Hermetic Library fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Green Woman by Peter Straub, Michael Easton and John Bolton.

As I was reading this hallucinatory horror graphic novel of murder and occult compulsion, I couldn’t help noticing: Damn, that principal character looks just like the actor Peter Capaldi. When I was about two-thirds of the way through, I flipped back to the front, intending to review some items from early in the story. I found myself instead looking at the dedication, where artist John Bolton had in fact dedicated his work here “To my friend the actor Peter Capaldi for being the perfect villain.” He couldn’t have known in 2010 that Capaldi would go on to be cast in the Doctor Who lead! Now I find that Bolton has cast him in the role of Peter Straub’s serial killer Viet Nam vet Fielding Bandolier—who had appeared in earlier work by Straub.

This book is very much a graphic novel, with the full content and pacing of a novel. It is not a stitched-together series of episodic comics. The intensity of violence and sex is reasonably high, and Bolton’s rich painted art is a good fit for the narrative style and content. Co-authoring with Straub is Michael Easton, a writer with more experience in the graphic medium. There are a lot of scenic shifts and impressionistic representations with a minimum of expository hand-holding. The plot isn’t what I’d call clever, but the story still held my attention. As with other things I’ve read by Straub, I get the impression that a second read would garner details that eluded me on my initial pass. [via]