Gigi Simeoni
Stria

Or how to keep the reader glued to the edge of their seat and breathless until the end.

Simeoni had already demonstrated his enormous talent in crafting psychological thriller/horror graphic novels with "Gli Occhi E Il Buio"; here, however, he reaches perfection by creating a masterpiece (yes, masterpiece) in which there's nothing out of place: the palpable tension from the (splendid) cover and the sensation of descending into the darkest recesses of the mind to understand the classic "what happened" prevent stopping reading before every knot is untangled.

The construction of the plot is brilliant: something terrifying happened in the past of the two protagonists but their unconscious has completely removed it, except realizing, many years later, that, in reality, it never disappeared, that it has influenced and is heavily influencing their lives and now is re-emerging with extreme violence.

Begins an astounding journey through dreamlike nightmares, hypnosis, ghosts of the mind and otherwise, witches, lost and found innocence, devastating temporal feedback, visions: all in an attempt to rediscover something that, buried in the labyrinths of the mind, is as simple as it is horrific.

Simeoni, reworking multiple literary, cinematic, and comic book influences, constructs a perfect mechanism, evocative, tense like a violin string, and deep as the darkest tunnels.

There will be a lifeline, but only after sinking into the blackest damnation.