her younger age when she first saw him and was a smaller person.

Panels turn to static when Jacey’s mind stops her from remembering horrible memories, and David’s keen sense of smell, when picking up on different people’s scents, is depicted as multi-coloured lines showing those people’s movements.

The first couple issues really draw you in and set the story up beautifully. And I liked that, later on, when Jacey confronts the politician, it doesn’t play out at all predictably.

Then things get less brilliant from the middle part on. David’s backstory and motivations are unconvincing and mystifying. How he became a shape-shifter is lazy and convenient, as is why he decides to pair up with Jacey. I don’t know why we were shown Jacey’s fascination with NASA as this has no bearing on anything, besides the obvious “escape” motif.

That final issue really irked me. How on earth did the pair of them escape from the woods after being surrounded by the authorities? It doesn’t seem possible that David would have time to escape, lure the politician back, and have that final fight, all without him or Jacey being picked up by a single cop! Also, why did the politician turn into a monster - was he always able to do that? And why did he need to go to Jacey in his monster form in the woods?

It doesn’t really make sense, and ending the story on a generic punch-em-up was a disappointing way to end things. I really thought that Paul Cornell had something more interesting in mind, particularly given how well he’d handled this unusual story up to that point, so to see it culminate in something so generic and dull felt very anticlimactic.

Sally Cantirino’s art is decent if unspectacular. David’s wolf form looked like something I’d seen from BPRD and quite a bit of this book’s art reminded me of James Harren’s work on that series, not least because of the wandering girl/monsters angle too.

I Walk With Monsters isn’t a bad horror story, and it’s certainly got some great moments in it, it just isn’t consistently good throughout. Still, it’s worth a look if you’re a horror comics fan.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was terrific. It's about a girl and a shapeshifter who seek out and kill serial killers. The art was just OK but I really liked what they did with the visual storytelling. Jacey has a lot of emotional scars and can't remember certain details like the face of the man who took her brother so his face is scribbled out in her memories. Memories start to fade out from panel to panel as she has forgotten details. Conversations are plastered over with short synopses instead of the actual conversation. I do feel let down by the ending turning into a big monster fight. I expected a little more after all the fantastic build up.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I Walk With Monsters starts strong and starts to fizzle out by the end. The art is fantastic, I love David's powers and how often times Catirino will use red lines and distorted panels to represent repressed memories. The series keeps many detailed deliberately vague or open-ended, leaving the reader to piece things together, but by the end of the series there is still an uncertainty about the plot that left me unfulfilled.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

A horror story about abuse and revenge. It's nicely told with great art and has some issues for you to think about, but it's ultimately too short to be more than an interesting, but shallow piece.

[Zedsdead · Rating 3 out of 5]

In the tradition of Hack/Slash, a woman (Jacey) and a monster (David) wander the country killing child-murderers.

Wonderfully innovative illustration choices. Word balloons are sometimes covered over with a brief description of the dialogue instead of the dialogue itself. "[father/daughter road trip bonding.] [well-rehearsed charming details.]" The monster's ability to smell child-killers is expressed as wandering color lines. The antagonist is drawn as a warped, menacing, looming giant, as he appears in a child's memories. Panels disappear in static when they brush up against a repressed memory. Excellent use of the medium to convey elements of the main character's experiences and fears.

After the five-star plot setup and resourceful illustration conventions are established, the story goes off the rails. I'm unsure whether the bad guy was a monster with supernatural abilities or just a human predator. I'm unsure what happened to the protagonist's father. I'm unsure why David joined up with Jacey or why she intermittently tried to stab him. Young Jacey looked exactly like adult Jacey and I was unsure what was flashback and what was "now".

What a waste of a powerful beginning.

