Spooky season meets election season in The Exorcism at 1600 Penn #1 from Hannah Rose May, Vanesa Del Rey, and IDW Publishing.
The United States is currently wading through two recurring traditions simultaneously: the early fall Halloween season, in which most people indulge in the playfully demonic and monstrous, and the more seriously cursed election season, with 2024 being especially potent as it is a presidential election year.
The issue’s motifs are visually apparent on its opening page. Former United States Senator Kelly Doyle is delivering her fiery, optimistic inauguration speech following her swearing-in as the first female President of the United States. Yet, the scene looks anything but sunny, as grey clouds blot the sky and the Capitol Building looms behind, as if ready to consume her and everyone around her.
Mara’s ostracization is the most acute and becomes the story’s cornerstone. She spends her days being ridiculed by her peers without backing from her brother. With her mother often absent, she receives some support from her father but spends most of the night doomscrolling on her phone. Del Rey pulls these posts out of Mara’s phone, making her compete with them for space within the panel, visualizing the mental anxiety this habit is causing her, taking up more and more space with each instance.
The deeper into doom-scrolling that Mara gets, the more she seems to awaken something supernatural lurking in the forgotten room of the White House that she has made her sanctuary. It’s in this room that Mara wakes after a nightmare of nuclear apocalypse. Following this is the issue’s only splash page, which places Mara and her consoling parents in a corner of light as the darkness, and whatever lurks within it, surrounds and threatens to consume them.
May’s dialogue can be offputting at times , but weaves an intriguing tale of family drama against a backdrop both political and supernatural. Del Rey’s layouts, particularly over two pages, are sometimes flashy to the point of distracting from the scenes they are meant to frame. However, with Bellaire’s moody colors, her artwork makes the White House seem possessed and conveys the fracturing of a family.
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