Infidel is horrific and disturbing, but not because of gore or the monsters. It's true that there are monsters and spirits, and elements of the supernatural in this first issue. However, what I really find unsettling is just how the personal horror or, should I say, the interpersonal horror hits so close to home. I think it's because the comic already shows you what is at stake. You have Aisha, a Muslim and Star Wars cook book writer who has a relationship with a non-Muslim, Tom, and is the stepmother to his daughter Kris. They live in an apartment that was the site of a terrible mass murder, presumably instigated by hate crimes, which is haunted by creatures that feed off of xenophobia: things that will undoubtedly exploit the fractions within these diverse backgrounds. The idea that these fallible, yet relatable people of different backgrounds might degenerate from good will and love into mutual hatred, fear, defilement, and even murder actually terrifies me. Imagine the Torrances in the Overlook from The Shining, except with the spirits and patriarchal horror of Under the Shadow and the insidious racial terror of Get Out, and you can see the scenario that seems to be getting built here. And it does more. In just the first issue, it makes you aware of the background noise of discrimination and disharmony, the prejudice and ignorance underneath even the most basic of actions, or what seem to be the loudest defenses against bigotry itself ... and it makes you as uncomfortable as finding the slimy tentacle underneath the male puppet of Paolo revealed by June in Gail Simone and Leonie O'Moore's "Bereft" within Planned Parenthood anthology Mine! But I suspect that Pichetshote, Campbell, Villarrubia, and Powell haven't even begun to reveal their Bereft yet, nor answered the question as to what happens when a puppet is pulled off of such an invasive thing: if there is anything left of the character -- the person or people involved -- beyond a hollow, dead

I didn't think I was going to have anything more to add after reading the first issue of this series. But the words "Fuck" in varying emphases on syllables came out of my mouth a lot, especially towards the end of the issue itself. The mystery is starting to be revealed with a few details, some symbols, some references to past events. Even Leslie, Aisha's potential mother-in-law seems to have a story the prejudice with which she is struggling. And we see the ghosts -- or demons -- starting to really get at work with sudden page and panel transitions, with heightened jagged colours by Campbell, Powell, and Villarrubia. It is here we truly begin to see just why these monsters are so evil in how they operate: how they drive people apart. It ends ... on a cliffhanger, to a point where it makes the reader wonder if they have truly perceived everything themselves so far. Pornsak Pichetshote's Afterword is almost as visceral, along with each of the drawings created by Jose Villarrubia's students: making you wonder if these creatures have been living along side, or inside of us this entire time and only some, perhaps minorities can call them for what they are. It makes one wonder if there is any hope. And I hope that Aisha can overcome this. I hope that she will be strong enough.

I don't even know where to begin. For some reason, I can't really let go of the beginning of this issue: this abstract, almost glyphic aesthetic reminiscent of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis that sheds more light on the childhoods of Medina and Aisha. It is both literal and figurative all at the same time, this shared space between them. Campbell and Powell excel in this opening sequence. Even now, I'm trying to untangle a lot of what went down in this issue and I suspect it might take some time. But this issue, this part of the story, is a mess: and not in a bad way. Basically, everything is going to hell and more questions are raised than answers, or at least the questions are really slow, temporally stagnated open-ended answers that will be dealt with as the issues progress. The human interactions, however, come through. The line between prejudice and preference, and perspective is skated across and sometimes even fumbled by the characters. And it becomes clear that even if the supernatural element or the psychological ones are dealt with, Aisha is still going to be dealing with the power of social, and even legal, consequences. It reminds me of Under the Shadow and how ironic it is that the theocracy of Iran doesn't protect its people against the supernatural: and how it makes sense that it fails to do so in that the people vulnerable to these dark, supposedly illegitimate powers in thin spaces in the world are in fact minorities, the discriminated, the dispossessed. I'll admit, I didn't complete the story to come to this point with Aisha and I am perhaps a little concerned that two more issues will not be able to necessarily wrap this up: and certainly not neatly. But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps there is nothing neat about this story, its examinations of how people's differences and fractiousness intersect and threaten to bring the whole tapestry down. Maybe Aisha and the others won't get out of this. Perhaps this is not ever going to be a story with a happy ending. That uncertainty is unsettling in and of itself. There is just so much here. I don't know what else to say but that I will follow this to its inevitable conclusion. Also, as an aside, I just want to say to the creators of this comic: nice Elder Sign in the grimoire. Don't think I didn't notice that.

