Category: Horror Stories

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The Chronicles of Legion volume 1-4: Rise of the Vampires, The Spawn of Dracula, Blood Brothers & The Three Faces of Evil



By Fabien Nury, Mathieu Lauffray, Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu, Tirso, Eric Henninot & various, translated by Virgine Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-093-1 (vol. 1), 978-1-78276-094-8 (vol. 2), 978-1-78276-095-5 (vol. 3), 978-1-78276-096-2 (vol. 4) – album HBs/Digital editions.

This book includes Discriminatory Content included for dramatic effect.

We’ve all been in love with vampires since the golden age of Victorian Gothic and it’s taken the undead in some extremely odd directions (I personally draw the line at sparkly immortal kissy-face boy-toys, but to each his own)…

Thankfully our European cousins have a more sanguine view of such matters and innate respect for tradition even when they reinterpret the old classics. Prolific scribe Fabien Nury (Stalin’s Death: A Real Soviet History, Once Upon a Time in France, The Master of Benson Gate, Necromancy as well as the epic Je Suis Légion with John Cassaday) began in 2011: a generational saga putting a fresh creepy spin on the legend whilst keeping a steady eye on the tone of what has gone before…

Les Chroniques de Legion was illustrated by round-robin art-team Mathieu (Star Wars, Long John Silver) Lauffray, Mario (Nathan Never, Morgana, assorted DC covers) Alberti, the enigmatic Zhang Xiaoyu (Crusades, Savage Highway) & Tirso Cons (Eye of the Devil, Le Manoir murmurs), reflecting the tale’s beguiling skirmishes occurring across a number of evocative eras.

First volume Rise of the Vampires found its English-language voice in 2014, opening in 1476 as barbaric warlord Vlad Tepes finally falls before the overwhelming armies of the invading Moslem horde. His stubborn Transylvania a crushed and broken province, the infamous leader had been dragged from the arms of his favourite concubine and beheaded by exultant general Selim Bey. Working for the invaders, Vlad’s despised and treacherous brother Radu knew that the story was not over yet…

As the victorious Turk ravishes his despised enemy’s beloved, Dracula’s implacable sibling rival is just too late to stop his brother’s malign blood invading the Moslem’s body and eating his devout mind. In an instant, Selim Bey’s is gone, overwritten by the undying Impaler…

Nor can Radu stop the sanguine horror escaping, and after “Selim” murders the Sultan and vanishes, the Transylvanian turncoat endures all the anger and hatred of the Ottomans. Of course, since his blood is just as accursed as Vlad’s, Radu’s story doesn’t end with his body’s destruction either…

In 1521, Vlad is on the move once more, inhabiting the body of Gabriella Del La Fuente. This recent orphan voyages to the New World; contracted to marry audacious conquistador Hernan Torres. A flower of the aristocracy, her perfect beauty is only marred by a strange scarlet mark on the back of her neck… a blemish shared with her recently-departed father Victor and a long-dead Turk named Selim Bey…

She has no idea Radu reached the Americas long ago, and transformed them to a hell of his own devising. The other brother has sustained his own arcane life by equally esoteric means, only in his case the intellect was scattered and diminished by the swarm of rats who consumed him and passed on his essence for the longest time…

Russia in 1812, and an undying warrior spirit wears French Hussar Armand Malachie. As Napoleon’s broken armies flee vengeful Cossacks after the battle of Berezina, he convinces his faithful subordinates Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to desert with him. Detouring to the Wallachian Mountains, they hunt for valuable loot Armand had heard about: the “Lost Treasure of Vlad Dracula Tepes”…

It’s all a lie. The true reason for the diversion is that Dracula sensed far-distant Radu had allowed an unprecedented atrocity to be created and the time has come to end their infinitely extended vendetta forever…

London, 1887: elderly lawyer Morris Webster contacts friendless, antisocial clerk and gambling addict Victor Douglas Thorpe with an offer that will forever liberate the morose wastrel and ne’er-do-well from the drudgery of his impoverished Whitechapel life. For reasons inexplicable, Thorpe has been selected by immensely rich aristocratic recluse Lord Byron Cavendish to inherit all his lands and properties… upon successful conclusion of a personal interview, of course…

To Be Continued…

 

The Chronicles of Legion volume 2: The Spawn of Dracula

The epic war between immortal blood-drenched brothers continues in the second translated volume with a reiteration of the gory facts: Vlad Tepes Dracula and his younger brother Radu possess the power to extend their lives beyond what anyone else would think of as death. Their consciousnesses are carried in their blood, and by transferring the potent ichor to other living beings they can possess and dominate any number of victims infinitely. Both have lived for centuries and for all that time they have hated each other…

Here the story expands across three theatres of war with their unceasing attempts to destroy each other centred in very different eras. However,  rather than disparate clashes over time and space, these duels comprise glimpses of an extended, ceaseless campaign of terror with mere mortals callously disposable tools, weapons and cannon fodder…

The opening act occurs in 1885 as gambling addict and utter swine Victor Douglas Thorpe enters the palatial home of reclusive Lord Byron Cavendish. Should the upcoming interview go well, the impoverished cad will soon be heir to the largest fortune in the Empire…

The conference goes exactly as the unseen benefactor intends. When the successful applicant returns to London, he bears a strange red mark and is no longer quite himself.

Centuries earlier in 1521, Gabriella Del La Fuente bears the same scarlet sigil as she is escorted through the green hell of the New World to a meeting with her powerfully placed future husband. Guided by the conquistador’s enticingly masculine mulatto bastard Martin, the Doña’s party – rough soldier, cloying Spanish priests, avaricious self-important dignitaries and her fanatically loyal bodyguard Carlos – slowly make their way through the jungles until an uncanny sense warns of danger ahead…

Seconds later they are attacked by a horde of screaming barbarian warriors seemingly immune to pain and mortal harm, fighting on after being holed by musket fire or even beheaded.

Moments before her body’s imminent demise, Gabriella recognises her brother’s bloodmark on an attacker’s neck and, even as faithful, steadfast Carlos comes to her rescue, Vlad realises Radu has beaten her to this new continent and made himself at completely home.

