The Cutting Garden
Writer: Darcy Van Poelgeest
Artist: Erin Connally
Letterer: Aditya Bidikar
Logo & Book Design: Ben Didier
Publisher:Image Comics
Publication Date:September 2026
When was the last time you saw a sunrise? Was it when you were small, waking up in the wee hours of the morning, preparing yourself for the next school day? Was it when you were older, fighting against the drooping eyes of sleep out of a sense of duty, be it the completion of a project or the peaceful rest of a child in your care? Was it on a long carried across the country, attempting to see it all without having to pay for a hotel? Was it on a camping trip with friends, sharing stories and drinks as the night transforms into day? Perhaps you’ve never seen a sunrise before, always resting in transition.
If nothing else, Erin Connally’s work on The Cutting Garden expertly depicts a sunrise. It’s a small, simple thing, just sixteen pages (or thereabouts) into the graphic novel. Starting out with the grey hues of the sky as dawn breaks. It feels like it should be day, but there is something amiss. Something lacking. And lo, the sun begins to shine and the lack becomes whole. But it is not the holistic shine of a thousand supernovas. Rather, it is the warmth of a fellow traveler, seeking company in these dark and trying times.
And yet, the brightness of the sun creates shadows. Each one clear on the page Connally designs for the closing of the sequence. Though the chair’s melds with the shadows of walls, you can still clearly see its shape within the darkness. There is a painter’s eye for detail within the image, something so often lost within the comics medium. There are stains on the couch our subject, Josette, sits upon, the latches of the windows are plain to see in their invisibility. The chair has no cushion separate from its seat. Even the rug, colored to invisibly blend in with the woodwork highlights details.
But more than that, there is the mood of the water colors. The splotches of color overlapping Connally’s pencils convey the melancholy of daybreak. Not the elation of daytime, when fun and games run rampant. But rather the sense of finality to the nighttime pleasures. There is warmth in the sun, yes. Each color bursting out from piercing white to mellow yellow to autumnal orange and the memory of red — each of them acts to push away the uncertainty of grey. But still, it lingers within the edges. It is the shadows brought about by the morning sun. It colors the world not with dread, but mystery. Note Josette’s face, bathed in the glow of the sun, as Darcy Van Poelgeest’s words imagines a potential future for someone who is not there. The light of possibility brings the shadows of uncertainty.
This is but one page of The Cutting Garden. One beautiful page full of hidden delights and implications. What follows frequently lives up to those implications with a depth and melancholy befitting of many a gothic romance, akin to Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. If I wrote about more than one page about the comic — from Connally’s use of water colors to Poelgeest’s poetic prose to Aditya Bidikar’s superb lettering — I fear I’d never stop. This comes highly recommended.
Cutting Garden is out September 2
And check out the Beat’s other recent comics reviews!
