Nectar #4 Review: Vault Comics Turns Beautiful Butterflies Into Pure Nightmare Fuel

WEPA! Now this right here is how you bring a horror comic to the finish line with smoke in the air, blood on the boots, grief in the chest, and one last crooked smile from the darkness. Nectar #4 from Vault Comics does not tiptoe into its finale. Nah, this issue kicks the door open like it owes rent, throws the reader into the blaze of Misery Island, and says, “You wanted answers? You wanted consequences? Cool. Hold this trauma.”

Jeremy Robinson has been building Nectar like a wicked campfire story told by someone who knows the woods are already watching. What started as a bizarre, eerie invasion of blood-hungry butterflies has grown into something sharper than creature-feature chaos. This finale understands that great horror is not only about what bites you. It is about what breaks you first. Amos begins this issue buried under the kind of sorrow that does not shout. It sinks. Lillian’s loss hangs over the opening like smoke after a house fire, and Robinson gives that emotional devastation enough room to sting before the story goes full mayhem. That balance matters. Without the grief, the gore is just spectacle. With the grief, every splash of violence lands like a bad memory with teeth.

Pastor Grant, meanwhile, remains a terrifying portrait of righteous madness. He is not simply a villain with a weapon and a pulpit. He is certainty curdled into cruelty. That is what makes him dangerous. The man truly believes he is on the side of heaven while dragging everyone around him through hell. Robinson writes him with that frightening, real-world flavor of a person who confuses control for faith, punishment for justice, and fear for leadership. The result is a villain who feels theatrical without becoming cartoonish. He is big, nasty, and unhinged, but there is still enough human ugliness under the robe to make him feel recognizable. That is the scary part, fam. Monsters with fangs are one thing. Monsters with followers? Whole different beast.

The pacing in this issue is viciously efficient. Nectar moves like it knows the island is burning and nobody has time for a committee meeting. The opening immediately drops us into panic and loss, then the book pivots into pursuit, confrontation, and supernatural reckoning. There is very little wasted motion here. Every page feels like it is either tightening the noose or ripping it loose. At times, the finale is so fast and feral that I would have gladly taken a few extra pages just to let certain emotional beats breathe longer. That is my main constructive note. The climax hits hard, no doubt, but the world and characters are so gnarly, strange, and compelling that the issue occasionally feels like it is sprinting past moments that could have cut even deeper. That said, better to leave readers hungry than stuffed with filler. Nectar goes out lean, mean, and sticky with nightmare fuel.

The art team of Annapaola Martello and Francesco Francini absolutely brings the horror banquet. This book looks diseased in the best way possible. The fire-lit landscapes, the haunted faces, the brittle bodies, the panic in the posture work, all of it gives Misery Island a suffocating atmosphere. You can almost smell the saltwater, ash, and blood. The opening sequence with Lillian is especially brutal because it contrasts elegance and horror: floating fabric, fire, water, flesh, and silence all colliding in a way that feels tragic instead of merely gruesome. Then the book later unleashes the butterflies as both beautiful and revolting, turning delicate wings into instruments of divine-looking carnage. That contradiction is the visual hook of Nectar: something gorgeous fluttering toward you with murder in its tiny little heart. Cute? Yes. Nightmare? Also yes. Nature said, “I got hands,” and then upgraded to wings.

Steve Canon’s colors are a major reason this issue punches so hard. The orange of the butterflies and the inferno glow against the cold blues, grays, and blacks creates this nasty visual rhythm where warmth never feels comforting. It feels predatory. The flames do not illuminate safety; they expose doom. The butterflies do not bring springtime; they bring judgment. Canon understands that color in horror should not simply decorate the page. It should manipulate the reader’s nervous system. The palette keeps dragging your eye between beauty and brutality until your brain starts questioning which one is worse. That is slick work.

Jim Campbell’s lettering with AndWorld Design deserves love too, because the sound effects in this issue do not just sit on the page. They attack. The cracks, clicks, snaps, and wet, ugly impact lettering give the violence texture. In a book where gunfire, fluttering wings, burning structures, and body horror all collide, the lettering becomes part of the choreography. It guides the eye without cluttering the chaos, and that is not easy when the story is basically throwing gasoline, bullets, butterflies, and religious mania into one blender. Campbell keeps the reader locked in. Clean when it needs to be. Savage when it has to be.

Chris Shehan’s cover is also a winner. That boot suspended against the moonlit blue with monarch-like butterflies swarming around it tells you everything about the vibe before page one. It is simple, iconic, ominous, and stylish. The image carries mystery and menace without screaming too loud. That is the kind of cover that makes a reader stop on the shelf and go, “Hold up… what kind of madness is this?” Mission accomplished.

What makes Nectar work as a finale is that it does not forget the emotional spine beneath all the bloodshed. Amos is not just surviving an infestation. He is surviving despair. He is staring into the abyss with nothing left but pain, rage, and the faint possibility that the horror around him might not be random. The mysterious butterflies have operated like plague, punishment, miracle, and monster all at once, and this issue leans into that delicious ambiguity. Are they evil? Are they nature’s revenge? Are they something older, stranger, and more mythic than any of the characters can comprehend? The book does not over-explain the magic, and that choice keeps the horror alive. Some answers are better when they still buzz in your ear after the final page.

As a horror comic, Nectar is nasty, stylish, and emotionally barbed. As a finale, it delivers a satisfying collision between grief, fanaticism, vengeance, and transformation. As a Vault release, it carries that boutique horror energy the publisher continues to cultivate so well: creator-driven, visually daring, and unafraid to get weird with purpose. This is not clean horror. This is not safe horror. This is the kind of comic that puts something pretty in front of you, then reminds you that pretty things can still eat.

Nectar is a bloody, beautiful curtain call for Misery Island, and it leaves a memorable aftertaste: part tragedy, part monster movie, part folk nightmare, part “yo, did that butterfly just ruin my whole day?” Robinson, Martello, Francini, Canon, Campbell, AndWorld Design, Gilmour, Shehan, and the Vault crew deliver a finale that feels operatic without losing its pulp punch. It is grim, kinetic, gross, emotional, and absolutely worth picking up when it hits shops.

Nectar #4 sticks the landing with gore, grief, and gorgeous horror craft. It may move a little too fast in spots, but the finale delivers the goods with enough fire, faith, blood, and butterfly madness to make Misery Island one of the creepiest comic book destinations of 2026. WEPA approved.

CRUSADERS SCORE:
4/5

Writer/Creator: Jeremy Robinson
Artists: Annapaola Martello & Francesco Francini
Inks: Annapaola Martello
Layouts: Francesco Francini
Colorist: Steve Canon
Letterer: Jim Campbell with AndWorld Design
Editor: Kane Gilmour
Cover Art: Chris Shehan
Publisher: Vault Comics / A Breakneck Comics Production

On Sale: June 24, 2026

Author Profile

Al Mega: I'm Al Mega the CEO of Comic Crusaders, CEO of the Undercover Capes Podcast Network, CEO of Geekery Magazine & Owner of Splintered Press (coming soon). I'm a fan of comics, cartoons and old school video games. Make sure to check out our podcasts/vidcasts and more!