Miles away, seeing through the dying eyes of his puppets, the other undying scion of Transylvania screams in fear and fury…

With daylight the much-diminished party struggles on towards Torres’ citadel and half-constructed cathedral, with the bride-to-be increasingly succumbing to lust as she cares for her wounded and septic future son-in-law. Once inside the Mission, she is forced back into the role of diffident contract-bride, but Hernan is no easy man to love. His thoughts are solely of preserving a legacy and creating a legitimate dynasty, and her bringing more grasping priests and fanatical Inquisitors to plague him has not endeared her to the Great Man…

Reduced to the status of closeted brood-mare, Gabriella has Carlos capture a huge eagle and, by allowing it to bite her, gains a mighty avian frame from which to view the world and survey her own inexorable rise to power. As he slowly recovers, Martin too falls under her spell, but this bewitching has nothing to do with her blood…

In late 19th century England an aristocrat’s estate burns in a vast and deliberate conflagration, but the new Lord has no regrets and looks only forward, never back.

In 1812 a band of deserters from Napoleon’s army have reached Targovishte. Armand Malachie has led faithful surviving subordinates Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to the Wallachian Mountains in search of the treasure of Dracula, but the long-suffering peasants there, rapidly recognise who the dashing French Hussar is carrying inside him…

When an innkeeper passes on a message from Radu, arrogant Vlad disregards it, but later engages in a pointless clash with a band of Cossacks leading to the death of his mortal host…

As his men abandon his corpse to the snows, the embarrassed immortal marshals his fading strength to reanimate the cadaver and follow in search of a new meat-home…

And in 1887, Victor Douglas Thorpe attends the funeral of his so-suddenly and suspiciously deceased benefactor and is accosted by the woman who carries his unborn child. Her entreaties go unacknowledged and, as he is driven away in his livered carriage, she bitterly damns him…

To Be Continued…

 

The Chronicles of Legion volume 3: Blood Brothers

The unstinting war of immortal sanguinite siblings flows into a third translated volume as here some hint of what caused their enhanced states of being and eternal enmity is at last revealed. Still unfolding, across varied theatres of war, very different aspects of their inhumanity, our saga resumes in 1812 where Transylvanian snows conceal so many creatures which are Radu, collectively awaiting the next move of the Napoleonic deserters lured to this frozen wasteland by dreams of finding Dracula’s gold.

The teller of those tales was Captain Armand Malachi who led his battle-hardened comrades to Wallachia Mountains before dying in battle. At least that’s the way they all saw it. Vlad, riding Malachi, found it expedient to fall down when “killed” but now, with his host form actually ceasing to function in the crippling cold, the eternal warrior is forced to transfer his accommodations to something more welcoming and sustaining. When he catches up to his former friends, however, their understandable reaction leads to more violence and in the end only poor Kholya remains of any real use…

Half a world away and back in 1521, Gabriella, bearing a sign marking all the blood-ridden, stoically endures the vigorous dynastic intentions of future husband Hernan. She had endured the New World to be his comfortable, church-sanctioned brood-mare but is now far more interested in the Conquistador’s bastard son.

Her empire-building is not only imperilled by her treacherous body’s needs, but also by the impossibly powerful, indefatigably hostile natives bearing the taint and preternatural vitality of brother Radu.

When the “Indios” mount a full attack on the half-built compound, the Europeans barely repel the assault, and then only at the cost of the Doña’s steadfast and mystically augmented Carlos, whom she impetuously sacrifices to preserve Martin. In the gory aftermath, Hernan’s son realises what she is and what she’s done, but when they foolishly consummate their overwhelming passion, the constantly spying priests of the Inquisition make their own move. They are of course, no match for the powers of a Dracula…

Soon Hernan is gone too and Gabriella turns her attentions to making the New World her own. All that remains to bar her progress is firmly embedded Radu…

London in 1887 is the centre of the universe and formerly impoverished scoundrel Victor relishes his return to it, even as the latest embodiment of a monster. The new Lord Cavendish takes his place amongst the aristocracy of the Athenaeum Club but cannot escape their haughty disapproval and even outright hostility. No one knows why the immensely wealthy old oligarch settled his title and the largest fortune in the Empire upon such a blatant parvenu blackguard, but they all have suspicions…

When Chief Superintendent Warren of Scotland Yard and solicitor Mr. Morris Webster attempt to extort the new Peer with a fabrication of supposition and innuendo, they are unaware that they are challenging a sadistic absolute monarch carrying centuries of experience in removing threats to his security, but his summary treatment of them is as nothing to the way the next chancer is dealt with…

Soon afterwards the holder of Thorpe’s old gambling debts attempts to reassert his old hold on the former addict and foolishly uses Esther Harrington as leverage. When he was human, Thorpe had left her pregnant and penniless without a second thought, but as new Lord Cavendish is more concerned about making a statement than any sum of money. Before long Whitechapel’s grimy streets first run red with his all-encompassing vengeance and then explosively burn in a furious storm of purging flame.

Afterwards Cavendish cannot really explain why he lets Esther live or why he sets her up with a fortune and a new life… in distant India…

And in the cold snows of a dark night, Roma gypsies gather around a campfire where an old man tells the story of two brothers who were held hostage by the Ottoman Sultan to keep their lordly father compliant. The boys dealt with enforced captivity in different ways. Tough, rebellious Vlad bided his time and nursed his hatred whilst softer, weaker sibling Radu quickly capitulated, becoming a favourite plaything of the Sultan.

One day an aged pilgrim came to court carrying a box with two scorpions in it and Vlad discovered the means to fulfil all his dreams, but at such an incredible cost…

To Be Concluded…

 

The Chronicles of Legion volume 4: The Three Faces of Evil

Bleak, thrilling and sumptuously sinister, this last instalment feels a little rushed as the wetware war of brothers escalates across separate eras. With the Carpathian brothers clashing continually, and taking everyone in their proximities to hell with them, the fate of the unborn abomination is undisclosed…

However, as Vlad and Radu exploit their specific advantages and specialities, the physical clashes enter the terrifying realm of 20th century global conflicts and espionage endeavours, with corpses piling high everywhere. However, and as always, throughout their entwined existences, no one gets out alive and at last the bloody chess game and extended proxy wars can only be settled up close and personally: face to face and ichor to ichor…

Ultimately there a victor of sorts, but it doesn’t feel like it…

With illustrator Eric Henninot (Little Jones, Carthago, XIII Mystery) stepping in to limn a portion of the cataclysmic conclusion, the winner appears to be attrition and weariness, but is there one last bite in one of these beasts?

