The Conjuring Comic Treads Ground The Films Have Already Covered
Warning: spoilers for The Conjuring: The Lover #1 by David L. Johnson-McGoldrick, Rex Ogle, Garry Brown, Mike Spicer, and Becca Carey are ahead.
The Conjuring is making its first foray into comics with the launch of DC Comics' new imprint, DC Horror. With the eighth film in the franchise, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, out June 4th, one of the biggest names in horror is returning once again to terrorize fans everywhere. A new comic series entitled The Conjuring: The Lover, will explore a previous case from paranormal investigators, Ed and Lorraine Warren, as a prelude to The Devil Made Me Do It's plot. Thus far, the first issue of the series treads territory that will be familiar to genre fans.
The Conjuring: The Lover #1 is set in 1981, and centers on an introverted college girl named Jessica (written by David L. Johnson-McGoldrick and Rex Ogle, art by Garry Brown, colors by Mike Spicer, and letters by Becca Carey). Promising her mother that she would improve her grades, Jessica deliberately avoids having a social life so she can concentrate on her studies. As she dodges homesickness, passive-aggressive remarks from her roommate, and thinly-veiled invitations from a boy she slept with, a sinister force stalks Jessica around campus, threatening her in typical Conjuring fashion.
Horror comics do not benefit from the immersive realism that can be achieved through moving pictures and sound, but they do have a unique expressive potential that should not be downplayed. A franchise like The Conjuring branching out into new mediums has an opportunity to reinvent itself to suit the strengths of its new form. And while the first two Conjuring films are enormously successful, thanks to James Wan's directing prowess, the plots of the films were familiar haunted house stories about families terrorized by demonic forces. In other words, despite being very good haunted house films, the Conjuring films haven't yet offered a game-changing take on the horror genre from a story standpoint.
This is why The Conjuring: The Lover has an opportunity to break new ground for the franchise, because the comics medium does not need to rely on the same scare vocabularies as films. Horror comics excel when they take advantage of the freedoms that the genre allows for. Unlike most other genres, anything can happen in a horror story, which has given storytellers limitless possibilities for how to unsettle readers. Unfortunately, however, this makes The Conjuring: The Lover #1's retread of familiar territory somewhat of a disappointment, because it has every opportunity to take fans someplace new.
The challenge of the Conjuring comics will be forging a unique identity with scares that coalesce comics as a medium, something that The Lover #1 stumbles with. The brand of The Conjuring franchise is well-established at this point, with its time period specificities as well as its emphasis on demonic beings and cursed objects. The films are known for their use of disembodied scares, which the issue utilizes as Jessica wanders around with a pair of creepy hands reaching out towards her. And while shadowy demons are highly effective in the films, they don't quite pack the same punch in The Lover #1 when readers are aware of their existence the entire time.
Still, as the first issue in this series, The Lover has plenty of opportunity to play against the expectations that it sets readers up for in its initial outing. The Conjuring franchise has found success in injecting tried and true scenarios with unnerving and confident direction, and The Lover #1 aims to replicate this core approach. Thus, the familiarity that The Lover #1 is infused with could all be a ruse for a much more shocking take on the Conjuring mythos in future issues. Until then, fans will have to wait and see if a new frontier for The Conjuring in comics can deliver on their promise.