Dylan Dog’s works range widely in contexts that go beyond human conception, traveling on parallel planes in astral substrates, in which the dream or rather the nightmare intertwines with the real, giving life to stories in which the protagonist and therefore the reader himself is involved in a journey through the mists of the subconscious.
This latest album “Terra Funesta” with script by Dario Sicchio and drawings by Riccardo Torti, involves the investigator of the nightmare in a search for a missing individual in the steelworks village of Glastonbury Grove, a town built around the factory for the employees , a sad and bare place.
Dylan is greeted upon his arrival by a thick fog that immediately recalls the film Silent Hill and the atmosphere, page after page, brings us back to that work.
An adventure in which the further you go, the more reality gets out of hand, in a kaleidoscopic succession of situations that seem to have no end, in which you can’t find the beginning of everything.
Who really is the missing worker? What is this mysterious black pit that has the ability to grant all wishes? In truth, Dylan himself will only be able to find part of the answers, remaining troubled as the reader himself is left with question marks, all in a context that disorientates but above all creates a certain disturbing sense.
A screenplay that is dramatic rather than horror, the whole story leaves a certain bitter sense in which there are no winners but only losers from a flat and gray life, where everything: past, present and future is always led by never-satisfied resentments that have soaked that land, giving life to this strange sentient form that is the Black Pit.
A very psychological reading, in certain situations even philosophical, in which Dylan’s assistant, Groucho, with his jokes becomes a fundamental element for seeing the concept of life from a less dramatic aspect but only so as not to be swallowed up and laughing remains the The wisest element to restore a fading reality.
A number that is not easy to read but the authors must be credited with having achieved something non-trivial.