Physically unfolding as a quartet of luxurious oversized (211 x 282mm) full-colour hardbacks, as well as in digital editions, this superbly illustrated and beguiling told serial saga presents an intoxicatingly absorbing jigsaw of terror and tragedy that is a stunning and ambitious treat for all fans of fang and fear…
The Chronicles of Legion and all contents © Editions Glénat 2011-2012. Translated editions © Titan Comics, 2014 & 2015.

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Ghosts and Ruins


By Ben Catmull (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-678-2 (HB/Digital edition)

If you know the works of Sidney Sime and Edward Gorey, the horror comics of Bernie Wrightson and Michael Kaluta or simply love to peep through your interlocked fingers at the films of Tim Burton or the creepy backgrounds in Charles Addams’ creations, you’re clearly an aficionado of silly, spooky business and know mordant fantasy plays best when played for laughs.

With that in mind, you might be interested in this macabrely monochrome inconceivably un-famous coffee-table art book from cartoonist Ben Catmull (Monster Parade, Paper Theater). It classily celebrates the stuff of nauseating, stomach-churning terror and sinister, creeping suspense in a series of eerie illustrated plates crafted in scratchboard on Masonite – for extra-spooky darkness!

All that audaciously arcane art is wedded to epigrammatic prose snippets to comprise tantalising skeletons of stories best left untold and consequences safely ajudged as unimaginable…

The engrossing landscape hardback (268 x 222mm but digital views may vary!) combines gloomy gothic imagery with wry & witty updates on uncanny situations in a procession of locations best left well enough alone, commencing with six views of the dank domicile of diabolical ‘Drowned Shelley’ and a single ghastly glimpse of ‘The Buried House’.

A queasy quartet then divulges the doings of the ‘The Disgusting Garden’, after which one sight of ‘The Secluded House’ leads inexorably to a triptych revealing ‘The Woman Outside the Window’…

Four frightful frames of ‘Wandering Smoke’ miasmically meander towards ‘The Order of the Shadowy Finger’ – five in full – before giving way to three glimpses of ‘The Lighthouse’; a visit to a domicile all ‘Hair and Earwigs’ and thence to numerous views of the monstrous masterpieces hewn by horrific revenant ‘The Sculptor’…

On view is the ‘Labyrinth of Junk’ once concocted by a demonic carpenter, but that is as nothing compared to the sheer terror of ‘The Crawling House’ and the ghastly practises of a ‘Lonely Old Spinster’…

Mordantly blending bleak, spectral dread and anxious anticipation with timeless scary scenarios, this terrifying tease – a kind of IKEA Fall Catalogue of the Damned – is a sheer delight no lover of Dark Art could conceivably resist…
© 2013 Ben Catmull. This edition © 2013 Fantagraphics. All rights reserved.

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Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares


By John J Muth (NBM/Marvel-Epic)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-060-8 (HB) (Marvel Graphic Novel #25: 978-0-87135-171-5)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As part of an adventurous foray into the then-budding world of graphic albums, the Marvel Graphic Novel line combined experimental projects and storytelling alongside glorified giant comic books. This particularly arty package from came from gallery guy/award winning children’s book illustrator Jon J. Muth.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio on July 28th 1960, he is much travelled, and studied sculpture and shodō (brush calligraphy) in Japan, and in England mastered painting, drawing and printmaking. For a brief moment, years ago, he was a new force in sequential art, scoring much attention on Sandman: The Wake, Lucifer: Nirvana, Swamp Thing: Roots, and The Mystery Play, after turning heads at Marvel and Epic with Moonshadow and Havok and Wolverine: Meltdown.

Also a writer, in 1986 Muth appropriated and accommodated elements of Bram Stoker’s classic novel, reweaving them as the framework for a painterly tour-de-force of gothic set-pieces and moving, intimate images. Familiarity with the original’s plot is not essential – if not actually ill-advised – as mood rather than narrative is favoured in Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares, and the pictures are of paramount interest even if, jarringly and inexplicably, Muth’s narrative mixes first-hand accounts from protagonists Lucy Seward and her father, prose and “newspaper excerpts”, with faux film-script pages into this dark tale of bloody obsession.

For all these problems, it was picked up by NBM in 1992 and re-issued as a gloriously enlarged upscale hardcover album (with eventually a paperback edition) which particularly enhanced those extended sections where Muth’s paintings were allowed to carry the story without the distraction of text.

Although this is so much more “Graphic” than “Novel” and not quite as clever as first seems – all beautiful surface with no depth at all – it is staggeringly pretty, and a delight for any fan with an appreciation of the visual arts and dark delights.
© 1986, 1992 John J Muth. All rights reserved.

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Melusine volume 4: Love Potions

Version 1.0.0

By Clarke (Frédéric Seron) & Gilson, coloured by Cerise and translated by Jerome Saincantin (Cinebook)
ISBN: 978-1-84918-005-4 (album PB)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Like most things in life, this ideal keepsake for Love’s Labours Ludicrously Lost comes far too late to be the perfect St. Valentine’s Day recommendation, but let’s face it: if you want to read a comic rather than romance a paramour – imagined, potential, fairly won or even abducted (wow, that got dark!) or any otherwise – there’s little hope for you anyway…

And Nether Gods forbid if you think buying one for him/her/they/it counts as a Romantic Gesture. You deserve everything you get. Anyway every fule knoes it’s all candies and pumpkin spice this time of year…

Witches – especially cute and sassy teenaged ones – have a long and distinguished pedigree in fiction and one of the most seductively engaging first appeared in venerable Belgian magazine Le Journal de Spirou in 1992. Mélusine is actually a sprightly 119-year-old, diligently studying to perfect her craft at Witches’ School. To make ends meet she spends her days – and far too many nights – working as au pair and general dogsbody to a most disgraceful family of haunts and horrors who inhabit/infest a vast, monster-packed, ghost-afflicted chateau somewhat chronologically adrift and anachronistically awry around the time in the Middle(ish) Ages…

The long-lived, much-loved feature comes in every format from one-page gag strips to full-length comedy tales, all riffing wickedly on supernatural themes and detailing the winsome witch’s rather fraught existence: filled with the daily indignities of the day-job, college studies, the appallingly trivial domestic demands of the castle’s master and mistress and even our magic maid’s large circle of exceedingly peculiar family and friends.

