Dylan Dog 175, Il seme della follia

Regular readers of Dylan Dog will know that he doesn't have much luck with women. Hold on, let me rephrase that: Dylan manages to hook up with a beautiful woman almost every month, but they don't last any longer than the gap between monthly episodes. The beauty he loses in issue 175 is however perhaps more painful than any of the others. At the start of Il seme della follia (The Seed of Madness) Dylan is not only in despair at having lost another girlfriend even before the episode had really started, one moreover that seemed to be perfect for him in every way, but the way Amber has been taken from him is truly horrendous.

Stopping off for a quick canoodle in the woods, Dylan and Amber are beset for no apparent reason by a group of youths wearing horror masks. Dylan is badly beaten and tied to a tree where he witnesses Amber tied to another tree in front of him, petrol poured over her and set alight. The doctor treating Dylan's wounds recommends he sees a psychiatrist, and indeed Dylan is deeply traumatised. Too traumatised to help Inspector Bloch investigate the bizarre killing, even when news of another unusual killing of a man known to Amber comes up.

If the opening sequence is troubling it's an indication of the general dark world that Dylan enters into. Deeply traumatised, he starts seeing the ghost of Amber, and the investigator of nightmares even resorts to going to see a medium. When he reflects on the past with Amber, Dylan recognises now that something was wrong, that his girlfriend was fearful of something. There were too many clues that he never looked into at the time. But, Dylan's condition is not just internal dive into darkness and possible madness; the indications lead Dylan into the dark and dangerous side of the city of London; drugs, prostitution, even the suggestion of 'snuff' movies. Could Amber have been mixed up in something like that?

Dylan is convinced that the ghost of Amber has been trying to tell him that her killer is none other than an outrageous rock singer Bloody Murray who has been accused of animal cruelty, killing live animals on stage and using their blood to paint his face. He finds lyrics in Murray's songs (all perfectly rendered in good English here) that bear close similarity to the killing of Amber and the messages she is sending him. Bloch is sure that Dylan is losing his mind, so recognising that the only one way he can shake off the horror of the mystery Dylan sets out to get to the bottom of the mystery himself.

Scriptwriter Paola Barbato gives you plenty of Dylanesque horror here of a more human kind, which just seems all the more chilling. It certainly has a deep impact on DD. The outrageous rock singer Bloody Murray is a brilliant creation, a disturbing one, but there are much darker psychological and narrative twists in this episode. Luigi Piccatto brings bold angular artwork to Dylan's living nightmare, not overly refined in the usual generic European style, but using heavy blocking, loose sketching and stark contrasts. It's Mike Mignola influenced certainly, but Piccato's work has its own character suited to the material. There are some excellent layouts that capture key scenes well.


Reading notes: Dylan Dog #175, 'Il seme della follia', February 2004 (Ristampa), 98 pages. Story and script by Paola Barbato, artwork by Luigi Piccatto.

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