Writer: John Lees / Penciller: Ryan Lee / Colour Artist: Doug Garbark / Letterer: Shawn Lee / Collects: Mountainhead #1 - #5 / IDW Publishing.
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13th January 2021
The Pitch: Don't slow down. Don't get comfortable. Don't think you're safe. Be ready to run. Something sinister lurks in this graphic novel that is part psychological thriller and part horror story. Abraham Stubbs and his father Noah roam America in a nomadic existence. Convinced they are being pursued by sinister government forces, Noah has them living off the grid, burgling houses to survive. Elsewhere, on Mount Rector, the lone survivor of a climbing expedition staggers homeward, covered in blood. Both are on an inevitable collision course with the picturesque Canadian resort town of Braeriach. Massive storm clouds are brewing. The animals are running. Something else is on its way.
There's darkness on the edge of town...
Part of the dark delights available to us in modern horror is the influences the terror takes from past stories to give itself a new, unique form. Some of these influences are now standards. A familiar baseline, a beat you're certain to know and hum along to. There's the weird otherness and outer world forms of Lovecraft. Then there are his descendants, like John Carpenter and his relentless, synth-thrum of distrust and anti-authoritarianism. There's the rural horror stylisation of The Wicker Man and Texas Chainsaw... The list goes on. You can tick them off. Does this checklist of grim bleed us of pleasures though? Are we robbed of originality? Sometimes, sure. But when masters like John Lees and Ryan Lee arrive in their beat-up pick-up truck, the back full of axes, shotguns and weird chemicals... when they start hacking away at the creatures our horror fiction has become, well... then you know you're in for new fears, new monsters... new pleasures.
THE KIDS IN MOUNTAINHEAD ARE A LONELY DUO. STRANGERS TO EACH OTHER AND THEIR ADOPTED PARENTS
In Mountainhead, Lees and Lee – wait. Let's cut the confusion. I'm going informal. John and Ryan. John and Ryan, start adding new influences here. In addition to the fiction-fuelled, transgressive horrors of bodily transformation, they bring the very real horrors of child abduction and the innate feelings of dislocation and loneliness that adopted children might feel. The kids in Mountainhead are striking figures, more communicative that the adults, their feelings simmering near the surface. Too hot to put a gentle hand to and soothe lest you get burned. They are (rightly) the heart of the story. Which brings up another influence: The Spielbergian kids’ action movie. Only here, the children are not a gang or a group or a team but a lonely duo. Strangers to not only each other but to their own parents and to their home town. In that town, John and Ryan create a horror that renders flesh and minds to its own purpose. Mountainhead is bloody, vomitus, full of teeth, eyes and other extremities. The gears shift from the internalised thriller landscape of kidnapped children to the externalised, outrageous horror landscape in some shocking turns. It's something horrible, done beautifully.
Lee's writing is feverishly intelligent. You feel the immediacy and excitement of his 'And then...' moments. The joy of the page-turn reveals and the infectious nature of ideas, spilling over the pages. He wants to lure you in, like Pennywise under the storm-drain in Stephen King's IT. His work is like a rumour that expands to howling wind, not deafening you but instead carrying a message that horror comics are about to change. Ryan's art is exaggerated, spidery. The eyes of his characters are haunted. The physicality and dynamic movement of his art make his panels exciting and scary. I'd love to see him on a weird sci-fi book or yeah, more horror. He should always – always – encouraged to run riot. Doug Garbark's colours feed off the same influences as John's writing. As creatures burst forth, they bloom with colours right out of John Carpenter's 'The Thing'. Colours out of space. Shawn Lee's letters give you the sounds of scared children, the bass of adults whose minds are slipping and transforming. Their tone sinister, regardless of what they say. Mountainhead is a masterful piece of work, one that deserves to be spoken about in respectful tones. It's a comic that will live on, beyond its single issues and trade, influencing others.
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