THE GODS ABOVE, THE CREEPING BELOW

Val, an American heavy metal fanatic, is on her dream vacation: attending the Inferno Metal Festival in Oslo, Norway. There she meets a charismatic young band, who take her out to a remote forest to show her the local “haunts.” Taken by their charm and oblivious to the danger, Val is drugged, beaten, and left for dead…

But her story is far from over.

She wakes at dawn, haunted by a vision of rain falling from a wolf’s jowls. Stumbling back to Oslo, she finds that the festival has already ended—13 years ago.

The world has moved on and the men who brutalized her are long gone, but when moss and roots begin to sprout from her skin… she realizes that everything has changed. Everything except her desire for revenge, that is.

In nature, there are gods older than man, and something ancient, something… hungry, has awakened powers in her that will guide her rage as she seeks to exact justice on those that wronged her.

Writer Brian Azzarello and Vanesa Del Rey deliver a blood-soaked feminist revenge saga, blending Norse mythology and eco-horror into a boundary-pushing cocktail of metal, magic, and murder!

I requested this digital ARC from NetGalley and BOOM! Studios because it sounded both unique and familiar to me. It gave off The Relic vibes along with the metal and eco-horror aesthetic. To be honest, the cover and art are really what drew me in to this comic. Just as soon as the story really started to pick up, though, it comes to a close, which is why I’m only giving this book three stars.

The art is fantastic. The story concept is so interesting–a young woman who is sacrificed to the old gods in the woods revives seven years later and exacts her revenge at the gods’ behest.

Val is the victim in question, a food and cooking photographer who travels to Oslo on assignment, but takes a side trip to the heavy metal world scene to take more pictures. She has rude encounters, but ends up getting friendly with the main metal band, who drive her out to the forest as a backdrop for a photo shoot.

Of course, things go terribly wrong, and as a comics reader, I’m glad much of that was off-camera/off-page. We get a flash of a before and an after, and what has happened to Val is nausea-inducing. She’s left naked, her body carved up with words all over it, and tied up on what looks like a stake. The band leaves her when she’s dead.

The last glimpse we get of her before the seven-year jump is a glorious one, of an old god looking down on its sacrifice:

The art of the gods and how their figures blend into the trees and forests are my favorite part of the book. The design is just so cool! And I wish I heard more from them aside from their dispatch to Val to take vengeance. On the other hand, I like how mysterious they are, and that could be ruined by them talking too much.

I want to love this comic more, I absolutely do. There is a lot of interesting and horrific and weirdly beautiful things going on with it all at one time, and the pacing is quite fast (maybe too fast for developing characters). But the story builds and builds and builds, and then it just…ends.

The description says this volume collects The Creeping Below issues 1-5. If that’s the series in its entirety, I couldn’t help but say I’m a little disappointed with how abruptly things ended. If there’s more to this story than these issues and this volume, then I will dive right back in and keep reading. There’s a lot going for this comic…I just wish there was more.

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The Creeping Below is available on preorder from the publisher. It will be available in paperback and digital. You can also find The Creeping Below from a wide variety of online booksellers. The expected release date is March 17, 2026.