The Tower Chronicles: DreadStalker


By Matt Wagner & Simon Bisley (Legendary Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-93727-836-6

In The Tower Chronicles: Geisthawk, FBI agent Alicia Hardwicke first encountered a strangely compelling masked bounty hunter named John Tower who filled a rather select niche in the broad spectrum of law-enforcement and peacekeeping services. This odd enigma helped people with highly specialised problems: things cops and feds and government refused to even acknowledge the existence of…

After having her eyes opened and seeing what Tower – “the Geisthawk” – did with vampires and ghosts and even stranger supernal threats, Alicia started skipping work and letting her day job slide to join him on his bizarre cases, but she could never crack his carefully guarded façade of secrets nor ascertain the reason for his relentless, thankless and generally unrewarding crusade.

The concept was created by Thomas Tull (whose Legendary Pictures is responsible for the latest Batman/Dark Knight movies as well as The Hangover, Man of Steel and 300) and comics veteran Matt Wagner – presumably as a prime concept for the new hero’s own monster-bashing film franchise…

This slim and sinister spooky sequel volume collects The Tower Chronicles: DreadStalker #1-6 (spanning August 2014 to January 2015) wherein Wagner, illustrator Simon Bisley and colourist Ryan Brown ramp up the tension whilst revealing a few of the horror-hunter’s darkest secrets.

The saga begins in the frozen wilds of Northern Ontario where a couple of thrill-seeking teenagers stumble upon a very hungry Wendigo. Their immediate gory consumption is narrowly averted by Tower and Hardwicke but, after the rescue and inevitable bloody battle, the FBI agent realises her sullen partner seems more interested in ransacking the beast’s lair that attending to a shellshocked survivor…

Elsewhere creepy cultists “The Brotherhood of the Rose” know far more about Tower than he would like, and confer on how to deal with the DreadStalker and give the first hints to his true motivations. Apparently magic calls to magic and supernatural terrors tend to confiscate eldritch artefacts. Somewhere there are objects Tower wants and his constant despatching of dire hidden horrors gives him unmatched opportunities to search for such spoils…

The Brotherhood also covet such articles and, now that Tower has allied himself with Hardwicke, they believe they have the potential to exert a little leverage…

In the Washington DC office Alicia is using the Bureau’s vast resources to look into Tower’s past but her investigations are beginning to return impossible results. She is also starting to draw attention from her superiors, and terms like “negligence”, “obsession” and “reassigned” are being used by her furious boss…

In his lonely citadel Tower broods. He is actually centuries old and has carried a grievous wound of the heart for that entire time. All his searching and ransacking of monsters’ dens is for one sublime purpose but his quest seems as far from success now as it always has. …And on the other side of a looking glass, a beautiful, mournful woman waits for him… Determined to get some concrete answers, Hardwicke confronts Tower’s elderly lawyer Romulus Barnes and wrangles an incredible story from the attorney of how the taciturn troubleshooter saved a young law student’s son from demonic doom in return for a lifetime of legal servitude…

A most insidious villain, Martin Castle spearheads a cabal of entrepreneurs dubbed “The Château Group” and, when not selling genetically augmented heirs to shady sheiks, he and they harbour patient dreams of acquiring the world. However, Castle’s machinations mask a vile and increasingly debilitating secret…

Some answers – for the reader at least – are forthcoming as Tower resurfaces in New Mexico, hunting an avian monstrosity. Scaling the high cliffs to its nest, Jean Latour‘s mind cannot help but wing back to the First Crusade when as one of nine Christian warriors dedicated to liberating the Holy Land he co-founded The Knights Templar in 1119 Anno Domini.

He recalls how the crusaders’ initial vows of piety, poverty, chastity and charity gradually eroded as their ranks grew and their coffers swelled, and how his life changed forever when he rescued the heathen maiden Nadira from Christian soldiers determined to stop her from praying at the mosque they had converted to a barracks…

In New Mexico Tower’s reveries are curtailed when the appalling Thunderbird attacks, only to fall after an horrific battle to the DreadStalker’s accumulated centuries of martial prowess. The net result is only more disappointment as the slaughtered beast’s nest reveals many artefacts but nothing of any use to the immortal warrior.

When Tower drags his battered, pain-wracked body back to his car, Alicia is waiting…

Still refusing to share, he drives off and Hardwicke reluctantly goes to plan B, applying the federal screws to another member of Tower’s support network. Raf is the genius who builds the uniquely devastating ordnance employed by the Geisthawk to expunge assorted creatures of the night but his tale of how the un-aging man exorcised his unquiet mother only adds to Alicia’s growing sense of unease…

As Mr. Castle undergoes radical surgery in Austria to alleviate an unpleasant arcane infirmity, further gathered strands at last force Agent Hardwicke to accept the impossible: her silent partner is possibly hundreds of years old and has been holding back a horde of horrors for all that time…

The man himself is in Colorado, dealing with a werewolf incursion in a brutally efficient manner before heading on to Ireland. En route he calls Alicia who probably scuppers her own career to join him, blithely unaware that the Brotherhood and Castle are both using her to track Tower. Neither organisation really wants the monster hunter, but they really need the prizes he’s likely to find…

After a cataclysmic battle with a ghastly Gaestlych, Tower finally relents and shares his story with Alicia, but the revelations give her no joy or satisfaction…

To Be Continued…

Fast-paced and astoundingly action-packed, this slight but satisfying romp is tailor-made for transferral to large or small screen as companion or rival to Constantine, True Blood and Supernatural, but The Tower Chronicles primarily offers comics fans a spectacular rollercoaster of straightforward beastie-bashing in the grand traditional manner beloved of Fights ‘n’ Tights enthusiast everywhere.
© 2015 Legendary Comics LLC and Matt Wagner. All Rights Reserved.