Strangehaven

Strangehaven is a self-published comic book series, created, written, and illustrated by Gary Spencer Millidge. Ostensibly a murder mystery set in a small, isolated village in South West England, Strangehaven fuses elements of folk horror and supernatural soap opera with off-beat humour and an impossibly idealised vision of British rural life.

Alex Hunter finds himself lost during a motoring holiday in the narrow winding lanes of Dartmoor in Devon. He sees a vision of a woman dressed in black standing in the middle of the road, which causes him to crash, rendering him unconscious. He wakes to find himself in the village of Strangehaven. During a short recovery period, he falls in love with both the village and its people, in particular the doctor’s young receptionist Janey. But like so many such quaint communities, it seems that behind each door lies a mystery, and every inhabitant has a secret to hide.

In Strangehaven we encounter all kinds of unusual characters including ghosts, talking animals, an Amazonian shaman, a missing World War II pilot, witches, and an alien from the planet Nimoi. Who or what are the mysterious Knights, a pseudo-masonic masked society who are using the village for their own ends…and why is there the body of a naked girl in a fishtank? Will Alex manage to escape the village? Does he even want to….?

Millidge’s Strangehaven is a meticulously crafted patchwork of murder mystery, quantum theory, secret rituals, and tangled human relationships. It questions the very nature of reality, and how to make the perfect cup of tea.

The series draws elements from the author’s own life, together with many quintessentially British traditions and culture, including pop music, sports and classic sixties’ television series like The Prisoner and The Avengers (while transposing something of Lynch’s Twin Peaks to rural England).

Inspired by comics series like McKean’s Cages, and Moore and Sienkiewicz’s Big Numbers, Millidge manages to create something entirely his own. A village not quite like any other. You may visit but, “you’ll never leave.”

Publishing History

Gary published 18 issues of Strangehaven between 1995 and 2005, which have been collected and are available as three graphic novels; Arcadia, Brotherhood, and Conspiracies. Between 2014 and 2023, the long-awaited fourth volume Destiny was serialised over eleven episodes in the British comic anthology, Meanwhile… published by Soaring Penguin Press, but to date has not been collected.

Alan Moore Creator of Watchmen, From Hell, League of Extraordinary Gentleman, V for Vendetta, Voice of the Fire, Jerusalem, The Show

A darkly glittering example of the soap opera noir, Gary Spencer Millidge’s Strangehaven is an occasionally-opening portal into a beautifully realised otherworld, a plane all the more intriguing and sinister for its resemblance to our own mundane territories. Perfectly controlled and naturalistic storytelling creates a wraparound illusion of the everyday in which surreal and threatening incidents are studded like unnerving little jewels. Gary Millidge is a consummate craftsman, a watchmaker patiently constructing his own unique universe.
For a passport to a planet of unsettling delights that writhe beneath the surface of the ordinary, I strongly recommend that you attempt to be there when the portal next opens.

Bryan Talbot Creator of Luther Arkwright Heart of Empire, The Tale of One Bad Rat, Grandville

One of the minority of truly original Anglo-American comic books that reject formula in favour of a personal vision, has real depth of plot and characterization and carries a milieu and atmosphere all its own.

Steven Grant Creator of Whisper, Mortal Souls and Two Guns

Strangehaven is a great argument for comics-as-literature. Very stylish and beautifully done. Had Millidge chosen to go the work-for-hire route at companies such as Vertigo, he'd undoubtedly be a major star in the business by now. He deserves to be.