Advanced Review: A Royal Horror Story Finds Its Footing in ‘The Exorcism at Buckingham Palace’ #2
The Exorcism at Buckingham Palace #2
TL;DR
The Exorcism at Buckingham Palace #2 deepens the series' grounded royal horror as a grieving, embattled prince navigates addiction, media scrutiny, and a looming succession crisis all while something ancient and malevolent tightens its grip on the Belmont bloodline. Political pressure mounts from Westminster to the White House as the supernatural threat finally makes itself visible, setting the stage for a climactic third issue.
Creative Team
Writer: Hannah Rose May
Artist: Kelsey Ramsay
Colorist: Heather Breckel
Letterer: Jodie Troutman
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Full Review
Hannah Rose May has constructed something genuinely ambitious with this mini. A horror story that uses the mythology of a cursed royal bloodline as scaffolding for a grounded character drama, with geopolitical intrigue tied to the original series humming underneath it all. Issue #2 deepens that ambition considerably.
The caveat, and it's a real one, is that three issues feels like a format constraint that doesn't serve the story May is telling. This is a dense, layered narrative with a large cast of players and issue two spends much of its page count doing essential character work that deserved to be distributed across a longer run. A five-issue structure, or even an oversized debut that merged the first two issues, would have given this world room to breathe and build tension more gradually. What we get instead is an issue that moves fast because it has to, not because the story demands it.
That said, the central relationships at the heart of this book get real depth this issue, and it matters. When the stakes escalate, and they do dramatically in the final act, you feel it because May has done the hard work of making you care. That's not a given in horror comics.
Kelsey Ramsay's art is doing something interesting across the course of this issue that becomes unmistakable by the final pages. The earlier scenes are rendered in a sketchy, ink-heavy style that keeps the palette muted and the atmosphere close and claustrophobic, but as the issue progresses toward its climax the visuals get progressively darker and more elemental. The best panels in the book are saved for the final act, where Ramsay fully commits to something unsettling. Heather Breckel's colors are a key part of this effect, working in concert with Ramsay to shift the issue's mood from muted dramatics to something properly nightmarish by the closing pages. Jodie Troutman's lettering also deserves a mention for how it handles some particularly tricky visual storytelling choices May deploys throughout the issue.
With one issue left, May has set up a conclusion that has every ingredient it needs to be something special. The supernatural threat is now fully visible and terrifying, the character stakes are as high as they've been, and the geopolitical machinery surrounding the horror has been wound tight enough to snap.
Rating: 4/5
