Can you hear them? Can you hear them falling?
Ten Thousand Black Feathers is a supernatural Horror comic book miniseries with Dark Fantasy elements written by Jeff Lemire and illustrated by Andrea Sorrentino. It is the second published entry in their Bone Orchard Mythos and was published by Image Comics.Ten years ago, fantasy author Trish Reed's best friend, Jacqueline "Jackie" Glatt, went missing without a trace one night while out partying. Now, she returns to their old hometown, Hamilton, and meets up with Jackie's mother, Terri, hoping to solve the mystery of where Jackie went. But a dark presence looms over her all along the way.
Due to the story sharing a universe with The Passageway and elements of it providing context for Ten Thousand Black Feathers, expect some spoilers for it here
Tropes
- After the End: The wasteland in Trish and Jackie's fictional universe as well as the one seen in the dark dimension hints at being set in some sort of post-apocalyptic world, with a lot of derelict factories and other modern, man-made buildings, but with some new, medieval-style buildings constructed throughout.
- All for Nothing: Trish gets to the dark dimension, makes her way to the Crow King's tower, fights and kills him and frees Jackie from her cage... only for the Grim Reaper to appear, meaning they're at the very least stuck there.
- Arc Words: "Can you hear them? Can you hear them falling?" The words are repeated by the voice Trish hears at various points in the story.
- Art Shift: Flashbacks use a brighter, more polished style than the present day scenes, representing a more innocent time for Trish, while the present day scenes use Sorrentino's usual, heavily shaded style. Tellingly, when she meets Jackie in a bar in the flashback parts of issue #3, only is she is drawn the former way while everything else is drawn the latter way.
- Big Bad: The Crow King seems to fill this role, being the one who jailed Jackie in his dimension and apparently being the voice Trish has been hearing that has been guiding her.
- Call-Back:
- The title seems taken from The Passageway, where the phrase was part of the text above the entrance to the subterranean temple.
- The "skinwalkers" from Trish and Jackie's Fantasy Sequence have previously been seen in the Shadow Eater one-shot, where the main character came across a figure like it. Also, the masks they wear look like the ones worn by one of the statue figures in The Passageway.
- In the final issue, the giant, multi-armed Grim Reaper seen as a statue in the underground temple in The Passageway appears in the sky of the dark dimension.
- Comic Books Are Real: Some aspects of Trish and Jackie's fictional universe very closely mirror aspects of the dark universe the hole leads to; it's implied that living so close to a gateway projected them into Jackie's mind and that Trish has always been influenced by them, since one of her first drawings looks like a skinwalker mask.
- Coming of Age Story: The flashbacks show how Trish and Jackie become friends as children and spend a lot of their time together, but also when they get older and Jackie starts hanging out with others in high school and going to a bar with a fake ID, creating tension with the more straight-laced Trish.
- Commonality Connection: Trish and Jackie first bonded over their mutual love of Fantasy literature when Jackie found her reading A Wizard of Earthsea.
- Dark Fantasy: Trish and Jackie's made-up universe seems heavily inspired by the genre, taking place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, but with medieval-style buildings and magic typical of the Sword and Sorcery genre.
- Disappeared Dad: When Trish and Jackie first get to know each other, she says her father left her and Terri when she was younger.
- Downer Ending: Trish journeys into the dark dimension, finds Jackie and releases her from the cage she's kept in, but the two are then trapped by the giant Grim Reaper figure and almost certainly killed.
- Evil All Along: The last few pages reveal that Terri was to some unknown degree involved with the dark forces at play, as evidenced by her total lack of surprise when she found the hole and covered it up, and her eating a black feather found on the floor.
- Feather Motif: Feathers appear throughout the comic in various forms:
- Trish gets Jackie a necklace with a metal feather on a chain.
- Black feathers, sometimes accompanied by crows, tend to appear whenever something supernatural happens, either falling from the sky or just part of the more abstract artwork.
