Review by Frank Plowright

Three stories each told very differently is stylistically ambitious from Adam Szym, and all fall into the category of horror, although that’s not immediately obvious, with some form of abduction the other connection.

The title story is constructed as a series of interviews with people who worked on a film about aliens speaking years after the events. The names of those interviewed suggest an Eastern European location and comments made about the production and how it’s overseen suggest a police state. Suggestion is key to the briefest of the three stories as Szym has us read between the lines of what’s said to build a picture of what actually happened.

‘A Cordial Invitation’ is set in 1925 and concerns a young girl looking for her father who’s been gone for some while. Again, Szym’s nuanced writing is impressive. By showing a parked car’s engine still running he suggests that the father only intended a brief stop. This is outside a large gated house in which a grand new year party is being held, and the girl slips in attempting to locate her father. As in the first strip, a masterful sense of unease is cultivated, firstly in subtle ways before the unsettling incidents become plain distressing. Halfway through, Szym pulls what seems an audacious switch, yet even more audaciously it’s no switch, just a prelude. This sort of confident toying with expectations suggests a creator with considerable experience instead of someone unknown to most of the potential audience. A disturbing stylistic leap prefaces an impressive ending where instinct takes over. Again, not everything is spelled out, but dots can be joined.

Consistently neatly designed pages can feature the occasional stiff or overworked pose, but the visual imagination and instinctive use of light and shade serve up an atmospheric visual brew in all three stories.

The tone switches again for ‘Frolicker’, which is a bitter diatribe and told with even greater subtlety. Szym deliberately confuses by mixing past and futuristic imagery initially providing no certainty when or where the story occurs. Despite the ambiguity it’s a very current study due to a resentful loner as the central character, and his observations about how people only give the impression of being good. Is the stranger he meets feeding his anxieties or fuelling his hate?

Little Visitor and Other Abductions is a finely crafted and admirably varied selection presenting horror as smart and not as obvious as usual. Each of the three worlds is worth a visit.