There’s an awe that comes with stepping into a great house. The history of the location is emblazoned on the walls and drips from the century-old chandeliers—as many of them are now museums, we even get to learn a bit about who made those walls and chandeliers. But that history leaves us at arm’s length from the house. We’ll never live in a place like that. The people who do, though, are privy to experiencing the great house from the inside, along with all of the secrets that entails. And it’s in those secrets that we have the first issue of Helen of Wyndhorn by Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Matheus Lopes, and Clayton Cowles. 

Lilith Appleton has been hired as governess to Helen Cole, whose father, the fantasy writer C.K. Cole, has died rather suddenly. Helen and her father were more used to sneaking on trains and living on the road than dealing with governesses and manners. But, since her father’s death, Helen has been summoned to her grandfather’s home, the great house Wyndhorn. To Helen, though, her father was the greatest writer to ever live and she wishes to immortalize him as such before the pair travel to Wyndhorn with an appropriate gravestone in the town Lilith finds her. Once they finally make it Wyndhorn, we start to notice something amiss—with only a single butler and a pair of cooks in the kitchen, how is the home spotless? Why has Helen’s grandfather left for the month? And what does Helen keep seeing out of her window every night?

What’s most striking throughout this first issue, though, is Evely’s line work. Striking a balance between the real and the unreal, the art here feels like a puzzle slowly unfolding before us. The framing device of this issue is an interview with Lilith decades after the events of the main story and utilizing that to buttress the more absurd aspects of the story gives a contrast to help ground us. As unreal as the monster chasing Helen is, it’s made more real by the fact that Lilith is sitting in her kitchen later—we’re made to accept what is happening because of that mundane moment. And this is where Evely’s lines sing even more. Effortlessly shifting from the grotesque to an old woman’s kitchen makes us pay attention while the smoothness of the lines almost makes us doubt what we’ve seen just a page prior. 

Helen of Wyndhorn does what every first issue needs to do—it hooks us so completely that we need to see how the second issue will unfold. It’s a testament to King, Evely, Lopes, and Cowles skills as creators in the medium that the issue flows so effortlessly that you forget you’re only seeing the first part of a longer narrative. It’s the kind of comic that can get someone excited to talk about comics as you only want to keep diving further into what it has to offer. 

Get excited. Get great.

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