The strip was devised by writer François Gilson (Rebecca, Cactus Club, Garage Isidore) and cartoon humorist Frédéric Seron – AKA Clarke – whose numerous features for all-ages Spirou and acerbic adult humour publication Fluide Glacial include Rebecca, Les Cambrioleurs, Durant les Travaux, l’Exposition Continue… and Le Miracle de la Vie.

Under the pseudonym Valda, Seron also created Les Babysitters and as “Bluttwurst” Les Enquêtes de l’Inspecteur Archibaldo Massicotti, Château Montrachet, Mister President and P.38 et Bas Nylo.

A former fashion illustrator and nephew of comics veteran Pierre Seron, Clarke is one of those insufferable guys who just draws non-stop and is unremittingly funny. He also doubles up as a creator of historical and genre pieces like Cosa Nostra, Les Histoires de France, Luna Almaden and Nocturnes. Apparently, he is free of the curse of having to sleep…

Collected Mélusine editions began appearing annually or better from 1995 onwards, with 27 published thus far. Sadly only a handful (yes, five) of those made it into English translations before Cinebook paused the project, but hope springs eternal…

Originally released in 1998, Philtres d’amour was Continentally the fifth fantabulous folio of mystic mirth and is most welcoming to the casual eye: primarily comprised of 1 & 2 page gags which delightfully eschew continuity for the sake of new readers’ instant approbation…

As the translated title suggests, Love Potions devotes the majority of attention to affairs of the heart – and lower regions – demonstrating how to alchemically stack the deck in the dance of romance…

When brittle, moody Melusine isn’t being bullied for inept cleaning skills by the matriarchal ghost-duchess who runs the chateau, ducking cat-eating monster Winston, dodging frisky vampire The Count or avoiding the unwelcome and often hostile attentions of horny peasants and over-zealous witch-hunting priests, our “saucy sorceress” can usually be found practising spells or consoling/coaching inept, un-improvable and lethally unskilled classmate Cancrelune.

Unlike Mel, this sorry enchantress-in-training is a real basket case. Her transformation spells go awfully awry, she can’t remember incantations and her broomstick-riding makes her a menace to herself, any unfortunate observers and even the terrain and buildings around her…

This tantalising tome features a melange of slick sight gags and pun-ishing pranks, highlighting how every bug, beast, brute and blundering mortal suffers pangs of longing and occasionally needs a little Covenly charisma to kick romance into action. Whether that means changing looks, attitudes or minds already firmly made up, poor harassed student Mel is bombarded with requests to give Eros a hand…

Her admittedly impatiently administered, often rather tetchy aid is pretty hit-or-miss, whether working for peasants, rabbits, tortoises or even other witches, and helping poor Cancrelune is an endless, thankless and frequently risky venture. Moreover, the castle master & mistress have obviously never had an ounce of romance in them, even when they were alive…

At least daunting dowager Aunt Adrezelle is always around to supply the novice with advice, a wrinkly shoulder to cry on and, when necessary, a few real remedies…

This turbulent tome also includes a longer jocular jaunt exploring the dull verities of housework, anti-aging elixirs and the selfish ingratitude of property-speculators, before wrapping up the thaumaturgical hearts-&-flowers with eponymous extended epic ‘Love Potions’. This portrays Melusine’s patience pushed to the limits after another attempt by the local priest to “burn the witch” leads to her helping the locale’s latest scourging saurian marauder find the dragon of his fiery dreams…

Wry, sly, fast-paced and uproariously funny, this compendium of arcane antics is a great taste of the magic of European comics, and a beguiling delight for all lovers of the cartoonist’s art. Read before bedtime and share with your loved ones – but only after asking politely first and maybe sharing our sweets too…
Original edition © Dupuis, 1998 by Clarke & Gilson. All rights reserved. English translation 2009 © Cinebook Ltd.

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Halloween Tales



By O.G. Boiscommun & D-P Filippi, translated by Montana Kane (HumanoidsKids)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-654-5 (HB/Digital editions)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

The trauma-tinged, gluttonously anarchic ceremonies of Halloween are celebrated far and wide these days, and although the basic principles are fairly homogenised, different regions can throw up a few enticing variations that are well worth noting. A graphic series that proved a huge European best-seller when released in 2017, the three stories comprising this magnificent hardback compilation are also available digitally in the original 3-album format, albeit translated into English for your delectation and approval.

Snob and eco-supporter that I am, these days, I’m going to say buy or gift the book if you like: I’m reviewing the electronic editions here…

Devised by writer/artist Olivier Boiscommun (Renaissance: Children of the Nile) and full-time screenwriter/scenarist Denis-Pierre Filippi (Gregory and the Gargoyles, Muse, Fondation Z, John Lord), these overlapping adventures focus on a band of kinds in an oddly archaic city of indeterminate vintage. It’s a place of towers and cathedrals, strange moods and winding streets, perfectly captured by Boiscommun’s exaggerated painting style.

