THE HORIZON
Writer/Artist: JH
Platform: WEBTOON, Print
Publication Date: August 28, 2021
Rating: Older Teen (web), Mature (print)
Genre: Drama, Apocalyptic, Parable
Note: While The Horizon is available as a vertical strip on WEBTOON, it also cuts certain scenes of violence from the original release. For the full experience, I recommend seeking out the print editions from Ize Press.
There was a boy and a girl in a war-torn world. Together they walked along the road towards the horizon. At the end of the road was the ocean, and beyond the ocean, the sun. But would the two of them ever reach it?
The Horizon is a very odd webtoon. It is a mere 21 chapters, a remarkably short length compared to its peers. The art is primarily in black and white aside from the rare splash of color. None of the characters have names beyond nouns like “boy,” “girl” or “man in the suit.” They barely even have personalities.
Life merely exists, moving towards death
The author JH never explains when or where the story takes place. Is this another country? Another time? All the reader knows is that the boy and girl are young, and they are surrounded by the old, the sick and the mad. Any man or woman they meet on the road might kill them. Any star in the sky could be a falling missile.
The Horizon is comparable to other “children in danger” comics like Shadow Star or Made in Abyss. But JH is far less interested in bodily corruption than in exploring moral hazard. For instance, the boy is taught early in the series how to shoot a gun. His teacher insists that it’s safer to kill anybody with a gun than to trust that they are harmless. But does that make the teacher, who has a gun himself, a hypocrite? The reader is made to sit with that discomfort.
JH’s art delivers a world of stark black and white delivered at maximum volume. At times black swallows the page entirely, marooning the cast in a sea of hyper-detailed and chaotic scribbles. The characters are contorted by the artist’s pen so that their faces and their bodies express the furthest reaches of human pain. When they smile, though, their world explodes into bright color.
The boy took the girl’s hand and ran
At its root The Horizon asks the question: what does it mean to live happily in a world where living is suffering? The last few chapters, which introduce explicit religious symbology, clarify that the story is ultimately a Christian parable. I was surprised that JH insisted on this point when he was content to leave so much else vague. It makes me curious to read his other work, like The Boxer, to see if they share that fixation on crucifixion and rebirth.
There are those for whom The Horizon will be a profound reading experience. Speaking personally, I feel as if I came to the series too late; it might have hit harder for me as a teenager or college student, when I was less desensitized. Whether or not you agree with its message, though, I think it can be appreciated as an idiosyncratic and personal work. JH drew this comic as if he was waging his own battle against heaven or hell on the page. You can see it in every rough line.
