While visiting his hospitalized father who suffers from Schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s, Brian Cohn hears something quite peculiar escape his fathers lips. He begins to babble about dead girls and repeats an address. Upon investigating the address, he finds a large pile of human bones, and a box of small dolls… made of flesh.
Upon such a discovery, Brian is conflicted, and heavily so. The stress becomes so much that it aggravates his condition, causing hallucinations and voices to plague him. He begins to stalk children’s playgrounds, looking for victims, as the voices commanding him to continue his fathers work grow louder. At first he seems to be able to keep these hallucinations at bay but things soon begin to spiral out of control.
Written by Joshua Hale Fialkov, Echoes is a chilling tale about a schizophrenic man discovering his father’s identity as a terrifying serial killer.
A girl from the very park he stalked seems to have gone missing, and Brian cannot remember if he had anything to do with it. Even more terrifying, days later, a package arrives with shocking contents. As even the police begin to question him, Brian tries to keep his web of lies intact, even when evidence pops up all around him.
Yet with a twist that honestly made me stop reading for a moment in order to process it’s implications, the entire story takes a turn for the worst.
Echoes’ art is done almost completely in black and white, an artistic choice that not only came about for it’s cost effectiveness, but also to deliver a classic horror experience. The overall aesthetic and art style definitely lends to the suspense and terror packed within the comics pages. Originally intended to somewhat capture the flavor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, this work definitely hits it’s mark.
Overall, Echoes has instantly become one of my favorite Graphic novels. The classic horror experience packed with suspense and terror while accompanied by a creeping sense of eeriness is lost in many other mediums.