The first album – Halloween Tales: Halloween – sees a gaggle of adolescents gathering to celebrate the night with frolics and mischief: elaborately costumed and frightening each other. However, gauntly-garbed Asphodel remains gloomy and aloof, eventually heading off alone. Her thoughts are locked on death, until she is accosted by a strange, clownish figure who seems barely real. He seeks to alter her mood and mind with a strange philosophy…

Second volume Halloween Tales: The Story of Joe is delivered in eerie monochrome tones and hues, returning us to the mountainous outskirts of that dreaming city where little Bea can’t understand why playmate Joe is being so mean. As they idle about on the rooftops, the boy and his new pet cat survive a close encounter with a huge bat that leaves Joe scarred and bleeding. His doting dad is too busy working these days, so it’s Bea who first notices some bizarre changes – physical as well as emotional – increasingly afflicting her friend, before culminating in him dealing with bullies who persecute them with terrifying power. Only when Joe’s awful transformation is nearly complete do Bea, the cat and his father find a way to challenge the tainted child’s descent into nocturnal isolation and monstrosity…

Scripted by D-P Filippi, Halloween Tales: The Book of Jack completes the trilogy with a return to vibrant colour as a pack of children, led by overbearing Stan, dare little runt Jack to break into a spooky haunted mansion. As the moppet mob approaches the dilapidated pile through a statuary-infested overgrown garden – or is it a graveyard? – lanky Sam tries to reason with her little companion. She has plenty of misgivings and a really bad feeling about all this…

Bravado and peer pressure win out, and Jack enters the derelict building, to discover the biggest library in the world in its centre. Suddenly panicked, he snatches up a tatty tome to prove his triumph and dashes for the door. Only when they are all safely back outside the gates does Sam realise there’s something odd about the book. Many pages are blank, but gradually filing with spindly writing every moment – each unfolding line magically recording what Jack is doing as he does it. Mean, jealous Stan sees an opportunity for mischief…

Next morning the book has vanished, and Jack is slowly becoming a gigantic, savagely uncontrollable beast. Sam knows what’s happened and starts searching the city for the miraculous chronicle, determined to get it and literally rewrite her friend’s appalling future…

With All Hallows festive celebrations inexorably installed in so many modern cultures, it’s grand to see an alternative to the almost-suffocating commercialising and movie tropes where heart, sentiment and yes, unease and outright fear can be safely experienced and expunged. These moody escapades are a true treat, in darkness or in light, and that’s no mean trick…
© 2017 Humanoids, Inc. Los Angeles (USA) All rights reserved.

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Marvel Masterworks: Werewolf by Night volume 2


By Marv Wolfman, Mike Friedrich, Gerry Conway, Tony Isabella, Doug Moench, Mike Ploog, Don Perlin, Tom Sutton, Gil Kane, Gerry Conway, Pat Broderick, Frank Chiaramonte, Mike Royer, Vince Colletta, Tom Palmer& various (MARVEL)
ISBN: 978-1-3029-4948-8 (HB/Digital edition)

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Magical unrealism… 9/10

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

As Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in 1970, in the wake of losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators – Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby – they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties.

The only real exception to this was a mass release of horror titles rapidly devised in response to an industry-wide down-turn in superhero sales. The move was handily expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules.

Almost overnight nasty monsters (plus narcotics and bent coppers – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare within four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too) the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always, the watch-word was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible…

When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in, Marvel moved ahead with a line of scary stars – beginning with a werewolf and traditional vampire – before chancing something new via a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist.

With its title cribbed from a classic short thriller from pre-Code horror anthology Marvel Tales #116 (July 1953), Werewolf By Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2. It had been preceded by masked western hero Red Wolf in #1, and was followed by the afore-hinted Ghost Rider, but this hairy hero was destined to stick around for a while.

This chillingly crackers compendium compiles more moody misadventures of a good-hearted young West Coast lycanthrope who briefly shone as an unlikely star for the entire length of a trading trend, as proved here by the reprinted full-colour contents of Werewolf By Night volume 1 #9-21, Giant-Size Creatures #1, and Tomb of Dracula #18, plus some enticing extracts from Monsters Unleashed #6 & 7: collectively spanning September 1973 to September 1974.

Jack Russell is a teenager with a rare but very disturbing condition. On her deathbed, his mother revealed unsuspected Transylvanian origins to her beloved boy: relating a family curse which would turn him into a raging beast on every night with a full moon… as soon as he reached his 18th birthday.

And so it began…

After many months of misunderstanding as Jack tried to cope alone with his periodic wild side, Jack’s stepfather Philip Russell expanded the story, revealing how the Russoff line was cursed by the taint of Lycanthropy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reached adulthood. Moreover, the feral blight would do the same to his little sister Lissa when she reached her own majority…

As Jack tried and repeatedly failed to balance a normal life with his monthly cycle of uncontrollable ferocity, he met eventual mentor and confidante Buck Cowan, an aging writer who became Jack’s best friend after the pair began to jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s past. Their incessant search for a cure was made more urgent by little Lissa’s ever-encroaching birthday. In the course of their researches they crossed swords with many monsters – human and otherwise – including off-the-rails cop Lou Hackett, who had been going increasingly crazy in his off-the-books investigation/hunt for a werewolf nobody believed in. This time we will meet a fellow horror hairball who has found a shocking remedy to their condition…

Following fond and effusive recollections from novelist/comics scribe Duane Swierczynski in his Introduction ‘My Favorite Fur Baby’, the saga resumes as Jack heads back to LA after meeting Spider-Man, only to find ‘Terror Beneath the Earth!’ Here, Conway, Tom Sutton & George Roussos delve into an impending and thoroughly nefarious scheme by business cartel The Committee. These out-of-the-box commercial gurus somehow possess a full dossier on Jack Russell’s night-life and hire a maniac sewer-dwelling sound engineer to execute their radical plan to use monsters and derelicts to boost sales in a down-turned economy.

Sadly, the bold sales scheme to frighten folk into spending more ends before it begins as the werewolf proves to be far from a team-player in wrap up ‘The Sinister Secret of Sarnak!’

Werewolf by Night #11 revelled in irony as Marv Wolfman signed on as writer for ‘Comes the Hangman’ – illustrated by the incredible Gil Kane & Sutton – in which we learn something interesting about Philip Russell and The Committee, whilst Jack’s attention is distracted by a new apartment, a very odd neighbour and a serial kidnapper abducting young women to keep them “safe from corruption.” When the self-deluded hooded hero snatches Lissa, he finds himself hunted by a monster beyond his wildest dreams…

Concluding chapter ‘Cry Werewolf!’ brings in the criminally underappreciated Don Perlin as inker. In a few short months he would become the strip’s penciller for the rest of the run, but before that original illustrator Mike Ploog (with Frank Chiaramonte) pops back for another stunning session, introducing a manic mystic and a new love-interest (not the same person) in WBN #13’s ‘His Name is Taboo’. An aged sorcerer coveting the werewolf’s energies for his own arcane purposes, the magician is stunned when his adopted daughter Topaz finds her loyalties divided and her psionic gifts more help than hindrance to the ravening moon-beast.

