The Deep Dark

The Deep Dark is graphic novel about secrets, suffering, fear, and a path to healing. Or maybe it's about family, love, art, and becoming who you are. About living, and joy. Or about queerness, acceptance, and generational trauma. It's moving, grounded, complex. It's fantastic.

Mild spoilers follow: Magdalena "Mags" Herrera is a butch girl living in Joshua Tree, South California. Her mother is often staying with her new boyfriend, so Mags is the main caregiver for her grandmother, while also working part-time. Her secret girlfriend has a boyfriend in public. But the bigger secret is the creature in the basement which is tied to Mags life, and needs to be fed with her blood every night. It's the reason Mags barely goes out apart from highschool and her job. Into this life bursts Mags' childhood friend, Nessa. They reconnect, and Mags is torn between wanting more and keeping Nessa at a distance so she can't be hurt by her secret.

The story is well-told, weaving its complexities masterfully into a simple, moving tale. The characters are are wonderfully expressive, and the use of color is phenomenal. The book drew me in. I read it in one sitting even though I hadn't planned to. The next day, it still tugged at my heart as I was in a supermarket doing everyday stuff. The queerness of the characters (lesbian, bi, trans) comes with ease and without grand gestures. They are never reduced to it even as it is part of their core. Likewise, the blood-sucking monster in the basement is never reduced to a simple metaphor. Instead, it becomes more, defying explanations as much as expectations.

A small hole letting light enter the dark, turning things upside down. It's not magic. But it's a path.

Mags is just about grown up, but her life revolves around home by necessity. Part of that is because she needs to care for the aged abuela, but just as much is because of the thing in the basement, that she needs to feed every day. She is stoic about it, never complaining about a weight that would break most adults twice her age.

This all begins to get upended when her childhood best friend, long moved away, comes back home -- now transitioned, with the new name of Nessa. Nessa is more lively, and wants Mags to live more herself. But as far as she knows, the thing in the basement was just a childhood fantasy that they made up when they were kids.

This isn't a big loud fantasy book: aside from its one fantastical element, it is very much grounded in the here and now of small-town southwestern life. It's long, but a very fast read -- the average page is 3-5 beautiful panels, often wordless.

There's too much dark reality here to quite call it "sweet", but it's hard not to root for Mags and Nessa: their friendship is bone-deep and heartfelt. But they each have monsters to wrestle with before they can move on and live.

Lovely stuff. It was recommended to me while I was at one of our local comic shops, and I pass on that recommendation.