Novel Ideas By Bill Love

Sight Unseen
Image Comics

Writer- Robert Tinnell ... Artist- Bo Hampton
Horror | HC $19.99 | ISBN #1-58240-596-4 | 138 pgs.

Sometimes you find a high concept that is just cool and compelling but the execution is lacking. You know, a great idea but the story just doesn’t deliver. That is so not the case in Sight Unseen.

Artist Bo Hampton had an idea for a ghost story based on sound scientific principle. Canines have the natural ability to see and hear into portions of the electromagnetic spectrum beyond the ability of humans. If human beings could tap into that same ability, what might we be able to sense? He took that basic concept to horror master Robert Tinnell. Together they deliver a suspense story that lives up to the high concept.

Frank Byron is a blind neuro-physicist. His experiments based on the visual and auditory processing of his seeing-eye dog have given him the ability to see again, but only to see spirits. This man of science has now found himself thrust into a world of unspeakable evil.

Cinematic is a term much overused when reviewing comics but I have never read a graphic novel that was closer to a film on paper. Perhaps the fact that Bob Tinnell is a screenwriter and director has something to do with this. Listen closely and you can hear the mood music during the perfectly paced wordless sequences. If Tinnell is the director, he could not have found a better cinematographer than Bo Hampton. Bo is known for his fully painted work on projects such as Batman: Castle of the Bat for DC. His work in Sight Unseen is all mood and atmosphere. He creates a constant sense of unease with what he shows and what he doesn’t show. Together writer and artist capture the sense of movement and timing that is so hard to put on the printed page. This is horror in the classic Hitchcock mold. It depends on the skill of the talent involved to create chills in the mind of the reader, not on an overabundance of gore on the page.

Sight Unseen combines classic scary movie imagery, scientific plausibility and engaging characters to create one the best suspense films you will ever read. This original graphic novel receives my highest possible recommendation. Just don’t read it with the lights out. You don’t know what you might see.

Novel Ideas - Bill Love, Senior Editor of Graphic Novel Scene Magazine, looks at comics that never saw a staple. Many creators bypass the magazine format and publish original graphic novels. Novel Ideas spotlights the best, both old and new.