Spectators HC Vol 1 Review

 

Writer: Brian K Vaughan

Artist: Niko Henrichon

Publisher: Image Comics

Price: $29.99

Release Date: September 10, 2025

 

Life during COVID-19 was tough. Along with all the business closures, cinemas shut their doors. So, when the restrictions lift, Val heads to New York City's Village VIII to watch a movie. She grabs a seat in the back row and puts her jacket on the recliner beside her. Val has met someone she wants to get to know better. But when Val texts her date, she learns he's not coming. Will Val enjoy the movie anyway? And might her return to the cinema change her life? Let’s grab our sodas and popcorn, leap into Spectators HC Vol 1, and see!

 

Story

Pandemic restrictions prevented people from attending community events. Fears of contracting the deadly virus inhibited people from coming into physical contact with others. Amid this era of isolation, Val attempts to banish her disappointment by inserting her earbuds and watching porn on her phone.

 

Distant booms prompt Val to pause the woman giving her boyfriend a charley horse during sex. The people scattered across the cinema wonder about the loud reports. Then, a man enters clad in body armor and a Mickey Mouse hat. He shoots everyone in the first few rows. Then, he climbs the stairs and showers Val with bullets from his rifle.

 

Despite appearances, this isn’t the end of Val’s life in Spectators HC Vol 1. Yet as she looks down on her bullet-riddled corpse, it feels like it is. When Val floats outside the cinema, she meets another hovering woman. Lita couldn't bear to watch the shooting. Still, she asks what it was like. Lita explains that she and her true crime friends have been following the shooter. Cody was obsessed with mass shootings and meme culture. He wrote a manifesto this morning. Then, Lita watched as Cody went out to see how many people he could kill.

 

In Brian K Vaughan's story, Val is one of the few who don't immediately travel to their eventual destination. Unlike Patrick Swayze in Ghost, spirits like Val and Lita don't contact their former lovers. Nor do they communicate through mediums like Whoopi Goldberg. Instead, they experience the most entertaining show of all. Val grew up with a love of cinema. She wrote summaries of TV shows for a living. Val enjoyed watching people's most intimate moments on her phone. Now, no doors are closed to her. Val cannot pick up a phone. But she can watch anyone doing anything, anywhere they live, at any time.

 

Art

Val entered the cinema as a 43-year-old woman. She adorned her straight, pale blonde hair with a pink streak and wore a long-sleeved shirt and jeans. Val leaves wearing a flannel shirt over a T-shirt, boots, and shorts with rolled-up cuffs over black leggings. Val has robust strawberry blonde hair and an unruly ponytail. Lita explains that each ghost’s appearance represents the midpoint of their lives. Despite erasing the signs of age from her features, Val isn’t happy about reclaiming her youth. Still, she could be like Lita, who wears jewelry, one fishnet stocking, and nothing else.

 

After the cinema filled with red upholstered seats, Val sees the world around her in black and white. As the decades pass in Spectators HC Vol 1, Val’s ghostly friends appear in living color. Each ghost radiates a colored aura. But the people she watches appear as shades of gray. The only exception is when people die. Most vanish in a streak of colored light. The remainder regain color and linger, like Lita and Val.

 

Niko Henrichon’s detailed art shows people traveling through Manhattan in floating cubes. Spaceships fill the skies above New York City. Soldiers wearing jetpacks surround giant flying robots. While many of her ghostly contemporaries seek out violence, Val's hunger for intimacy remains. She grows frustrated with those addicted to the illusion of interpersonal fulfillment through technological means. Instead, Val seeks out people engaged in pleasuring others. Then, after two centuries in the afterlife, Val finds someone to watch the show with in Spectators HC Vol 1. Thanks to Image Comics for providing a review copy.

 

Final Thoughts

Why do parents buy their children shooter games but shield them from "inappropriate" depictions of intimacy? And why has Hollywood "cleaned up its act" by deluging cinemas with symphonies of violence? Spectators HC Vol 1 ponders our competitive natures, yearning for intimacy, infatuation with social media, and how current trends may influence our future.

 

Rating 9.8/10

 

To look inside see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.