Coffin Hill Vol. 1: Forest of the Night (Vertigo/DC)
Written by Caitlin Kittredge, drawn by Inaki Miranda
Collects Coffin Hill #1-7

It might not seem like it thanks to the lack of posts on the blog, but I’ve been fully into the Halloween spirit going back to September. The main reason I haven’t been writing about my horror reading and watching experiences here on the blog is two fold: first, time keeps slipping away each day and, two, I’m being paid to write about most of them elsewhere. However, I’m still trying to check out comics, books and movies for pleasure and not just for profit this October as well.

The first Coffin Hill volume was one such dalliance. I honestly can’t remember why I requested this book from the library aside from the fact that it’s a recent Vertigo book that sounded horror-y so I wanted to give it a read. I actually had a really good time with this comic that reads a bit like a well-layered television show.

Kittredge and Miranda have crafted a quality story about Eve Coffin, a hell-raising heiress who decided to be a cop in Boston before leaving the force and returning home to help find some kids lost in the woods. Oh, she’s also a witch from a long line of witches who accidentally released something evil in the woods around town a decade ago. That thing took one of her friends and turned the other into a vegetable, but still roams around looking for magically inclined people to eat.

There’s a whole lot going on in this book and I like that. We see scenes of Eve as a cop, hear that she accidentally stumbled upon a serial killer and also those scenes with her friends in the woods several years ago. There’s also a great deal of witch and supernatural mythology worked in to the point where I was satisfying by what I got in this first volume, but am also intrigued to see where it all goes in the future.

This might sound odd, but I’m most interested in finding out about a doll that we first see in an asylum and then again in a flashback involving Eve’s mom. It’s fairly subtle, but definitely there and now I can’t wait for my library to get the second volume in stock!