With The Plot published by Hi comics, the reader attracted by the superb cover understands the setting: a menacing house in the middle of the swamps. He will then be convinced by this horror story where evil is not hidden in the human soul that built the house but in the wilderness.
A broken family sheltering in the mansion
Charles Blaine and his wife Wendy have just been mysteriously killed – even though the reader knows that the killer is a Swamp Thing-style spongy creature. His brother, Chase Blaine, became the guardian of his two nephews. To rebuild himself, the very young head of the family decides to settle in his childhood home. But this house and the surrounding marshes are far from safe… 
Chase finds himself in his house under renovation trying to build a home for children he has only met three times. Mackenzie is such a straightforward teenager that she becomes cynical. Stranger, Zack, the youngest, no longer speaks to adults but whispers to his dog. Chase refuses to search for the murderer to focus on his new role, but given his erratic past, the task promises to be complicated. Upon their arrival at the mansion, they are awaited by Sheriff Sullivan who refuses to let Chase return and even seems to suspect him of the murder. The story of The Plot takes the time to install a heavy atmosphere on an episode but a cliffhanger at the end will make the reader addicted. As soon as they walk through the door of the estate, the two children are trapped by nature.
To receive, you must first give…
This excellent genre narrative is placed on the path of great masters which is not surprising because the past in The Plot is a place of mystery and danger. Screenwriters Tim Daniel and Michael Moreci set their story in Cape Augusta, Maine, an American state well known to horror fans, as it has been the location of many horror stories since Stephen King. Ghosts appear and lies are numerous as in the King. This old house owned by the Blaines for 200 years is necessarily reminiscent of the book The Haunted House by Shirley Jackson. We also find the classics of the genre in the main theme. The Plot is a story about a family marked by madness for many generations. Mental illness is seen as a genetic defect. Chase's father was seen by the other villagers as disturbed like many men in the family. But to Charles, he was a sickly generous man who was never rewarded. Chase drinks to the point of collapsing on the floor of the abandoned family home but refuses to be helped. He broke up with his brother. Charles is the opposite and embodies the American Way of Life through his professional success – he is the CEO of Sortland Pharmaceutical – and personal – a beautiful modern home where he lives with Wendy his beautiful loving wife and two children. For this, he left the city of the lineage but remains marked by the past because he works to cure mental illness. One builds and the other destroys. But the past finds Charles and kills him in the form of a monster.
From red to green
We are delighted to find the cartoonist Joshua Hixson who had marked the retinas of Shanghai Red readers. It changes genres from a blood-red historical revenge tale to a contemporary horror story. Hixson then adopts a new chromatic range around green but he has especially gained in precision for faces without sacrificing his deliberately unfinished style. It is also more regular by no longer botching the end of episodes for lack of time. Its layout remains fluid and sometimes very successful as when Chase learns of the death of his brother and sister-in-law. The reader is never tired because he knows how to alternate action scenes and a quiet time on emotion. These first four episodes of The Plot offer a horror comic at the crossroads of Locke & Key and Swamp Thing. Tim Daniel and Michael Moreci's screenplay contains many mysteries in the image of the house while the splendid drawing Joshua Hixson plunges the reader into the heart of the dark and greenish marshes. Once the latest revelation is discovered, we are ready to do anything to read the rest of the adventures of the Blaines. If this column did not scare you too much, you can find a vampire story in Love Kills and our vision of the first work of the same cartoonist: Shanghai Red.