- Evil Tower of Ominousness: The wasteland in the dark dimension has an old, run-down skyscraper with a giant wooden throne on the roof that seems to serve as the Crow King's base.
- Eye Scream: At the big wooden throne on top of the skyscraper, Trish finds a few people worshipping it and sees that their eyes are gone, leaving behind bloody sockets.
- Fantasy Sequence: Issue #2 shows one of Trish and Jackie acting out a story from the universe they've developed, with Trish as a mage and Jackie as a warrior going to a tavern for information and fighting skinwalkers.
- Hearing Voices: Throughout the series, Trish hears a voice taunting her and trying to break her confidence.
- Inspector Javert: When Casey Dubois is found brutally killed and strung up, Trish is interrogated by a police detective who wrongfully suspects her of it. Having worked on Jackie's disappearance back in the day, he also seems convinced that Trish did it, accusing her of killing her and hiding the body.
- Invisible Parents: Trish is said to be a foster child, but her foster parents are never seen.
- Malevolent Masked Men:
- Skinwalkers look like naked men who wear face-like masks with thorns around the edges.
- The massacre at the police station is carried out in part by a man wearing a big mask or helmet that looks like a crow's skull. In the dark dimension, the Crow King wears a similar mask that's colored red and has deer antlers.
- Mooks: Skinwalkers, as seen in Trish and Jackie's fantasy sequences, serve as simple minions for the Crow King and are seen by Jackie as disposable. There is also a kind of Bird People called Crowfolk, who are at least somewhat intelligent and capable of speech.
- Nothing Is Scarier: Trish and Jackie's ultimate fates are never shown, but that doesn't make it any less horrifying.
- Parental Neglect: Terri wasn't a very attentive mother to Jackie, often leaving her on her own at night to go out on dates.
- Queer Establishing Moment: Issue #3 reveals that Trish was in love with Jackie and kissed her after an emotional night out; unfortunately, Jackie didn't reciprocate her feelings and ran off.
- Shout-Out:
- The walls in Jackie's basement room has posters for classic sci-fi movies like Dune (1984), The Terminator and Alien.
- Trish and Jackie talk about their favorite science fiction and fantasy novels, specifically naming The Dark Tower and Dune, among others.
- Tentacled Terror: Trish fights one in the dark dimension that pops out of a well. She fends it off, but not before it manages to drag her horse down when it retreats.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Jackie was the tomboy, having short, pink-dyed hair and getting piercings later, while Trish was the "girly girl", having long hair and dressing in more typically feminine style.
- Tragic Keepsake: Trish still has the feather necklace she gave Jackie when they were about to start high school.
- Trapped in Another World: Jackie was actually taken to the dark dimension that the Crow King originated from.
- Uncertain Doom: It isn't clear what happens to Trish and Jackie when the Grim Reaper appears, but it clearly isn't pretty; it's likely that they were either killed or trapped in the dark dimension.
- The Worm That Walks:
- When designing Trish's fictional universe, Jackie suggests that its Big Bad be called something like the "Crow King" and be built out of lots of normal-sized black crows with a crow skull for a head.
- In the last issue, an unfathomable number of black birds flock together tightly to form the giant Grim Reaper in the sky of the dark dimension.
- Wham Shot:
- Issue #3 ends with a full page showing Casey Dubois killed by means of "blood eagle" and suspended with chains and hooks.
- Issue #4:
- After being left alone at the police station, Trish leaves the interrogation room and finds a skinwalker killing the detective she spoke to.
- Then Trish goes downstairs and sees several police officers dead, with a figure wearing a crow's skull mask sitting at the center.
- Near the end, Trish pulls down a curtain in Jackie's basement room and discovers a large, dark hole going into the wall and seemingly into the underground.
- Issue #5 has first the nearly two-page spread of the multi-armed Grim Reaper having formed in the sky, followed by another page of it having taken off its hood and staring down at Trish and Jackie with its formed eye colored white and bright red.
