Cover Image: Blink

Blink

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Blink is a journey of self discovery to find the roots of blocked trauma awash in the cameras and observational devices that surround our every move. If you make it to the end, you might wonder who is on the other side of the screen. Worth a read for any horror fan, at least for the art, but plot wise it's not the most compelling work.

Wren Booker doesn't really remember much of her early childhood. Just that she was found in blood covered clothes wandering in the city. Now an adult, Wren pays the bills as a journalist or content creator, doing investigative work on missing people and writing listicles as opportunities arise.

In the first issue of this miniseries, Wren writes a listicle about "How to Be A Human Being" and it montages the past few decades, showing Wren trying to move on from the blocked trauma. As you can probably guess, while Wren has learned to function in society, they're still deeply scarred and have been trying to figure out their origin. There nights are haunted with sleep paralysis with a skeletal red eyed figure looming over them.

One day all the investigating and research pay off and Wren has a glimpse at a webpage titled Blink that is a collection of camera feeds. Wren traces this site to a heavily secured building and with the help of an urban explorer friend, enter. Things do not go well.

Inside the building is a jumble maze full of cameras, screens and a jumble that resembles the aftermath of a battle. Will Wren and her companion make it out again? And what will be left of them?

Christopher Sebela's Blink is a mixed descent into the madness of mass observation. It makes an interesting point and has a solid premise, but is clunky in execution, particularly in its explanation of how things went sideways. The art by Hayden Sherman is well executing with a lot of layouts and arrangements that play with different types of recording media.

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The story is intriguing but some parts are a bit rushed (some characters are not fully developed and some questions are not answered ). The art is colourful and hectic and conveys the sense of desperation that Wren feels when she goes through her journey. The Panneling is particularly adherent to the tones of the comic but is difficult to read as an E-book so I would suggest reading this as a Paperback.

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4/5 stars! This was a great graphic novel. I felt like the story flowed and kept me engaged from the very first page. The depth of the mental health and trauma of the MC jumped off the page and made me empathize with the character. I cannot imagine not knowing your childhood but having nightmares and fears from this missing chunk of your life. Overall, the story was super entertaining. I did feel like the last chunk was kind of disjointed.

I received an advance review copy for free through NetGalley, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

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Wren Brooker doesn't know where she came from, but she has been searching her entire life. One day, while working as a freelance journalist, she finds a website with various CCTV feeds. Wren tracks down where they come from, only to find a place trapped in her memories, full of unspeakable horrors. When Wren breaks into the house, she finds Blink, a house filled with cameras that was once a social experiment in the Y2K-era. Only Wren is not alone and as she ventures deeper she will discover the secrets of Blink and her own past.
Blink was a great horror comic, with a formidable protagonist and interesting world building. Christopher Sebela wrote a fascinating work about how being filmed can effect us and about how we cannot escape where we come from. Hayden Sherman's illustrations and Nick Filardi's colors are wonderful, and reminded me a lot of the best layouts by Andrea Sorrentino in comics like Gideon Falls. Every few pages I would just stop and stare at the beautiful, complex, and undeniably horrific page designs. I recommend this to any horror comic fans or anyone who wants to see a story told in the most exciting and beautiful way possible.

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Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for an advanced copy in exchange for my honest review!

Wren is a woman who is haunted by a past she can't remember until she comes across a mysterious site. Snatches of memory of her past come flooding back, so she sets out to find out the truth about her childhood and her past. This entire story was wild. I love the intermingling of sci-fi elements and analog horror elements. (By the way, I really don't know why this book has been described as "found footage horror" It's not "found footage" if you're following the main character in real time. It's pretty much an analog horror story.) Watching Wren try to make sense of her past and the truth behind Blink was interesting. The concept of what Blink is and was is both horrifying and fascinating. Honestly, the idea behind Blink reminded me a LOT of the idea behind the experiment "Quiet: We Live In Public". This story was trippy as hell, and at times even I had to wonder if what I was seeing was real, or if Wren had a hallucination. I feel like the end of this story was trying to convey a deeper message about the real world, but I don't want to say too much for fear of spoiling it. The art style was pretty fantastic in this one; I loved the sequence where I keep having to slowly turn the entire page more and more in order to read the words correctly. An interesting way to show the perspective is changing by LITERALLY forcing the reader to change the perceptive of how they are reading the page. I had a thought while reading, that if you like Jordan Peele's horror, you would likely like the horror of Blink.

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Thank you Netgalley and Oni Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I wish I could say that I liked this more. I’m a huge fan of found footage horror, so when I saw this marketed as such I was really excited. I don’t think it can honestly be called that though as we are following the mc in real time as the footage is happening. I also usually like disorienting narratives, however this felt like it was being disorienting just for the sake of being disorienting.

I was also excited to see that the mc was a female poc, but as I was reading I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was written by white men - and I was correct.

It just wasn’t something new or exciting, though the art was interesting. I feel like a lot more could have been done with it.