Plot points:
--David in monster form dismembers a serial killer while Jacey sits calmly tied to a chair.
--Flashback: Jacey's father disappearing a drifter who helps out around the farm.
--Flashback: Jacey's father giving her brother to a predatory politician, whose name and face she represses.
--Jacey and David argue; he wants to stop killing, she wants to continue hunting predators.
--Flashback: David, as a weird black dog, attaches himself to Jacey for unclear reasons.
--Flashback: Jacey's father dies. Poison? Or heart attack?
--Jacey recognizes the politician on a billboard and they hatch a plan to kill him. Jacey gets in to see him somehow and it's implied that something important happens (????), then she's outside concocting a different plan with David. David goes in to the guy's office in dog form but scratches him instead of killing him. For some reason this makes the politician, now a David-style monster, seek out Jacey in the woods (????) where David can fight him.
--Some maybe-flashbacks in which Jacey tries to stab David for no apparent reason.
--Somehow the politicianmonster turns into a baby (?????) and they give him to social services.
--David has Jacey's DNA now (????????????) and this makes them both happy.

[Mac · Rating 1 out of 5]

Started out great, and I'm totally on board with the team dishing out violent justice to serial killers and child predators, but the story fell apart and had a lot of plot holes and things that weren't explained in the end. What happened to her brother? Why does it seem like they don't care if they got answers about that? I guess it was implied something really bad happened to him, won't write it here, but I felt like there was very little closure on that front. Very disappointed with the last 1/3 of this story.

[Kelly Lyn · Rating 2 out of 5]

jumped around and was inconsistent

[Michael J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This starts out with a novel premise, builds tension slowly then fizzles a bit, and concludes very rapidly with an unexpected and surprising ending.
I think this title could have done better if certain scenes were more clearly defined by the script. Cornell is a cerebral writer, and this story will certainly challenge readers as he keeps it vague or symbolic regarding the back-story. Each issue is interspersed with brief flashback scenes that give the tiniest of clues, but mainly serve to break the momentum of the story. What was called for was a bit more of emotional tension, which ebbs and flows instead of being the primary driver here.
If you can define the back-story of Jacey’s upbringing and the real intentions of the “Important Man” (a politician in the middle of a campaign) it begins to make more sense. I’m not pretending to fully get it, so I won’t be sharing my speculations.
I enjoyed the story, despite the challenges. On the plus side, the art is interesting and the coloring is effective, dark and atmospheric. I appreciate the story-telling device of showing blanks in the dialogue when Jacey struggles for a full memory of past scenes as well as partially obscured faces on campaign posters as she tries to fixate on the right image of the Important Man. THREE AND ONE-HALF STARS.

[Václav · Rating 3 out of 5]

(4 of 5 for this pretty urban fantasy, which steps on its own feet)
This is a very nice story about abuse and revenge. Where the fighting power is a supreme supernatural one. So the only issue-dealers are the main characters themselves. That's fine, that can work. The art is splendid, creative in jumping from "now" to "back then". The flashbacks slowly unveil the whole history, which is quite obvious from the first few ones but not yet spoken out. The author maybe try to slowly escalate the story by that, but for me, the effect was quite the opposite - two steps forward and one backwards. The simplicity of the story and the storytelling is quite high. If there wouldn't some "gore" scenes, I would even call it a "young adult story". So even if the story is "nice", I was not impressed a bit. It is good, nice, good looking but I felt the whole time, considering the topic, it's on a leash. The result is just a paranormal young adult thriller comic. Which just loses the impact of the topic in urban fantasy generic cliché.

[Daniel Kovacs Rezsuk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Loved the art, the bitter and haunting, yet strangely beautiful mood it sets up, and how it deals with themes of abuse, exploitation, and trauma. But the way Cornell handles the fantastic elements of the story is very strange and not very executed well in my opinion. He does this weird balancing act between pure symbolism and straightforward speculative fiction and excels in neither aspect. Maybe if it was a ten-issue series, he would have had more room to explore these details. And it's strange to describe dialogue as such, but it was just clunky. The way the main characters speak to each other is incredibly awkward, especially as they are planning out their actions, which becomes the most frustrating in the last issue. Other readers might not even register the problems I had, so I still recommend it, but be warned: it features extremely heavy subject matter, namely sexual abuse of minors, albeit in a proper, respectable manner and it's not exploitative at all.