‘Lo, the Monster Strikes!’ pits the wolf against Taboo’s undead – but getting better – son and sees revelation and reconciliation between Philip and Jack Russell. As a result, the young man and new girlfriend Topaz set off for Transylvania, the ancestral Russoff estate and a crossover confrontation with the Lord of Vampires…

Tomb of Dracula #18 (March 1974) commences the clash in ‘Enter: Werewolf by Night’ (Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer) as Jack & Topaz investigate a potential cure for lycanthropy, only to be ambushed by Dracula. Driven off by the strange girl’s psychic powers, the cunning Count realises the threat she poses to him and resolves to slay her…

It concludes courtesy of Wolfman, Ploog & Chiaramonte in Werewolf by Night #15 and the ‘Death of a Monster!’ as the battle of beasts resolves into a messy stalemate, but only after Jack learns of his family’s long connection to Dracula…

The suspense builds as Jack & Topaz reach Paris. After failing to find a cure in his Balkan homeland, and clashing with a vampire they were forced to endure a tiresome – and crucially untimely – forced stopover in the City of Lights. Quel dommage!

This leads to an impromptu clash with a modern-day Hunchback of Notre Dame (he doesn’t sing and he’s not very gentle here) and ends with ‘Death in the Cathedral!’. Scripted by Mike Friedrich and inked by Chiaramonte, this bombastic battle was co-originator Ploog’s farewell performance as artist in residence.

WBN #17 was by Friedrich & Don Perlin, with Jack & Topaz escaping Paris only to fall into The Committee’s latest scheme, as blustering Baron Thunder and his favourite monster ‘The Behemoth!’ try to make the werewolf their plaything again. The plot concluded in ‘Murder by Moonlight!’ (Perlin inked by Mike Royer) as the secret of Jack’s mystery neighbour is exposed when Thunder attacks again, aided by witch-queen Ma Mayhem. However, it’s all a feint for The Committee to kidnap Lissa who will, one day soon, become a werewolf too… and hopefully a far more manageable one…

A potent pin-up carries us onwards before – whilst searching for Lissa – Jack finds out some of the secrets of nasty neighbour Raymond Coker before falling foul of two undead film-stars haunting the Hollywood backlots in #19’s ‘Vampires on the Moon’ (Friedrich, Perlin & Vince Colletta).

Armed with the knowledge that for a werewolf to lift his curse, he/she must kill another one, it’s a swift lope to  Giant-Size Creatures #1, where Tony Isabella, Perlin & Colletta moodily re-imagine a failed costumed crusader and introduce a new creepy champion in ‘Tigra the Were-Woman!’ Greer Nelson – one-time feminist avenger The Cat – is “assassinated” by Hydra agents, revived by ancient hidden race the Cat-People and becomes an unwilling object of temporary affection for feral and frisky moonwalker Jack Russell…

Following text piece ‘Waiter, there’s a Werewolf in my Soup!’ – also from Giant-Size Creatures and explaining the genesis of Marvel’s horror line – WBN #20 debuts writer Doug Moench to wrap up all the disparate plot threads in ‘Eye of the Wolf!’: a rushed but satisfactory conclusion offering a whole pack of werewolves, Baron Thunder, Ma Mayhem and lots and lots of action.

With the decks cleared, Moench began making the series uniquely his own, beginning with #21’s ‘One Wolf’s Cure… Another’s Poison!’, wherein he starts playing up the ever-encroaching 18th birthday of little Lissa, before deftly engineering the final reckoning with rogue cop Hackett…

With the stage set for some truly outrageous yarn-spinning we abruptly divert to a brace of sidebar shorts taken from Monsters Unleashed #6 and 7. Here Gerry Conway’s prose yarn ‘Panic by Moonlight’ and concluding instalment ‘Madness Under a Mid-Summer Moon’ (with spot illustrations by Ploog, Pat Broderick & Klaus Janson) detail how a gang of bikers pick the wrong night to home-invade the flashy singles complex Jack Russell lives in…

Kicking off the bonus section is an Introduction by Ralph Macchio first seen in 2017’s Werewolf By Night: The Complete Collection volume 1, contemporary house ads and – complementing the cover gallery by Sutton, Kane, John Romita, Ernie Chan, Ploog, Palmer, Frank Giacoia, Ron Wilson, Klaus Janson – a selection of original art by Kane, Ploog, Perlin & Chiaramonte.

A moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action, this compilation comprises some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history: tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling. If you must have a mixed bag of lycanthropes, bloodsuckers and moody young magical misses, this is a far more entertaining mix than many modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…
© 2023 MARVEL.

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Ugly Mug #8


By many and various aligned to The House of Harley, including Denny Derbyshire, Ed Pinsent, Julian Geek, Alberto Monteiro, John Bagnall, & various (House of Harley)
ISBN: N/A (A4 softcover)

Comics may be a billion dollar business these days, but thankfully it remains at its heart and soul all about doing something creative and waiting for people to react. Hopefully, they’ll be appreciative and give you lots of money… or at least try to swindle you out of your rights. That latter one’s not actually that bad, as it does mean you’re doing something others want…

What I want – and at last have – is the latest annual extravaganza from artistic iconoclasterers The House of Harley; one more supercharged in your face-area assemblage of stories, thoughts and even continued serials from people who don’t care if pastors complain, social workers worry or the Telegraph pitches a disingenuous, profit-seeking hissy-fit….

At this fertile, dynamic pictorial coalface are folk who would draw strips and cartoons even if the act carried the threat of exile or death penalty: concocting and unleashing the kind of word-wedded images the industry and art form continually renews and reinvents itself with.

