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Scarenthood #1
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Story & Art: Nick Roche
Colors: Chris O’Halloran
Letters: Shawn Lee
Cover: Nick Roche

Picking up IDW’s Scarenthood I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I think my last horror review was Image’s excellent Infidel, which proved to be a profoundly jarring work casting excoriating social commentary against a macabre backdrop of genuinely unnerving supernatural rage. From the title alone, Scarenthood could not have seemed further removed. For me, it evoked an impression of the saccharine, kid-friendly fare one might find in any mom-and-pop pharmacy around Halloween. I’m proud to admit that I was laughably off the mark. Scarenthood is a slick, darkly comedic romp aimed squarely at adults that as is irreverent as it is timely. 

Written and drawn by Nich Roche, Scarenthood follows a lively quartet of mostly thirty-something parents whose young children attend the same Montessori style pre-school in the Rathdaggan area of Ireland. After suffering through some initial awkwardness, restless mom Jen hits it off with recent transplant Cormac. The friendship starts off rather innocuously with a walk home and some banter. The next day, however, when Jen goads Cormac into breaking into the school auditorium while everyone is away on a field trip, things take a darker turn. Cormac inadvertently runs afoul of supernatural forces haunting the Little Pixies school building, suffering what seems to be hours of lost time in the process. 

After Cormac is visited by a horrific apparition at home the same evening, he enlists the aid of his new friends to figure out what to do. Rounded out by quick-witted Sinead and pugnacious elder conspiracy theorist Flynno, the team must investigate the history of the school and discover the origin of Cormac’s terrifying curse. As one of the team delves into his own shocking connection to the rebuilt former hunting lodge, the mystery only becomes stranger and more surreal. We can never be certain that all of the information shared is the truth and that all of the group members are behaving in earnest.  

Generously intermingled with the gradually building supernatural drama, Roche incisively calls on universal challenges that have confounded stay-at-home parents the world over, especially as the pandemic has shifted so many more of us to the more harried work-from-home parent. He deftly stages situational gags that hit so close to home I often found myself looking around for any adult to share a chuckle with. Working from home myself, sequestered in front of a computer without a sympathetic adult in earshot while my three young children ran amok only compounded how hilariously meta the humor is. I get it. It’s golden. I can’t wait to see what next.

Christian Davenport
cable201@comicattack.net