Comic review: The October Faction #3- Waiting for Buffy to make a special guest appearance

Writer: Steve Niles
Artist: Damien Worm
Publisher: IDW 
Released: 10th December 2014


It’s the tone of this comic book that is probably stopping me from enjoying it as much as I want to. It’s that comedy, throw-away, nothing really matters and lets have a laugh at everything in a wishy-washy politically correct, feminist, liberal, oops, is it okay if I say that, kind of way.

If you’ve read any of my previous reviews you’ll know where I’m coming from here. I want my comic books to say something, and I don’t want to see this endless obsession with gender and sexuality politics being played out again and again, where men are weak and indecisive, bordering on silly and effeminate, whilst the women are strong independent ass kicking warriors. That used to be a powerful statement, but it’s the norm now. It’s boring; it’s the consensus, stop telling me the same stories over and over again. Give me something new that doesn’t remind of cultural Marxism and Frankfurt school theories from my college days. I learnt that stuff, but its theories, it's not reality, and it’s old theories now. It doesn’t represent the current state of affairs in a post 9/11, post NSA surveillance, post Iraq, post Edward Snowden, almost post Obama (fake hope and change) landscape.

What I’m trying to say, in a ham fisted way (my bloody computer re-started just after I finished this review, deleting everything, so this is me trying to re-capture the essence of that deleted version in an angry typing kind of way) is that the tone of the narrative in ‘The October Faction,’ is a bit too mainstream, a bit too safe, and a bit too familiar for my liking. It’s saying the same old stuff, and it’s not connecting with me, not doing anything more your average Marvel X-Men book would do. If you like that kind of adolescent stuff then you’ll like this. It’s okay, it’s warm and fluffy and giggly and the old television school-hall stereotypes are thrown in there as well.

In other words, it’s doing the same old Buffy the Vampire Slayer stuff quite well. If you like Buffy or the X-Men Academy, or Wolverine Academy, or anything else that deals with teenagers on the cusp of leaving school and trying to find meaning in their lives then you'll love it.  I just want something more than it has to offer. I’m old. School was a long, long time ago for me, and I don’t particularly want to remember anything about it either.

There are two standout narrative moments in this book, firstly a scene where a tormented bully is shown surrounded by resentful Ghosts of his guilty past, and the end panel with its shocking moment of extreme…. well, I won’t spoil it. These two moments are made all the more dramatic by the stunningly atmospheric artwork and colouring from artist Damien Worm. If you want modern Goth in comic book form, then Damien Worm is your man. He has a way with shading, with bleak, dark colouring, and his grim depictions of lean, desiccated horror are an absolute joy for anybody interested in all things that could loosely be collected up within the Gothic horror genre.

The October Faction is horror in an Adams family, or Munster’s tradition. The characters are not really threatening, they are silly and you know that whatever happens doesn’t really mean anything. This tone, of soft playfulness is broken with the final narrative development at the close of the book, but because that tone of unthreatening silliness has already been so firmly established I cannot get too excited about what happens next in a narrative context. Instead, I am just going to enjoy the wonderfully evocative art, the use of the colour blue was particularly memorable in this issue, and I’ll let the story wash over me. Get this book for the art. The story is a backdrop; the art is the main attraction in this one.

Rating: 7/10 (Rating for the art alone)