‘Cradlegrave’ – John Smith & Edmund Bagwell (Rebellion)

On the whole, we’ve been very lucky with the places where we’ve lived. There was that one place in Gloucester (that was pretty nightmarish, I'm still trying to forget that place) but everywhere else seems to have worked out well for the most part. I feel even luckier when I see certain areas and estates on the news. You know the ones I mean, I’m talking about real urban deprivation that the local residents are never going to be able to escape from. Yeah, I really don’t have much to complain about at all...


Is there anything worse than this grinding level of poverty? I don’t know about real life but you can always rely on a writer somewhere to at least try by adding a fictional spin (usually horror based). Gary McMahon did it with ‘The Concrete Grove’ but, if I’ve got it right, John Smith and Edmund Bagwell had a go before that (within the pages of 2000AD) with their ‘Cradlegrave’ story. I’m not so hot at keeping up with the stories in 2000AD but I do get round to reading the trades eventually and that’s how I caught up with ‘Cradlegrave’. It’s an unsettling read (that I really should have picked up over Halloween) but I couldn’t help feeling that it could have been a little more...

Shane Holt has just served eight months time, in a young offenders institution, and all he wants to do is go home and start his life all over again. Life on the Ravenglade estate has its own share of problems though with a lack of opportunities leaving the youth of the area with nothing to do apart from indulge in drugs and petty crime. Shane is going to really have his work cut out to avoid the temptations that landed him in the institute in the first place but the danger of drink and drugs cannot compare to the horror that is growing within Ted and Mary’s old council house. Shane will be very lucky indeed if he can escape what lurks within those walls, no-one else will...

‘Cradlegrave’ was an odd read for me. It was a compelling read because of its undoubted ability to unsettle, on more than one level, but it felt like it had a lot more to say, for itself, than it eventually did. It almost felt that Smith reckoned that three quarters of his story would be enough. You can’t deny that the story we’re left with is a strong one but I couldn’t help but think that the whole story would have been even more powerful...

The dual approach to the horror of life on the Ravenglade estate is explored in some depth and certain moments become even more horrifying when you realise that the monstrous presence, in Ted and Mary’s house, is inciting people to violent acts that they were quite capable of committing anyway. The estate is a nasty place to live and just the act of even being there opens up the story in lots of ways for Shane. All Shane wants is to keep his probation officer happy but the Ravenglade estate isn’t the place for a quiet life at the best of times and a simple trip to the off licence can have tragic consequences...

“It’s foraging again...”

You never find out just what is lurking in Mary’s bedroom but what artist Edmund Bagwell is able to show is horrifying to say the least (he does great work, in general, showing the estate off in all its squalid glory). Other than that, all we know is that it’s hungry and will feed its prey before feeding from them (a nice parallel is drawn with Shane’s dog and her newborn puppies)... It’s nasty stuff and all the more so because it lies right at the heart of what is a seemingly normal housing estate (well, apart from all the drugs and violence but you know what I mean...) That contrast is what makes ‘Cradlegrave’ so unsettling but it’s also where things fell down for me. These two contrasting themes are so different that the ‘horror plot’ really needs a little more grounding, than it actually gets, in order for the overall plot to be more cohesive. What we ultimately end up with are two plot threads almost working against each other because the whole story hasn’t been told. Of course there’s an argument that deliberate omissions like this are there to make the story even more unworldly and scary. While that may be true though, I don’t think it worked here; a little more grounding could have made all the difference...

‘Cradlegrave’ is an unnerving read, which I’m sure I’ll revisit in the future, but it’s also a read where I couldn’t help but wonder what might have been. The story that it tells is solid enough but I think the whole story would have been even better; I guess there was only a certain amount of room in the comic...

Eight and a Half out of Ten