Category: Horror Stories

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Heart of the Beast – A Love Story


By Dean Motter, Judith Dupré & Sean Phillips (Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60690-491-6

What is art? Does it have anything to do with creativity? What is its value and what is the cost?

Originally released as an original hardback graphic novel in 1994 as one of the early experimental triumphs of DC’s Vertigo imprint, this evocatively disturbing reworking – or more accurately contemporary sequel – to one of literature’s greatest stories of mystery and gothic imagination features a tragic, doomed love triangle and carefully unravelled mystery.

In August 2014 this remastered 20th Anniversary commemorative hardcover edition was released by Dynamite, re-presenting the tale in all its subtly sinister glory, bolstered with a few textual extras for the inquiring, bonus-hungry minds of post-Millennials.

The first of those is ‘Circa Soho’: an atmospheric mood-enhancing and memory-intensive reminiscence from co-scripter Judith Dupré; now a globally celebrated author, commentator and critic on The Arts, but back then a fully active participant and observer in the scene.

As a self-confessed “Gallerina” making a living amongst the wild creatives and greedy lampreys attached to the arena of contemporary art burgeoning in the former no-go areas of New York City she was the perfect partner for writer, illustrator and designer Dean Motter.

Having worked on Mr. X, The Prisoner: Shattered Visage, Batman: Black and White, Electropolis and many more projects for young and old, Dean Motter is a creator with a singularly unique voice and style. Here his collaboration with Dupré on this striking addendum to a classic literary marvel and social critique of the price of creation adds chilling edges to a fantasy suitably sub-titled “a love story”…

The saga tells of Sandra, who spends a fateful night tending bar at a so-fashionable Gallery opening paid for by the rich but creepy celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Andrew Wright. Even in the supremely decadent world of the Art Glitterati the surgeon is infamous, with dubious connections to both the high and mighty and the down and dirty. His patronage of bellicose wunderkind Jacob Sistine is fraught with haughty tension, pompous one-upmanship and barely suppressed loathing…

Drowning in the self-serving, pretentious pontificating of this week’s models, Sandra is surprised when she meets beautiful, sensitive Victor, a poetic rose among crass, wealthy thorns. Despite herself, she is drawn to the mysterious paragon who seems so much more than just Dr. Wright’s factotum and dogsbody.

A man of many secrets, Victor is almost the ideal (and – most frustratingly – reluctant and still largely prospective) lover, but his devotion to the shadier side of the doctor’s dealings with gangsters, fame-chasing poseurs and art forgers augers nothing but disaster for their budding relationship. Furthermore, there is some hideous secret Victor is keeping from her – an undisclosed past and unmoving obstacle not even the truest love or most forgiving nature can overcome…

I’ve endeavoured to obscure the originating source work since the unfolding secret is cleverly handled and the growing realisation adds to the dawning horror of the situation. The love-story spirals to its tragic conclusion, helped in no small part by the beguiling painted art of young Sean Phillips evoking the distant past and spotlighting the harsh modern world with equal skill and sensitivity.

In the intervening years the illustrator has risen to a position of revered prominence in the comics business and this collection closes with a fascinating ‘Codex’ with Phillips plundering his files and wracking his memory in an interview and commentary section packed with photos, layouts, roughs and sketches detailing the development of the project, whilst Motter enthusiastically shares his childhood obsession with scary movies and horror tales in a picture-packed Afterword ‘Frankenstein & Me’…

This cunning yarn failed to find its proper audience when first released, but is a solid story superbly told for all that and might well be the treat that turns your film freak into a comicbook zombie…
Heart of the Beast – A Love Story © 2014 Dean Motter, Judith Dupré & Sean Phillips. All Rights Reserved.

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Small Press Sundays

Like so many others I started out in the business making minicomics, collaborating on fanzines and concocting stripzines with fellow weirdoes, outcasts and addicts. Even today, seeing the raw stuff of creativity in hand-crafted paper pamphlets – or better yet professionally printed packages which put dreamers’ money where their mouths are – still gets me going in ways which imperil my tired old heart…

So here’s a long-overdue peek at a brilliant publishing project bringing a wealth of independent graphic craft to your attention…

DiRTY ROTTEN Comics #8

By various, Edited by Gary Clap & Kirk Campbell (Throwaway Press)
No ISBN

Graphic narrative and cartooning covers a vast range of genres, formats, disciplines and tastes. Moreover, to my jaded old eyes, these days all the very best and most imaginative work seems to come from outside the pool of professional creators and publishers from what used to be called the “Small Press” …

At the moment in Britain we’re blessed with a fresh, vital and engaging wave of strip-makers and DiRTY ROTTEN Comics is periodically gathering up a wide sampling of the most impressive work and packaging it in sleek, professional-looking black-&-white books I would have killed to be printed in back in the so-cool, tech-deprived Seventies…

