Review by C.J. Bunce
What did the man who wears a Fez hat unleash upon the residents of his apartment building in the town of Engelstadt (literally translated as The City of Angels), when he brought home a statue of a beautiful sphynx? Like something out of Moon Knight, the apartment complex unfolds and unravels, opening up to the reader the personal lives and relationships of those within. If you watched the trailblazing Netflix series Archive 81 (reviewed here), you’ll fit right in with Professor Andrzej Klimowski’s Edifice, a haunting study in pencil of the curious and the strange, a microcosm of the myriad lives led in Anytown leading up to Christmas Day. Edifice is available for pre-order now here at Amazon from publisher SelfMadeHero, arriving in comic shops and bookstores everywhere tomorrow.
The artwork of the pencil illustrator in any medium is usually covered up. Take comic books and graphic novels as an example. Typically either the pencil artist or another artist adds ink to the pencil drawing, then someone else comes along and adds color. Rarely does an entire story unfold solely as fine art pencil work. Klimowski’s 291-page book features full-page or two-per-page panels, each a study in light and dark like you’d find in an Edward Hopper painting, and imagery that combines subjects from Renaissance paintings or Expressionist works. It also could be about any character from Philip K. Dick’s science fiction novels. Each page hauntingly beautiful, the story the pictures tell is something more muddled.
Call it hotel noir, if you will. I hesitate to make the obvious comparison to Stephen King’s The Shining because this isn’t just shock and awe storytelling. But the focus of the story is a hotel, and many images are of those stark corridors that both warn you and lure you. Stay away, or flip the page if you dare. Netflix’s Archive 81 could be the setting for this story. That series, which was canceled after its first season, followed a man studying the strange events in an apartment complex years before, all viewed via an archive of tapes from old camcorder footage. A strange and spooky group of odd but ordinary tenants were up to something. Was it a cult or something spiritual? The audience will never know because the answers hadn’t been given yet, and the cancelation meant we’d never find out. Which is a perfect analogy for Edifice. Klimowski doesn’t even try to show his hand.
Or does he?
At one point his circle of tenants attempt to figure out what the story they are in is really about, like the clandestine club of tenants of the Arconia in Season 5 of Only Murders in the Building. Maybe it’s “an allegory of some sort,” as one character interjects, or satire like “pataphysics”–a mocking or philosophical explanation. If you’ve watched Netflix’s documentary The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, you may find the story even more chilling, because there is at least one ghost in this hotel. Yes, this is another of those odd yet traditional Christmas ghost stories, albeit devoid of holiday spirits.
One of the surprises of the visuals is the inate desire within human nature to judge–to judge either who these people are, how they live, or where they live. For all I know the dark and dreary vantage Klimowski gives us is just masking a group of apartment tenants living their best lives. One of my favorite comic book series was J.H. Williams III’s haunting visuals in his various Batwoman books. Klimowski captures the same stark realism while enveloping his reader in the macabre, without getting too horrifying or too creepy. Klimowski doesn’t go so far as the more disturbing corners of Cynthia von Buhler’s Minky Woodcock books, although readers should expect nudity and dark, surreal imagery.
Fans of cyborg stories may also want to take note. The story of a cyborg realizing he or she isn’t real is a staple of the sci-fi genre. What if the sphynx is experiencing something similar? Is she related to the old resident, the Lady Dendrite? The woman of the sphynx steps out of her presumably stone or marble state into real life, replacing another life with a stone edifice in the shape of an obelisk like the Washington Monument. The role of the obelisk mirrors that of the monolith of 2001: A Space Odyssey. A harbinger? Why is it here? Why is the sphynx woman here? What danger lies ahead that she beckons? And what’s the story of the awkward boy who sees impossible things and mopes among the adults like the little girl in Luc Besson’s The Professional? Is that a real lion roaming the halls? For me that scene conjured Henry Winkler walking the desolate halls in his apartment building in Night Shift.
The film within the story may conjure the video within Gore Verbinski’s The Ring. Does each image have any real meaning or is it just there to provide a general feeling of dread? Is this all another take on Rosemary’s Baby or The Prisoner or Devil’s Advocate or Midsommar? You Should Have Left, Vacancy, 1408, and other recent creepily surreal voyages will come to mind, but it’s certainly suspense and definitely a percolating thriller. But how much horror awaits you, and how chilling will it get? Is it more possession or body swapping like Fallen or Skeleton Key or Intruders or Get Out? Weird rituals like Eyes Wide Shut or The Watcher in the Woods? Or is it The Lost Room or John Carpenter’s The Prince of Darkness? Maybe it’s like what Yoda warned Luke about when he reached to take his lightsaber into the dark cave to confront his worst fear–what you as reader find in this book might be “only what you take with you.”
As reported on a live news broadcast, “We are facing great danger. Evil forces are staring us in the face.” A holiday screening of Nosferatu and a woman’s hairdo out-of-control and creating a dark cloud over all the town? Clearly much is going on here–some important, the rest to distract? The all-seeing Eye of Providence adorns the cover of Edifice just as it watches humans via dollar bills and centuries of symbolic works. Who is watching back?
Illustrator, designer, and graphic novelist Andrzej Klimowski studied at St. Martin’s School of Art in London and at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, and is now Emeritus Professor at the Royal College of Art. He has designed posters for theaters and film distributors in Poland, and book covers and illustrations for UK publishers.
Edifice is an incredible piece of art and a graphic novel you don’t need to understand to enjoy. Even if creepy tales and horror stories aren’t your thing, there’s plenty here to amaze and to marvel at. Sure to be one of the best graphic novels of 2025, don’t miss Edifice, available for pre-order now here at Amazon from publisher SelfMadeHero, arriving at Elite Comics and other comic shops and bookstores everywhere tomorrow, January 21, 2025.
