Review by Ian Keogh

Somewhere remote in Scandinavia there’s an exclusive spa resort that prides itself on high levels of service. It’s expensive, but you pay for the quality, outlined by Erik Svetoft over several pages in the form of their TV advert. Behind the scenes, though, the staff labour ceaselessly to rid the place of an ever-present black gunge, which can resist the best efforts of the cleaning staff. There’s also something putrid about some guests, but the staff so admire the management that such minor troubles are ignored. The customers, by contrast are crass and repellent, the type of people who believe payment for a service includes insulting those providing it.

Symbolism abounds in Svetoft’s surreal nightmare, where slapstick merges with the sinister in situations that extend without ever resolving. Static, emotionless people engage without honesty, designed to be creepy and disturbing, the horrors lurking on the edge of your consciousness. However, for all the effective scene setting, Svetoft doesn’t know how to bring anything to a close, so prolongs sequences long beyond the point being made, and then jolts into the next scene.

He’s at his best when vaulting completely over the top, such as a staff member becoming influenced by wild animal forces, or the occasional plain nutty and disturbing pin-up page depicting an exotic horror. A greater percentage of these imaginative intrusions in a graphic novel around half the length in total would have been a far stronger package. As it is, for the final hundred or so pages, Svetoft does pick up the pace, as chickens come home to roost, but it’s taken too long to get there, and any sense of curiosity or expectation has long evaporated.