[Ricardo Nuno Silva · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an intriguing graphic novel...
It delves in the protagonist traumatic past and the uncertainties of the present.
The art varies with some scenes very well drawn (for this style) but others feel a bit lacking and confusing.
As I read, it was a bit challenging to keep up with the story as it contains several "puzzling" flashbacks that left me struggling to understand some key details.
I think some scenes and character interactions leave out some details/explanations/reactions that made the story less clear and "enjoyable" (keep in mind this book contains several violent/gory scenes).

All in all I would have liked more if this story didn't have so many plot holes and missing details.

[Sadie Forsythe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found family is a beautiful thing, even when steeped in blood. I enjoyed this. In the beginning, I wasn't sure that I would. I liked the art right off the bat, but I spent almost a decade as a child abuse and neglect investigator. As such, I'm a little sensitive to content that touches on it. But, while what happened in the character's past was pretty clear, nothing was graphic enough to put me off.

It did take a little while to get around to explaining (in the vaguest sense) what David actually was. But I very much appreciated his and Jacey's relationship, and the happy ending made me smile.

[Damian Herde · Rating 3 out of 5]

A team up of a young girl who escaped abuse, and a man infected with a curse that enables him to shape change. They hunt serial killers, using her as bait and his beast form to save the day and kill them.
The girl is dealing with childhood trauma, while the man is trying to set moral boundaries for his actions.
I wasn’t satisfied with the ending, and the story is quite short, rushing to the conclusion. The artwork was fine and worked for the story, with some excellent moments. Some aspects of the book reminded me of ‘Monstress’, although I’d rate Monstress higher.

[Andrea · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jacey is searching for her brother. Years ago, an "important man" took her brother away from her and that was the last she had seen of both of them until recently.

Jacey and her friend, David, work together to find people who prey and hurt the weak and vulnerable. David is able to transform and control a terrifying blood lust monster. When Jacey recognizes the "important man", she and David decide to see if they can find her brother.

The artwork was amazing and brilliantly done. The story started off strong and interesting but then fell apart. The story would switch back and forth between the present and the past without any clear indication. The story was vague and confusing when explaining Jacey's past, David's ability, and why the "important man" was. I felt like the story needed to be fleshed out a bit more and not jump around from past and present so often.

[Alex Sarll]

A young woman who baits serial killers so that a man who's half-monster can devour them: it's far from the most original premise of Paul Cornell's career, but it's a solid foundation. And it's executed with some great ideas: the name that's somehow never quite seen or heard, the billboard of the man she's been hunting all this time where he seems to reach out of the picture to crush her. Or rather, it would have been if anyone else on the creative team were up to the job; as is it's simply difficult to follow, especially when timeframes shift, and prone to looking childish and daft on the page. About the only thing that really comes off is the monster, though even he feels distinctly sub-Monstress, and the lingering sense is frustration at the better comic this could have been, and a deepened suspicion that Vault is not a serious operation.

[Holly · Rating 4 out of 5]

A horror comic that deals with the real nightmares that can haunt us, and also literal monsters. Deals with some very dark material with tenderness. A found family story at its heart.

Features incredible color work by Dearbhla Kelly. They give dimension to dark woodlands, which is a real challenge. Cantirino’s line work is gorgeous, capturing Jacey’s range of emotions on every page.

My primary criticism is that the story feels rushed at the end. It dealt with the trauma of the main characters and felt like a slow burn book with uncomfortable horrors, until all of a sudden it rushed to the solution. The very ending is satisfying, but it definitely felt poorly paced in issues 5 & 6.

[Adam Rodgers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jacey is a runaway from an abusive upbringing who runs into drfter David, who has trauma of his own - he's a shapeshifting monster! Together they team up, channeling David's monstorous urges to hunt down serial killers and stop what happened to Jacey happening to anyone else.

The story starts off well enough, with a strong dynamic between the two leads. Cornell jumps back and forth across Jacey's childhood, juxtaposing traumatic events as the pair pursue various killers. We see her memories piece themselves together as things she has blocked out emerge. Catirino's artwork portrays this as static covered recollections with redacted faces, which is quite effective. However as the narrative progresses Cornell seems to lose focus and keen to bring things to a head. David's backstory is random and feels just thrown in as the pair home in on the architect of Jacey's trauma. The rushed ending weakens what is an engaging story, and comes off a bit mangled and confused, with inconsistent timelines and its difficult to tell what is meant to be actually happening and what is a figment of Jacey's psychological trauma. That said on the whole this is an appealing story that works on several levels. With a more detailed narrative this could have been a great story instead of merely a good one.

