A Gut-Punch of Grit, Grief, and the Ghastly
Or, A Noir Nightmare Under New Management
You ever get that itch in your brain—the kind that doesn’t let you sleep because something’s off and your gut knows it before your eyes catch up? That’s Westron. It’s a mystery that peels itself back in layers, one twitching muscle fiber at a time.
Issue #1 kicks off with a something of a classic horror setup—two sisters vanish after heading into the woods for a party, and only one is found. Dead. Brutally.
The other? Missing. Maybe alive. Maybe worse.
Enter Jan Westron, a noir, trenchcoat-wearing kinda sleuth with an eidetic memory, a troubled past, and a chip on his shoulder big enough to cast more shade than Kendrick on Drake. The dude is Sherlock by way of Mignola, but without the Victorian starch—more blood under the fingernails and ghosts in the closet.
Told with chilling pace and illustrated in a stark, visceral style that’s a little raw and unrefined but that plays into the dread. Westron #1 doesn’t flinch. It drags you through trauma, memory, and mystery with all the grace of a shovel digging up bones. Flashbacks to Jan’s own haunted youth—his best friend falsely accused of a murder that still screams in his ears—ratchet the tension beyond the procedural. This isn’t just a whodunit. It’s a why-does-this-keep-happening‽‽
There’s no easy comfort here. No safe terrain. Just footprints in the forest and the promise of more monsters—real or otherwise.
This is page-turning horror-detective storytelling that smokes a cigarette while staring down the abyss. And I was pleasantly surprised.
In a rough parallel it reminded me of Anthony Stokes’s first outing with his Decay #1. The art isn’t great, but it does fit the story. The story is hauntingly primal and interesting. The worst part of this book, for me, was the lettering but the creative team let me know they’re working to have that redone by a more professional letterer. That said, for those keeping up we know where Stokes ended up so far—Kickstarters far exceeding their goals, five-figure campaigns, and every book just gets better in art, story, production, or all the above.
Will we see that with McBee and team…? Time will tell, but I’ll be watching, for sure.