You can only withhold information from the audience for so long before they start to become impatient. Cullen Bunn, the writer of Cold Spots and many other exceptional horror genre books on the market, was toeing this line while dancing around answers in issue three of Cold Spots. Those questions are answered in issue four, and now the heroes are left with choices to be made. That, to me, is the most interesting part of story. Yeah, a mystery is good, but if it gets in the way of characters being forced to make life-or-death decisions in the moment, then it’s not going to be nearly as exciting.

Dan has discovered his daughter Grace with her mother Alyssa on a secluded island in a big Victorian mansion. It’s pretty obvious from the get-go that Grace has some hidden talents; mainly communing with the dead, and with a power like that, there are going to be people that want to take advantage of it. Dan finds himself way in over his head, which is exactly where you want to find your hard-boiled, film noir-like character.

Co-creator and artist Mark Torres has created a haunting visual landscape and has given us ghosts that look and feel dangerous. They have the essence of having been around for ages. Torres’ color palette is dreamlike, melding purples, oranges, and greens; there’s a dissonance Torres is creating on the page, something that looks and feels unnatural. And freaking kudos to pages 22 and 23 specifically; I’ve been flipping back and forth between them on my PDF review file.
It’s excellent, creative visual storytelling.

This may not be one of the world-building epics that I love so much from Cullen Bunn, but as far as a solid piece of genre storytelling, it succeeds. One more issue left…

Creative Team: Cullen Bunn (creator, story), Mark Torres (creator, art, design), Simon Bowland (letters)
Publisher: Image Comics
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