Back in April, I looked at Jude Ellison S. Doyle, Letizia Cadonici, Alessandro Santoro, and Becca Carey’s The Neighbors. Back then, I applauded the story’s dread and the unnerving feeling of being other in an isolated town. Not simply othered for being outsiders from the city, but othered for being an interracial family, for Oliver being a trans man, for simply being not what the rest of the banal town. But, of course, the rest of the town is more insidious than the normal distrustful townie due to the rituals and body-swapping. Even more so as the series came to its conclusion just a few months ago and we were able to witness the true depths the dread could go.

The Neighbors centers on the Gowdie family and their new home. But nothing about where they live now was supposed to be this way. This was a new start after the panic of living in the city as a new family and the worry of the violence that could befall Oliver and their new daughter, Isobel. But the town is more insidious as the ground can swallow a person whole and replace them with something uncanny. The thing looks like Casey, Janet’s daughter from a previous marriage, but its mannerisms are odd and it keeps breaking things around the house. And it’s trying to drive the family apart—all the better to pick off and replace them one by one.

A disquiet can come with moving into a new neighborhood—the newness of everything maintains a sheen of unease before falling back into regular routines, but there’s always that malingering menace when your neighbor gives you an odd look or doesn’t even acknowledge you at all. What The Neighbors does here is work in both of those spaces—the family here is simultaneously watched constantly while also feeling completely isolated. The narrative balancing act here is delicate, but it works wonderfully as Doyle, Cadonici, Santoro, and Carey imbue each issue and panel with the space and color to never quite feel like things are stable. More than anything, the team gives us snapshots that border on the disjointed, but work instead to keep us from ever feeling steady as we make our way through the narrative. A flashback, a zoom-in, a couple panels than linger on a moment for just a beat too long—they all work to heighten the uneasiness that feeds right into that continual dread.

The paranoia in The Neighbors pulses on every page. Nothing ever feels completely safe. Even moments of shared intimacy can topple into tension before we can exhale. It never relies too heavily on any kind of shock to keep its dread going—it lets itself take root in your mind before the terror fully blooms. 

Get excited. Get neighborly. 

Drew Barth (Episode 331, 485, & 510) resides in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida.