With a title like this, The Forest, the Chair and Those Forsaken There sounds like a particularly grim fairy tale. And it is. Kind of.
It tells the story of Si, a former rock star crippled by a mysterious illness. As he lies emaciated and comatose in a hospital, his consciousness is held captive in a pocket otherworld within his head, chained to a chair in a forest cabin. Other people become transported there in their sleep, only to become devoured by a horrific force existing behind an ominous door, whereupon they die in the waking world. It’s a horrific and nightmarish tale, and one with a specific purpose.
An afterword from writer James McCulloch spells out the comic’s highly personal inspiration in unflinching specifics, but soon after getting into the story it becomes clear that the tale is a particularly grim allegory about the soul-consuming black hole that is mental illness. Si’s torment as a prisoner in his own mind is a visual depiction of what it’s like to suffer from depression, its portrayal representative of how much the affliction swallows everything good in your life. Bit by bit it erodes your entire existence – friends, family, creativity, personality – invading as some insidious force of pointless spite, gradually stripping away everything that makes you who you are until all that’s left is an empty husk barely a parody of functional humanity.
The frayed artwork of the moments in the dreamscape reflects the jagged spines of the illness tearing at your mind and destroying your will to battle against it, the only option seeming to be to surrender to its ravages and hope that the scarring they leave doesn’t completely destroy you. Black ink slashes across the panels like sprays of blood, while translucent spots of grey splatter the images, as though the very pages themselves are stained with drops of the essence of vitality that the tale drained from its subject. As things become more intense the panel borders become pure black, pulling your vision closer in to the petrifying intensity of the pure terror seared onto the page as the shadows descend and darkness itself shines upon the page, slowly growing ever-more compelling until all sense of self is utterly consumed.
Despite of the bleak subject matter, the story manages to invoke a slight sense of optimism, again reflecting the lives of people with mental imbalances. For some, help comes too late, but others are fortunate enough that they are able to overcome the darkness and find a way out.
The Forest, the Chair and Those Forsaken There / Author: James McCulloch / Artist: Dan Charnley / Publisher: Comichaus / Release Date: Out Now
