House of Slaughter #4 continues Aaron and Jace’s love story and their fight for survival in the pressure-cooker of the eponymous household. Jace goes off with the other white mask initiates to conduct a ritual hunt that will help them acquire the teeth on their masks – the mark of acceptance into the house. Meanwhile, Aaron has a difficult conversation with his mentor Jessica. When she catches him sleeping in Jace’s bed, she puts two and two together, harshly condemning Aaron for breaking the house’s rule of no emotional attachment. She also drops a bombshell. If the house finds out, they are likely to kill Aaron for his disobedience.
House of Slaughter #4
Andworld Design (letterer), Tate Brombal (story and script), Miquel Muerto (colorist), Chris Shehan (art), James Tynion IV (story)
BOOM! Studios
January 26, 2022
The series depicts Aaron as a soft, quiet boy, but his feelings for Jace have made him passionate and obstinate. He explodes at Jessica’s news, claiming he has never been happy or felt accepted until meeting and falling for Jace. It’s an unexpected, arresting moment in the book, but Brombal’s writing introduced tension and tenderness between Aaron and Jace that, in retrospect, make the boil-over of Aaron’s anger inevitable. This is my favorite issue so far because of the emotional pay-off. Aaron has proven to be a sympathetic protagonist, and Jace’s blustering demeanor has made him a satisfying contrasting deuteragonist. Through their emotional reactions, the book reminds us that they are just children stuck in an abusive household, fighting to live.
Miquel Muerto’s coloring continues to be a lovely mix of deep shadows that often pop with purple and orange. The series’ negotiation of chronology causes some confusion in this issue’s art. Toggling between past and present is more perplexing here than in past issues, and the carry-over of dialogue from one time period to the next doesn’t always sync up. It’s a difficult issue to read digitally because the layout of the book benefits from seeing the whole page or pages while you read. The small, fast panels that switch back and forth in time do work well to remind us of how childhood trauma often circles back to repeat in adulthood.
The book best shines in characterization, but that doesn’t mean the action sequence lacks polish. Although Jace’s ritual hunt might have benefited from more space in the book, it offers familiar sights such as Something is Killing the Children and its blood-soaked forest scenes. The monster is formidable and puts Jace in a position of physical vulnerability we’ve yet to see him in. It also ties his imperilment to his feelings for Aaron, which might seem to validate the house’s no attachment rule but shows that Jace shouldn’t have to be in this predicament at all.
House of Slaughter #4 is an issue of heartbreak, not just that found in a relationship break-up or loss of a loved one, but in unique, nuanced situations of betrayal and revenge. The book validates Jace’s and Aaron’s respective fury at the abuse they’ve experienced without justifying the way Jace copes with it.
House of Slaughter is tending toward being a queer tragedy, which some readers may dislike on principle, but the story is so well-wrought and thoughtful that it’s hard to dismiss it as a problematic stereotype. Queer tragedy is not inherently bad, but does become an exhausted trope when writers use it without a clear purpose or, in the worst case, when LGBTQIA+ characters die to further the plots of cishetero characters. With one issue to go in the series’ current arc, it doesn’t seem like House of Slaughter is heading toward a disappointing rehashing of shallow tragedy. James Tynion IV and Tate Brombal, both LGBTQ-identifying men, have worked together to guide the story to fresh ground. Overall, House of Slaughter #4 is an excellent chapter in the ongoing series. Even if the art isn’t as smooth as one might hope, the storytelling deftly weaves the personal character moments with big action.
