Collaborative comics where the entire creative team are perfectly and harmoniously in synch are probably far rarer than we could care to admit. Currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, horror comic The Berg is brought to readers by writers Sarah Peploe and Fraser Campbell, artist Gavin Mitchell, letterer Colin Bell, and with colour assists by JP Jordan. It’s a moody, tense and character-driven piece of storytelling wherein every narrative tool of the form plays a vital role in intensifying the oppressive darkness that sits at the story’s heart.
Set in London, The Berg follows a small team of sanitation engineers as they set out to clear the sewers of the biggest fatberg – a combination of congealed fat and non-biodegradable waste – the city has ever known. As the group approach the monstrous deposit, though, they begin to experience strange phenomena. Visual and aural hallucinations abound, their tech fails, and there’s an all-pervading sense of the ominous. Deep under the streets something malevolent, brooding and sentient seems to be waiting for them…
The Berg may be a horror comic but it’s as much a character study as an exercise in gruesome terror. While the characters travel towards their goal their internal conflicts, personal relationships and even familial failings become apparent, as the claustrophobic atmosphere and the forces manipulating them come to the fore. Peploe and Campbell have only a 40-plus page count to economically ensure our connection to a relatively large cast but they pull it off with strong characterisation and dialogue that feels natural and never forced or expositional.
Mitchell’s art is a revelation. The reader feels almost as enclosed and confined as the characters, and their expressive body language as the terror ramps up is a perfect complement to the story’s careful pacing. Colour, too, is integral to our perception of events. Its careful application brings us into the dank filth of the sewers while also giving the realisation of the fatberg itself an eerily entrancing quality in its incongruous allure. It’s actually difficult to discuss what a fine job Colin Bell does on the lettering front because describing some of the choices he makes and how effective they are gives away latter plot twists. But it’s absolutely vital to the book’s success.
Self-contained comics are a relative rarity these days but The Berg is a reminder of their worth as discrete, escapist, genre vehicles. The Berg still has three weeks to run on its Kickstarter campaign and has already doubled its target. That, of course, is a most high recommendation in itself.
Sarah Peploe & Fraser Campbell (W), Gavin Mitchell (A), Colin Bell (L), JP Jordan (Colour Assists) • Self-published
Review by Andy Oliver
