Writer, Penciller, Letterer: Tyler Landry / SC / Uncivillized Books
10th August 2023 (Released 3rd August 2023)
Review by Paul Dunne
The Pitch: A retiree dedicates his days to combing a dense, snow-covered forest in pursuit of the unknown, and his nights to reminiscing about his wife. Old Caves is a peek through a frost-covered window at isolation, obsession, and the slow erosion of relationships. The high contrast black and white art enhances the sense of absolute solitude. Old Caves is one of the best-looking graphic novel debuts in recent memory.
One doesn't go into comics, especially from the indie publishing scene, expecting a happy ending. Sometimes, those endings are marked out, flashing on the edges of our eyesight like beacons in the snow, telling us there was never any other ending, any other way for it to go and we should have prepared ourselves. In Old Caves, we should have known better from the start. Tyler Landry is not an artist I'm familiar with, but you can bet I'll be retracing my steps through the wilderness, seeing if I can find his work. In Old Caves, the stark light of snow covered places is beautifully articulated in Landry's black and white art. These two tones speak of a filmic memory and how we project what is past into our present.
A man alone.
There are shades of Risso, Toth, and Frank Miller in the book's art. Landry's deep blacks find light in the eyes of his protagonist and those who intrude on his memories. But it may be the light behind the eyes of our unnamed guide to this wilderness is slowly dimming. Are the old caves our dark places where memories have free reign to haunt us? The lead is often framed, isolated in the white snow. A man alone. As we progress through the cold nights of the story, it takes on an epistolary nature and we realise our man is alone because he chooses to be. The letters from his wife talk about distraction, how her writing them is hers. His reading them becomes his and in that, they keep him warmer than the fire does.
Intrusions
He himself is writing a diary, or perhaps even a reply, one that may never reach her. Often Landry drops the background and detail of the land or rooms, isolating the lead even further. Flashbacks come unannounced, intruding on the forward-moving narrative like an unwelcome guest, filling in the scant details of life in the forest. You wonder if this man's wife was one of those intrusions, a distraction, a wrong turn, taking him in one direction whilst in his heart, another path called out to him. By the end, our guy becomes like an astronaut, heading into spaces unknown.
It's hard to say what the turning point for him is, where he sees the end coming up and decides to embrace it, rather than shrink away. But the letters offer a clue. His wife, once called away, can't bring herself to return. The perils of choosing to live where most people only visit. There's an element of the mythical, as our lead is consumed by myths of Big Foot, the sasquatch, forgotten creatures that walked the earth and perhaps still do. Will this man become one of those, passing into myth, remembered by none, not even himself? Landry essays loneliness here. But also, perhaps, a way forward, into a Destiny of one's own choosing, where going into the cave is the best and only choice. There was never any other ending.