"... And how do you fight something you can't touch? That other people can't see?" "How the hell did we not hear all this noise ..." "Why... why is it so quiet? Why is it so quiet when it is so loud out there?" On the back of Infidel #4, Comicosity writes a blurb for the series which states: "[Infidel] challenges expectations by including the tensions between characters of different faiths, while not being explicitly about that difference." In fact, I would expand further on those words by adding that Pichetshote doesn't explicitly write a series that highlights the privileged blank white blindness and little intersectional horrors of every day life. He and the team don't preach it. They show it. They gradually show it through the flawed, scared, but sometimes at their core well-meaning actions of their characters, and their multi-layered environment. Medina shines in this issue. I won't say anything more than that. We also find out a little more about the possible occultic origin of the demons in Aisha's apartment, and it is pretty telling that this time they manifest in steam -- or the dispersed medium of water: doing more explicit physical damage this time. There are references to a twisted ideological Platonic World of Being that influences, or influences, our physical material plane of Becoming, as well as a snarky pop-culture reference that I hope no one gets sued over. Hell, even Medina's roommate Ethan has grown on me with his investigations, his horror writing background, research, and look very reminiscent of a young Guillermo del Toro: who ... thinks he knows all the conventions of the horror genre. And as far as the purported occultist who caused all this, Arthur Quinn, is concerned ... I almost sympathize with what he apparently tried to do at this point, except for a discovery Medina makes in Aisha's apartment that prompts her to say to Ethan: "Because in a room full of shadows, she's obsessed with the light." Medina has, up until this point, displayed an obviously justified abrasive persona with regards to "racial" tensions that actually gets challenged here, and reinforces that she is just a human being trying to do the right thing. I got a little confused with who Mitchell Fisher was supposed to be -- either the "bomber" or one of the victims of such in the apartment before Aisha moved in with Tom and Kris -- and whether or not he was tied to the discovery of last issue due to his tattoos (like if, for instance, Mitchell was Kent's late friend), but it takes away from none of this issue. In my last review, I was concerned that the team might have challenges wrapping up this story in five issues, but the last is going to be extra-sized, while at the same price of purchase. I also realize that Infidel has benefited from the miniseries single issue treatment, its format allowing for a perfect parsing of sequences and events. I can't help but wonder how putting it all into a trade paperback might affect the pacing. But I suppose we will just have to see. As I said, there is one more issue left. In the back of the book, editor José Villarrubia interviews Infidel artist Aaron Campbell who says, with regards to his love of reading Lovecraft and his affect on contemporary storytelling "What we can't relate to anymore is a fairy tale ending. They just don't ring true any longer." This is perhaps most telling. Indeed, even now if all goes well after all this, Infidel still will not end on a perfect, happy note. But I hope, if nothing else, it will take after fairytales' ancestor -- folk tales -- and at least leave a strong cautionary shadow in its wake.

It's the Alpha and Omega, really. I didn't really know what to expect, at the end of Infidel. If anything, the entire plot and setting of Infidel is built on uncertainty: of how far your prejudices affect your reality, on how well the characters perceive reality, on -- as one of the characters in this issue put it in another context -- perceiving "appearances over truth." There has been nothing comfortable, or reassuring about Infidel and it renains so, even to the very end. It is in this issue that we find out how the entire mess began, and just what those demon spirits may actually be: how the feathers that appear in Issue #1 may be more than just ifrit or dijnn, of a sign of a paradise denied. It's actually quite horrible what those beings might be, or might have been when you look at the hints and realize that those twisted shapes of bile and slurs may just be more than deformed abstractions of hatred. Especially when you see the thing that could be imp ... but probably didn't start out that way. That, and when you see just what Pornsak Pichetshote does with the word and concept of "Faith," and just the shivers that travel down your back when you take all those creative connotations into consideration. When you look at how the last issue ended, and how Tom reacts to Medina and how he finds her -- and she even attempts to deal with the basement -- even that entire sequence of events is incredibly fucking twisted, and no one gets away from these demons and their influence in this weaker part of reality that Arthur Quinn, or something left behind. No one looks innocent here, and perhaps that's the point. Perhaps that's why the Infidel creative team decided to end the story, to shift the character perspectives from Aisha to Medina: and the decisions that Medina makes at the very end of the narrative. Hatred does warp a relationship, it does cost some lives, but ... There is light at the end of this story. Infidel essentially shows you that no one is perfect in this world. Everyone is messy and imperfect, and all the more so when they face true evil: especially an evil where "hate's just like everything else, and sometimes it evolves too, in forms we'd never predict." The combination of epistolary narrative between differing news and Wikipedia as well as folklore accounts, as well as Aisha's own communication with the elementary Persepolis aesthetic of Medina calls back to mind what Aaron Campbell said to José Villarrubia about fairy tale endings no longer being relatable. But, perhaps, as I mentioned before this is less a fairy tale and more of its dark predecessor, its ancestor if you will: that of a contemporary, urban folk tale where there is a cost to everything that is done, that nothing is perfect, that people make mistakes, but how even some of the most ignorant, biased people informed by prejudice can change, or show another side -- that humans can show another side -- if you just have "Faith" in them. In the end, Infidel ends where it begins. There are never happy endings when a story never ends, even and especially at the end of a miniseries that deals with prejudice and the cycles of human behaviour and understanding. What can I say: it's been quite a ride. I both anticipate, and dread, how this series will be adapted to the big screen. Take a bow, Infidel Creative Team.