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Thank you to NetGalley and Oni Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review! I’m loving Oni Press lately. All of their graphic novels have been awesome!

When Wren was a child she escaped a traumatic situation that left her with PTSD. She forgot about the incident until as an adult she comes across a website called Blink that shows her as a child trapped in a room with her parents. She goes back to the building where she was held and attempts to uncover the secrets of Blink and why she was the only survivor.

I loved the art here. The monsters and horror were too tier here. There were a few pages that were amazing with how the creatures were presented. I really look forward to the rest of the story and how it’s going to progress.

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I'd describe this graphic novel as Junji Ito meets Midsommar. You have an MC, Wren, who has a huge obsession with finding out about her past as a child who lived in a closed-off cult-like society/environment called Blink. And when she confronts her past, everything spirals out of control pretty quickly.

I just wish there was some kind of prequel into her childhood since we only get snippets. So it was kind of difficult for me to understand why she's so obsessed with going back to what's essentially a haunted house with a murderous cult living in it. There's a lot of suspension of disbelief in the beginning so as the reader, you pretty much have to go along with it.

The art is colorful and hectic and really conveys the sense of desperation that Wren feels when she goes through the house/structure/compound. In a way it reminds me of the film As Above, So Below because you feel trapped, suffocated, and claustrophobic in the hellhole of a house as humanlike monsters chase Wren and company. Kudos to the artist.

The ending raises a lot of questions though instead of providing any answers. I also wished Cy, the nightmare creature that haunts Wren's dreams, had been more fully developed. They're inseparable and he's "real" to her, but why? I guess there's a volume 2 that might explain everything in more detail.

Thank you to Oni Press and NetGalley for this arc.

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An incredible trippy, black mirror similar, sci-fi, horror graphic novel.
I cannot tell you if I fully understood the ending, but it definitely left me staring at the wall.

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(I have read the entire series, not just issue 1)

<spoiler>What if you went looking for answers about your childhood to find out you were a cult's Chosen One hero to save them but then it turned into an anti-technology critic and also it was sci-fi gore aesthetic and the story ended without answering any of the questions raised by the plot... </spoiler>

Blink started with such an interesting premise that I was genuinely pulled in from the first page. Unfortunately, I feel it did not deliver. The story took a few very sharp turns that made it increasingly confusing without ever really explaining the hows and whys of the enigmatic universe that Wren discovers. Also, the last 1/4 of the book is a review or critic of society which would be fine were it tied in more cohesively with the story. The ending fell flat and rushed, and didn't satisfy my need for answers based on the set up at the beginning.

I would also like to mention that because of some of the artistic decisions made about page lay out, many of the pages were difficult to read as an ebook as the orientation cut the text in two. I would suggest reading this as a physical book.


Thank you NetGalley and Oni Press for the opportunity to read an ARC of Blink.

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Blink is somewhat of a mad combination of House of Leaves and 1984, following Wren as she searches for her own history and finds more than she could imagine.

This was a really creative story with some fantastic art. There are visual motifs of VHS tapes and digital glitches and static throughout. Parts of the story fall a bit on the side of House of Leaves as the main character explores a house with a seemingly nonsensical layout and far more vast than it should be. This, combined with the big brother-esque surveillance makes this a really unique read.

For the horror aspect of the story, I found it fairly light, with most of the horror being in the visual appearance of some of the beings in the story. The other aspects that might be considered horror are along the lines of a dystopian novel.

There were some moments that were a little confusing (somewhat of a hang on and you'll figure it out), but overall a cool story with fantastic art.

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I loved the art style and the premise of this graphic novel. I love the gory horror genre so I liked that aspect.

Unfortunately I felt like something was missing. I found it hard to care about the characters (esp main character) bc I couldn’t really get a feel for her feelings and motivations. Sure she wants to recover her lost memories but why? Why was it so important to the point of endangering her life? Why should we care? It kinda felt like things just happened to her and we were along for the ride.


Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the eARC.

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Rating: 4 stars

Blink tells the story of one woman's quest to solve the mystery of her past and find a way to free herself from the demons that haunt her. A perfect blend of scifi and horror, it felt like Black Mirror meets 30 Days of Night meets 1984 - and I am 100% here for it. The illustration and color-work in this graphic novel are absolutely breathtaking. The entire team deserves kudos for their mind-blowing work on this. I loved it.

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Blink focuses on Wren, who was found as a child wandering the streets covered in blood. She has searched tirelessly for where she came from, building from the brief flashes of memories she has of the life she escaped from. She finds a website streaming images from rooms she swears she knows. What follows is her journey through a complicated maze filled with cameras and mysterious bands of creatures and people alike. Blink felt incredibly suffocating in the way good horror is. I kept thinking about just how close the outside world was to the buildings she was adventuring through. If you're a fan of found footage and creepy crawlies, you need to pick up this graphic novel.

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