Black Stars Above #4 is out Feb. 26, 2020. — **Black Stars Above #4** is out Feb. 26, 2020.

By d. emerson eddy — I've been very impressed by the output from Vault for some time now. I said as much in a previous review of The Plot. There's just something about the creators and projects for the publisher that seem to push the boundaries of genre and comics storytelling. They're beautiful and lovingly crafted stories that are endlessly readable and enjoyable, that call you back to experience again to discover new little elements that you might have missed the first time, wonderfully rewarding reading a series again. And then there's Black Stars Above #4. I know I'm going to find more on a reread, but just a first experience of this issue has been revelatory. This comic is transcendent.

In more ways than one, but I'm going to start with the artwork. Jenna Cha, Brad Simpson, and Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou make this story a visual feast and it comes to a mind-blowing head here. The page layouts and panel transitions from Cha here are next level. They transport you several times through different environments, different realities, and different understandings that even if this were a silent comic you would feel like you'd just eaten a sumptuous meal. Particularly as our protagonist Eulalie traverses the moon-ladder to try to follow the path to the northern town. Through the artwork, the reader too is taken on the journey to an altered perception.

Simpson's colors help emphasize the existential terror of the seemingly endless wasteland of snow and cold as we travel further north. There's a blue tinge throughout much of it that reminds you more of the pallor of death, adding an ominous atmosphere to everything. Otsmane-Elhaou puts on the finishing touches with his letters, continuing to present Eulalie's journaling narration as pages in such a notebook. The epistolary nature of the narration always helping to give a sense of time and period to the story. Here we also get a shift as we get closer to the northern town and a particular word balloon change for the infant that's suitably unnerving along with its own visual shifting.

It nicely dovetails the horror and potential descent into madness that permeates through Nadler's narration in Eulalie's journal pages. The narration adds another layer for the reader, a kind of buffer for the Lovecraftian unknown, that gives us hints of the cracks and guides us towards the shift in perspective brought forward in the art. There's an emphasis here of realizing that there can be something meaningful found in the darkness, away from normal paths.

The transcendent nature of how this story is told ties in beautifully with the theme and process of transcendence in the story itself. Nadler, Cha, Simpson, and Otsmane-Elhaou work magic in Black Stars Above #4.

Black Stars Above #4
Writer: Lonnie Nadler
Artist: Jenna Cha
Colorist: Brad Simpson
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Publisher: Vault
Price: $3.99
A frozen death searches for Eulalio in the neverending wilderness. While the northern town is nearer than ever, the infant child under her care is changing, and she must decide if it is a being she can trust, of it it will only bring her closer to the ruins of reality.

d. emerson eddy is a student and writer of things. He fell in love with comics during Moore, Bissette, & Totleben's run on Swamp Thing and it has been a torrid affair ever since. His madness typically manifests itself on Twitter @93418.