Leave On The Light #1 - Antarctic Press Comics

LEAVE ON THE LIGHT No. 1, April 2019

Brought vividly to life via “Kickstarter” in January 2019 courtesy of 130 backers pledging $2,974, this twenty-page ‘fright-fest’ most assuredly delivers on creator Bradley Golden’s intention to provide its audience with a truly disturbing narrative as “an undead serial killer” graphically begins claiming the lives of a small township’s children “using the city's Electrical system.” True, Issue One of “Leave On The Light” starts straightforwardly enough with little infant Kassey Maxey crossly disagreeing with her mother that she still needs to go to her new daycare in the morning, but just as soon as the bedroom light is switched off and the heavy rain outside starts pattering against the girl’s windows, it’s clear something enthrallingly gruesome is about to take place.

Impressively however, what then follows is far from a simple ‘slasher flick’ as collaborative writers George Aguilar and the aforementioned Golden rapidly start to establish that their ghoulish-faced knife-wielding antagonist isn’t just yet another in a long line of unoriginal homicidal maniacs who have recently escaped from some psychiatrist’s padded cell. Indeed, even before Detective Marshall arrives at the grisly murder scene and watches the crime scene investigators photographing Claire’s severed head, there is a strong suggestion that something innovatively supernatural is taking place within this publication.  

Determined to reveal the identity of a supposed copycat killer, the pair’s penmanship successfully provides an excellent hook by permitting the reader to soon realise that the haunted policeman is wrong in his assumption that a dead man can’t return to continue his crimes. This disclosure genuinely imbues this book’s harrowing closing scene with even more menace, as it rapidly becomes clear that the deranged nightmarish figure stalking Gary’s partner when she stops off at a late night roadside garage isn’t a mere figment of her imagination and that Sarah is probably about to come to a gratuitously violent end; “Strange, I been feeling this chill on the back of my neck the whole ride here.”

Adding to this comic’s palpable fear factor are Alex Sarabia’s breakdowns, which go an incredible way to help show the sheer sadistic delight Thomas Butcher Lassey takes in both shadowing and subsequently butchering his prey. The decision to only employ colour when the creative team utilise sound effects additionally proves a ‘master stroke’ in generating a seriously disturbing ‘film noir’ atmosphere to the story-telling’s grim premise.

First published on the "Dawn of Comics" website.'

Script: Bradley Golden & George Aguilar, and Pencils: Alex Sarabia