Injection #13 - Image Comics

INJECTION No. 13, June 2017

Arguably focusing far more upon the mystic nature of primeval manifestations and the sinister machinations of modern day magicians than its more recently printed publications, Warren Ellis’ script for Issue Thirteen of “Injection” must have both encouraged and delighted this comic’s increasingly dwindling audience with its simply told tale of terror concerning Brigid Roth’s patient excavation of the Cold House. Certainly, the twenty-page periodical’s plot seemed far more closely aligned to the Essex-born author’s original vision for the on-going series' content to be “high-concept science fiction fused with elements of magic and mythology”, than its story-arc’s previous instalments had been.

Foremost of these improvements has to be Professor Derwa Kernick’s creepy examination of the ancient site’s archaeological finds, and her menacing dialogue with Roth involving the early Christians in the area being sacrificed as part of a “cultural exchange” with mischievious pixies. Indeed, one doesn’t need to be the computer geek’s Stanley-knife carrying female chauffeur Emma Louise Beaufort to know that the elderly bespectacled expert is lying, and clearly knows how “the mechanism of the cell” operates; “She already cited local stories and poetry. Poetry was how oral history survived -- put into rhyme to make it easier to remember. She knows.”

Equally as captivating is the Cold House’s reaction to Force Projection International performing “a series of small current tests across the mineral pan.” Initially innocent, and simply part of a checklist in order for the scientists to get paid, this experiment shows just how gruesomely fatal Brigid’s miscalculations can be by causing one of the nearby FPI assets to be unceremoniously torn to shreds by giant claws composed of blindingly white energy…

Gratuitously drawn by Declan Shalvey, without a single syllable being uttered, this ten-panel soundless sequence genuinely appears to be pencilled in order to replicate the stuff of nightmares, as heavily-whiskered Bob Gristle has his skin ripped from his face, his tongue gouged out of a mutilated mouth, and his entrails pulled from the man’s still pain-wracked, breathing torso. In fact, the entire scene, which ends with all the corpse’s meat being somehow dragged through the earth by the savage spriggans, appears to have been a disconcerting labour of love for the Irish comic book artist.

The regular cover art of "INJECTION" No. 13 by Declan Shalvey