Every year The House of Harley unleashes an annual (well duh!) anthology of short stories, posterworks, tableaux, diagrammatic diatribes – even further continued characters and serials, and also invites international guests to get what’s needful off their artistic chests, and it’s well past time you indulged their splendid efforts.

This year’s industrial strength model proudly lurks behind a wraparound cover from  John Bagnall and boasts much “modern machinery invented by returning Ugly Mug contributors” beginning with a polemical parade through hidden depths in ‘Sound of the Underground’, before Jack of all Trades helpfully shares the way to handle wasps nests and Ed Pinsent details the repercussions upon R.S.D. Laing, Record Collector after ‘He travels back in time to get a rare LP!’…

Half page hilarity ensues as ‘Mark E. Smith: Music Teacher’ goes that extra mile for a young violinist whilst nudist larks abound in ‘Life with Freda Nipple’ with a second outing for each at the far end of surreal and epic historical fable ‘Bearskin’ by Denny Derbyshire, whereafter apish anarchy is astoundingly unleashed in Julian Geeks ‘Jungle Ruck’.

The savage outbursts are followed by the eighth arcane instalment of Pinsent’s beguiling ‘Windy Wilberforce’ serial The Saga of the Scroll (fear not, back issues of Ugly Mug are available to all with the wherewithal), and we conclude with some more brief bits featuring Mark E. and Freda, before being escorted off the premises by an assortment of ‘Big backsides’ as depicted by Brazilian guest creator Alberto Monteiro.

Proudly proffering “vinyl mania, whirling microphones, stuffed tigers, cable inspections, terrible mistakes, old mining railways, time travel on the cheap, floating ziggurats, tree portals, strange clouds, hand-cranked cars, mating season orgies, smoking spoil-heaps and a Tunnock’s shortage” here is more racy fare than any British X-mas Annual of yore. These cunning creations teem with turbulent narrative force and visual clout, and come packed to the gills with wry and witty visual oomph, an ideal example of the compulsion to leave our marks wherever we can.

Buy one. Read one. Do one yourself.

You know you want to…
All contents © their respective creators.

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Wild Fun and the Epitome of Sheer Creativity Perfection… 8/10

For all this and much more please check out houseofharley.net/shop

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The Eyes of the Cat


By Moebius & Jodorowsky (Humanoids)
ISBN: 978-1-59465-032-1 (HB/Digital edition) ISBN: 978-1-59465-042-0 (Yellow Edition)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Many of the world’s greatest comics exponents are cruelly neglected these days. It’s not because they are out of vogue or forgotten, it’s simply that so much of their greatest material lies out of print. This little gem is one of them…

Born in Tocopilla, Chile in 1929, Alejandro Jodorowsky Prullansky has been a filmmaker, playwright, actor, author, world traveller, philosopher, spiritual guru and comics writer. The controversial creative polymath is known for such films as Fando y Lis, El Topo, The Holy Mountain, Sante Sangre, The Rainbow Thief, The Dance of Reality and others, plus a vast and influential comics output, including Anibal 5 (created whilst living in Mexico), Le Lama blanc, Aliot, The Meta-Barons, Borgia, Madwoman of the Sacred Heart, The Son of El Topo, Showman Killer, Knights of Heliopolis and so many more, created with some of South America and Europe’s greatest artists. His decade-long collaboration with Moebius on Tarot-inspired Sci Fi epic The Incal (1981-1989) utterly redefined and reinvented what comics could aspire to and achieve…

Most widely regarded for his violently surreal avant-garde films, loaded with highly-charged, inspired imagery – blending mysticism and what he terms “religious provocation” – and his spiritually-informed fantasy and science fiction comics tales, Jodorowsky is also fascinated by humanity’s inner realms and has devised his own doctrine of therapeutic healing: Psychomagic, Psychogenealogy and Initiatic massage. He still remains fully engaged and active in all these creative areas to this day and has never stopped creating. Most of his lifelong themes and obsessions are seamlessly wedded together in this glorious re-release of his very first comics collaboration with the creator most inextricably associated with him.

Jean Henri Gaston Giraud was born in the suburbs of Paris on May 8th 1938 and raised by his grandparents after his mother and father divorced in 1941. In 1955, he attended the Institut des Arts Appliqués where he became friends with Jean-Claude Mézières who, at 17, was already selling strips and illustrations to magazines like Coeurs Valliants, Fripounet et Marisette and Le Journal de Spirou. Giraud, apparently, spent most of his college time drawing cowboy comics and left after a year…

In 1956, he visited Mexico, staying with his mother for eight months before returning to France and a full-time career drawing comics. These were mostly westerns such as Frank et Jeremie for Far West and King of the Buffalo, A Giant with the Hurons and others for Coeurs Valliants, all in a style based on French comics legend Joseph Gillain AKA Jijé. Giraud spent his National Service in Algeria in 1959-1960, where he worked on military service magazine 5/5 Forces Françaises and, on returning to civilian life, became Jijé’s assistant in 1961, working on the master’s long-running (1954-1977) Western epic Jerry Spring.

A year later, Giraud and Belgian writer Jean-Michel Charlier launched the serial Fort Navajo in Pilote #210. Remarkably quickly its disreputable, antihero lead character Lieutenant Blueberry became one of the most popular European strips of modern times. From 1963 to 1964, Giraud produced a number of strips for satire periodical Hara-Kiri and – keen to distinguish and separate the material from his serious day job – first coined his penname “Moebius”…

He didn’t use it again until 1975 when he joined Bernard Farkas, Jean-Pierre Dionnet and Philippe Druillet – all inspired science fiction fans as the founding fathers of a revolution in narrative graphic arts as created by “Les Humanoides Associes”. Their groundbreaking adult fantasy magazine Métal Hurlant utterly enraptured the comics-buying public and Giraud again sought a discreet creative persona for the lyrical, experimental, soul-searching material he was increasingly driven to produce: series such as The Airtight Garage, The Incal and the mystical, dreamy flights of sheer fantasy contained in Arzach…

To further separate his creative twins, Giraud worked inks with a brush whilst the futurist Moebius rendered with pens…

After a truly stellar career which saw him become a household name, both Giraud and Moebius passed away in March 2012.

