Treading the quiet horrorscape of 'The Forest'

The book opens with an image of a boy at the wake of an old man (his father? Grandfather? Uncle? Someone else?). The scene is inside a house. There is a wreath, flowers, and sympathy cards. Small, generational portraits adorn the wall. Sullen adults have their backs to the boy, neglecting him as he sits apart on a sofa. His dangling feet do not reach the floor.

The adults are dressed in formal attire. The boy wears the clothes of a child—shorts, shoes but no socks, and a short-sleeved white shirt buttoned to the top. He looks awkward. He’s young, but perhaps too old to be dressed like this.

In the pages that follow, the boy flees the gloom of the house and runs into a dark, foreboding forest. There, he navigates treacherous pitfalls and gruesome specters. Each is a source of anxiety for a growing boy, lurking around corners in a progression from the painful rites of passage for adolescents to the grim atrocities of adulthood. Ultimately, he perseveres and encounters someone special who embraces him, counsels him, and helps him find his way.

The Forest is about growth. Uncomfortable, traumatic, inescapable growth. The apprehensive boy, confronted by the sobering concept of mortality, struggles alone along a path through fear and confusion. When he returns to the house, it’s clear he is no longer like the carefree children playing under the table.

The story is told in 25 stark black-and-white pages. Each contains a single vertical image. The single-panel format creates a more deliberate pace than the multi-panel rhythm of many graphic novels. The reader’s eye movement occurs within the images rather than between panels.

The layout is orderly. Each image is the same size, bordered by a thin white organic line. A thick, matte-black frame fences the eye within each illustration and deepens the immersive experience.

Ott’s spectacular images carry the full weight of the narrative and imbue the pages with spirit—literally and figuratively.

Using his well-honed scratchboard technique—scrapeboard he calls it—Ott begins with a white surface covered in hardened black ink. He illuminates a scene by deftly scraping the ink with a knife to expose the white beneath. He decides with impressive sensitivity what to reveal and what to conceal in darkness.

Strokes define form. Subtle contours make a tree trunk feel real and familiar. Facial expressions are rendered with a clarity that propels the story. Nothing feels random; each stroke has a precise weight and direction. Nothing is purely white; each form is rendered in meticulous detail.

Ott’s consistency is impressive. People, grass, trees, houses—all are cohesively at home within each image and across them.

You can see Ott work in this 2018 video from French art publisher MEL Publisher:

The forest can feel nightmarish or dreamlike, depending on a few simple design choices. Ott uses light, form, and composition to intensify tension or diffuse it.

In one scene, downward angular shapes create tension, resisting the boy as he struggles to scale a murky incline. In another, the right angles of a thick tree trunk and flat patch of sunlit grass create a serene oasis.

Do yourself a favor—resist the temptation to look too quickly. I’m guilty of fast-flipping the first time I read The Forest. I robbed myself of a lot of nuance. My second, slower pass was much more rewarding.

Creator: Thomas Ott
Published: by Fantagraphics Books, Inc.; February 2022; 32 pages; hardcover
Background: First published in November 2020 by the French press Les éditions Martin de Halleux under the title La Forêt.