A classic piece of psychological horror that uses the circus setting as both a source of great wonderment and terror.
“Make ’em laugh, and you’ve got ’em in the palm of your hand,” muses the titular character in the opening pages of the gripping new Pirouette, a comic that recognises the inherent sadness and fear that comes with the freaks and geeks of the circus world. “The same thing can be said about fear,” she concludes, before letting us in on the twisted home that makes her own nightmares a reality.
It’s those dreams that draw us in immediately, the young clown girl Pirouette dreaming that she will never escape from her painted persona, metaphorically trapped in a cage and unable to remove the mask she must wear for the public. Her mother and father (who insists on being called The Duke) make her waking life a misery, belittling her in front of the circus audience and refusing her the chance to display her natural acrobatic abilities. Those kinds of privilege are reserved for the European star of the trapeze, Vesprintessa. Yet when the creepy clown Brassy promises Pirouette that the next town will give her a chance to break out of the cycle she is stuck in, she realises her destiny could change forever.
Pirouette is a return to the kind of horror stories that we didn’t realise we were missing, the psychological ones like Freaks and Carnival of Souls that predated teens being stuck in slaughterhouses. Here it is the main character that is trapped in the carnival, although she is a part of her own cage. Writer Mark L Miller does an excellent job of drawing us into her world, introducing a plethora of familiar circus tropes without them ever feeling like tired clichés. The indeterminate setting makes the book timeless, and while we can assume its set somewhere in the mid-20th century, it only adds to the La Strada-esque charm of the piece. We instantly feel an affinity with the gentle giants Tellulah and Scoops, who act as the alternative family for Pirouette’s fractured life.
Carlos Granda, who has mostly been seen in the pages of Zenescope’s Grimm Fairy Tales series, cuts loose here on some frankly jaw-dropping art. After a terrifyingly dark opening set of pages, he lets us in on a giant splash reveal of a living, breathing, and dusty circus that spares no detail. Tight panels, sometimes scattered like a deck of cards, skillfully control the drama and the transition from comedy to terror, so that moments when Pirouette is on the trapeze are truly joyous, and her abuse at the hands of her father bone-chillingly terrifying. Granda makes full use of the landscape format and “widescreen” layouts to convey movement, especially in the digital edition, giving us a front row seat in the circus tent, surrounded by a myriad of gorgeous colours, or allowing us to witness the full scope of the circus train from a distance.
A gripping first chapter to a 4-part mini-series that has convincingly set the scene and left us with a score of questions that will draw us immediately back next month. Miller is not the first to scratch at the dark substance that lurks beneath the surface of the circus, but placing the source of terror to be largely within the mind of a young girl who is discovering her own identity for the first time makes this a compelling read from start to finish. Highly recommended for fans who like their horror a little more on the psycho-surreal side.
Pirouette #1 is released on 8 October 2014 from Black Mask Comics.
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