Antony Johnston is a genre chameleon, but I have a particular soft spot for his horror work, like Frightening Curves, Spooked and Closer. Closer is also psychological horror to some extent, but it could also be called scientific horror, as it takes some of the principles of quantum mechanics and uses them to form a horrific premise. For the most part, though, the strengths of Closer come in Johnston's characters, and the twists come more in the revelation of their relationships rather than in the more out there twists of murder, which you kind of expect given the tone of the book from the outset. Johnston is joined on art by Mike Norton and Leanne Buckley, and the result is Norton's solid professional layouts with a somewhat more stylized look courtesy of Buckley.
When you say that Closer is a horror tale based around teleportation, everyone's mind naturally drifts to The Fly, particularly the David Cronenberg version, but Closer really more resembles a haunted house tale. A variety of people with a dark secret are invited out to a distant locale, where they find someone has started bumping them off. Hell, the threat in the story is essentially a ghost, just one with a scientific origin rather than one that is supernatural. At least, for the most part. Johnston includes a supernatural touch that I actually felt unnecessarily muddled the issue, particularly when the embodiment of the mystical element shows up toward the end of the issue.
In fact, though teleportation and the quantum mechanics of it are a big part of creating the menace of Closer, they're almost irrelevant to what makes the story work. What makes the story work is the human interaction, as the story shows us how people in an isolated and frightening locale can come together or turn on each other. Johnston writes a terrific bad guy in Graham Butcher, and Norton and Buckley give him a great sinister old man look, but he could just as easily have been a ghost or serial killer and been just as effective. The real story is to be found in his cruelty, his arrogance, his insanity, more than it is his actual abilities.
The rest of the characters are, to be honest, a little more sketchy for the most part. Then again, there's only so much definition they need, since most of them are just lambs for the slaughter. The two characters who really get defined are Serena, our goth heroine (complete with white rat named "Whitey") and Kenneth, who has a connection to Serena that unfolds throughout the course of the story. Serena is the kind of person who would drive me nuts in real life, pretentious and self-involved, but she makes an interesting character, and given her background, her personality is certainly forgivable. Kenneth is more interesting to me, someone whose weakness and disappointments in life led to one tragedy and make him a crucial part of another one in this story. The way these two resolve their relationship is a little too sudden for me, and I would have liked to have seen the relationship revealed earlier and explored more, but it's an interesting relationship on which the story can rest.
Norton recently impressed me with his artwork on Queen & Country, but I think I like his work with Leanne Buckley even better. Norton's strengths are strong storytelling and realistic figures, but Buckley adds a nice touch of atmosphere to the proceedings. Some very nice graytone work gives the book a more moody, horror feel, and some of the characters also really benefit from the collaboration of the two artists. Serena is a notable one, as she looks kind of like a restrained Chris Bachalo character in the midst of a more realistic backdrop, and the craggy, sinister Butcher is another.