[Ανδρέας Μιχαηλίδης · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might have easily been a 4 or a 5. the art certainly warrants a 5, though it does get a bit sloppy towards the end.

But the story... It starts out great, giving us a couple of mysteries and a revenge plot, builds on them with a good pace and then... then it goes for some morally gray and ambiguous bullshit ending, without even giving an explanation to the two mysteries:

1. What are the creature symbiotes/spirits, and how do they actually work or propagate?

2. What was the deal with the circle of pedophiles/serial killers that the Big Bad belonged to and what, in fact, happened to Jacey's brother?

Not to mention, with all the horrific stuff in this story, you go with "no one is born bad"?! Darn shame for an otherwise great comic

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my usual style of thing but I quite enjoyed it. A couple of pages had a weird effect that I wasn't entirely sure if was a misprint or deliberate, seems more deliberate (the first one worked quite well, the second had me questioning it though), and I think one page used the wrong border style (they used different styles for present / flashback).

Art generally quite good though. Some nice stylistic flourishes. Good story, nice to have something wrapped up in 6 issues.

[Niche · Rating 2 out of 5]

A girl and a "werewolf" travel together hunting child predators. A central theme is how the characters wrestle with and direct their trauma and violent psychoses into something more "constructive." The storytelling is rather asynchronous with frequent flash backs and jumps forward and backward in time that left me feeling disjointed. The ending was also rather neat and tidy, which is unfortunate as the aforementioned theme of dealing with trauma/violence etc is rather magically resolved with a "they did this and got immediately better 'cuz closure" trope. There's a lot of implied child physical/sexual abuse, but nothing "onscreen," though there is a fair bit of blood and violence.

[Steph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the art style. Was super disappointed to realize this was a one off series, but enjoyed it nonetheless. The idea of being able to hunt down bad men isn’t new, but it was intriguing enough to keep me interested. Some of the plot was confusing or a little too vague, but overall, a decent horror graphic novel.

[Alaina]

i LOVED the opening and the art for this, as well as the design of the monsters. it does, however, feel TOO vague and even though i can see it's really trying to skirt detailing out the abuse subject it almost feels like it doesn't do the gravity of the subject justice, if that makes sense

i did like how some of the flashback scenes were rendered, however

i felt the ending was a little, idk, anti-climactic? jacey should've gone through with it, imo

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

About an abused girl and a man who was a domestic abuser that is able to turn his guilt into a giant monstrous dog (you heard me). Together they take out abusers on the trail of a man who took the girl's brother. Tries to take on serious themes but doesn't have the depth or imagination to really do it well.

[Nicole Geub · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this series even tho it was extremely dark and disturbing. Dealing with past trauma and a need for vengeance. My only thing was the whole story felt rushed and there wasn't a whole lot of cohesion to me for the text.

[Bexa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dark and disturbing artwork, excellent dialog, but a real lack of information. I have no idea what happened or what the point of it is. I wish it would have been a little more fleshed out. There's a lot of great potential, but it falls apart in the end.

[Tamara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was pretty good, my only real caveat is how it was difficult at times to differentiate between flashback and present. There was also a lack of information presented in this story that I'm still on the fence about whether I enjoyed or not. Overall, it made an interesting story.

[Whatcha Reading Heather? · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was missing a huge chunk of the middle of the plot to the point where I needed to flip back to see if I was missing something before getting to the ending. Great artwork and concept, but definitely needed a few more issues to really build a stronger story.

[Lio · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great and powerful story. Of the main characters, Jacey's plot and characterization was strong, fascinating, and complete; however, David's was convoluted and haphazard. Despite that, there were many standout moments and I felt they had good chemistry as a non-romantic, monster-killing duo.

The art was profound, and solidified all the best parts of this narrative.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

Weird and incomplete

[Abby Frye · Rating 4 out of 5]

The art was pretty and an interesting story. But I feel like I missed something somewhere. At the end I thought "What? I'm lost."