As explained in Jodorowsky’s Foreword, this magnificently macabre minimalist monument to imagination came about as brief tale in a free, promotional premium “Mistral Edition” of Métal Hurlant constituted their very first collaboration – outside the creative furnace that was the pre-production phase of doomed & aborted movie Dune, where they first met. Also included in that imaginative movie production dream-team was Dan O’Bannon, Douglas Trumbull, H.R. Giger and Chris Foss, and some secrets of that time are also shared here.

Les Yeux du chat was realised between 1977 and 1979: a dark fable that is sheer beauty and pure nightmare rendered in stark monochrome and florid expansive grey-tones. Text is spartan and understated: more poetic goad than descriptive excess or expositional in-filling.

There’s a city, a boy at a window, an eagle and a cat. When their lives intersect, shock and horror are the inescapable result…

Available in a number of formats since 2011, this is a visual masterpiece no connoisseur of comics can afford to miss.
© 2013 Humanoids, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Littlest Pirate King


By David B. & Pierre Mac Orlan, translated by Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-403-0 (HB)

Just one more day, me Buckos!

Tim Burton has pretty much cornered the market on outlandish, spooky fairy tales masked as edgy all-ages fantasy, but if you and your kids have a fondness for scary fables and macabre adventure with a uniquely European flavour you might want to seek out this supremely impressive yarn of unquiet buccaneers and phantom piracy.

Pierre Mac Orlan was one of the nom-de-plumes of celebrated French author, musician and performer Pierre Dumarchey who – between his birth in 1882 and death in 1970 – managed to live quite a number of successful, productive and action-packed lives. As well as writing proper books for sensible folk, he also crafted a wealth of artistic materials including children’s fables like this one, hundreds of popular songs and quite a bit of rather outré pornography.

A renowned Parisian Bohemian, Mac Orlan sang and played accordion in nightclubs and cabaret. He was wounded in the trenches in 1916, subsequently becoming a war correspondent. When the conflict ground to a conclusion, he evolved into a celebrated film and photography critic as well as one of France’s most admired songwriters and novelists.

By contrast, David B. is a founder member of the groundbreaking strip artists’ conclave L’Association, and has won numerous awards including the Alph’ Art for comics excellence and European Cartoonist of the Year. He was born Pierre-Françoise “David” Beauchard on February 9th 1959, and began his comics career in 1985 after studying advertising at Paris’ Duperré School of Applied Arts. His seamless blending of Artistic Primitivism, visual metaphor, high and low cultural icons, as seen in such landmarks as Babel, Epileptic and Best of Enemies: A History of US and Middle East Relations, Nocturnal Conspiracies and many more, are here augmented by a welcome touch of morbid whimsy and stark fantasy imbuing this particular gem with a cheery ghoulish intensity only Charles Addams and Ronald Searle might possibly match.

Mac Orlan’s tale perhaps owes more to song than storybook, with its oddly jumpy narrative structure, but M’sieur B.’s canny illustration perfectly captures the true flavour and spirit of grim wit as it recounts the tale of the ghostly crew of The Flying Dutchman, accursed mariners destined to wander the oceans, never reaching port, destroying any living sailors they encounter and craving nothing but the peace of oblivion.

Their horrendous existence forever changes when, on one of their periodic night raids, they slaughter the crew of a transatlantic liner but save a baby found on board. Their heartless intention is to rear the boy until he is old enough to properly suffer at their skeletal hands, but as years pass the eagerly anticipated day becomes harder and harder for the remorseless crew to contemplate…

Stark and vivid, scary and heartbreakingly sad, as only a children’s tale can be, this darkly swashbuckling romp is inexplicably not a global classic in every home (yet) but remains a classy act with echoes of Pirates of the Caribbean (which it predates by nearly a century) that will charm, inspire and probably cause a tear or two to well up.
© 2009 Gallimard Jeunesse. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Frankenstein


By Mary W. Shelley adapted by Martin Powell & Patrick Olliffe (Malibu Graphics Inc./ Moonstone/ CreateSpace)
ISBN: 0-944735-39-8 (TPB Malibu), 978-0-97129-379-3 (HB Moonstone)
978-1-47927-227-3 (TPB CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform)

This book includes Discriminatory Content produced in less enlightened times.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s gothic classic The Modern Prometheus was first published in 1818 and is still one of the most influential novels of popular fiction ever written. As is so often the case, it is the book rather than the many cinematic or other reinterpretations that best informs this impressive lost graphic gem from 1990.

Originally released as a 3-issue miniseries from Eternity Comics, it followed the success of author Powell’s Sherlock Holmes pastiches Scarlet in Gaslight and A Case of Blind Fear (collected by Moonstone as Sherlock Homes Mysteries Volume 1, ISBN: 978-0-97216-686-7), but rather than extrapolation, the author aimed for a more straightforward adaptation of the source material.

Although no true and faithful version yet exists – since most of the novel deals with the agonies, travails and travels of hellbent natural philosopher Victor Frankenstein and his interactions with his damned creation are relatively few (albeit torturous and telling) – this is an effective and often chilling interpretation made starkly memorable by illustrator Patrick Olliffe (Edgeworld: Sand, Amazing Spider-Man, 52, Dracula: Lord of the Undead, Hero Alliance).

Version 1.0.0

The chiaroscuric art-in-transition of the young artist perfectly establishes a mood of tortured humanism, with breathtaking resonances of Roy G. Krenkel and solid echoes of Berni Wrightson; but, oddly, not that latter’s own impressive treatment of Shelley’s text. Of the many, many versions of the tale, this ranks closest to the superb Mike Ploog version put out by Marvel in the early 1970’s (see The Monster of Frankenstein link please to October 15, 2022).

This is not a replacement for the novel – so please read that too – but a well-crafted addendum that deserves a larger audience. Oddly enough the Spanish and others abroad already agree with me as editions of this quintessentially English masterpiece have been available in their languages for decades.

¿Qué pasa? Quoi?
Script © 1990 Martin Powell. Artwork © 2006 Patrick Olliffe. All Rights Reserved.