The brainchild of – and edited by – Gary Clap and Kirk Campbell, this splendidly broad church of graphic recollection, exploration, extrapolation and fancification is a superb snapshot of the creative vitality, welcome diversity and uncompromising inclusivity of the modern stripzine scene, and sheer heaven for an avowed sucker for all forms of black and white art such as we. I gravely mourn its passing in both film and comics media…

This particular compendium – the Autumn 2016 edition – opens with whimsical rumination in ‘Lady Masque’ by David Robertson and segues into nostalgic reflection with Henry Miller’s charming ‘Real Roman Coins’ before sliding towards comedic anarchy in ‘Journey into Stupid: Summer’ from Claude T. C. & Kyle Gerdes…

Andrew Warwick then heads into spooky M. R. James territory with ‘Insert 20 Pence’ whilst Joanna Harker Shaw waxes poetic with ‘Extract from ‘The Lesson” after which ‘Wallace’ experiences a technical itch in a comedy short from Kevin Loftus.

Maria Stoian explores domestic isolation in ‘Nighttime Routine’ whilst a child’s salient question gets a typically brusque adult answer in ‘Seabass’ by Stanley Miller.

Petitecreme’s manga-styled discursive debate on mourning in ‘It’ll Be OK’ quickly gives way to frustrating and surreal terror courtesy of Benjamin Leon’s ‘Knots’ and trenchant black humour in ‘What A Catch’ from James Gifford.

Social overload leads to a welcome moment of calm in ‘Dandelion’ by Francis M. whilst Faye Spencer displays another method of maintaining equilibrium in ‘Bile’ even as Lukasz Kowalczuk shows the world’s next owners at their unsavoury worst in ‘Hollow Earth’.

Benjamin A.E. Filby introduces us to a very human monster in ‘SANGUISUGE’ whilst Scott Wrigg nervously anticipates ‘Those Days’ and bereavement concerns inspire Rozi Hathaway’s bleak and languid ‘Sørgedag’.

Mock heroics and a search for love (or at least acceptance) concern diminutive ‘Sir Tramsalot’ in Ben Hutching’s mirthful, moving vignette, whilst Jey Levang examines the downside of immortality in ‘Amaranthine’ and Tom Mortimer considers the ramifications and necessity of population control in ‘#Neutered’.

A delicious moment of domestic veracity in depicted in ‘Maladroit’ by Josh Hicks after which Elias Bevan comments on the small press creative mill with ‘Grow Them…’ before this aggregate walk on the personal side concludes in epic style with James Wragg’s poignant mystic ‘Remembrance’…

Concise, expressive, intimate and evocative, this is a compendium with something for everybody who loves the comics medium and is well worth your time, money and impassioned support.

All content © 2016 by their respective creators.
For more information and sales details check out THROWAWAYPRESS.COM

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Edgar Allan Poe’s Spirits of the Dead


Adapted by Richard Corben, with Beth Corben Reed & Nate Piekos (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-356-2

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: an animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist, catapulting from the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in comic storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision.

He is equally renowned for his mastery of airbrush, captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales. In later years he has become an elder statesman of horror and fantasy comics lending his gifts and cachet to such icons as John Constantine, Hulk, Hellboy, Punisher and Ghost Rider as well as new adaptations and renditions of literary classics by the likes of William Hope Hodgson, Lovecraft and the master of gothic terror Edgar Allan Poe.

Corben didn’t sell out; American publishing simply caught up, finally growing mature enough to accommodate him, due in no small part to his own broad and pervasive influence…

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the neutered comicbooks of the Comics-Code Authority era were just starting to lose disaffected, malcontent older fans to the hippy-trippy, freewheeling, anything-goes publications of independent-minded creators across the continent who were increasingly making the kind of material Preachers and Mummy and her Lawyers wouldn’t approve of…

Creativity honed by the resplendent and explicitly mature 1950s EC Comics, Carl Barks’ perfectly crafted Duck tales and other classy early strips, a plethora of young artists like Corben responded with a variety of small-press publications – including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor – which featured shocking, rebellious, sexed-up, raw, brutal, psychedelically-inspired cartoons and strips blending the new wave of artists’ unconventional lifestyles with their earliest childhood influences… honestly crafting the kind of stories they would like to read.

Corben inevitably graduated to more professional – and paying – venues. As his style and skills developed he worked for Warren Publishing in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and outrageous adult science fiction anthology 1984/1994. He famously coloured some strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s The Spirit.

Soon after he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He has never stopped creating comics but prefers personal independent projects or working with in-tune collaborators such as Bruce Jones, Jan Strnad and Harlan Ellison.

In 1975 Corben approached French fantasy phenomenon M̩tal Hurlant and quickly became a fixture of its American iteration Heavy Metal, cementing his international reputation in the process. Garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he has been regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he seemingly fell out of favour Рand print Рin his own country. Through it all he has never strayed far from his moss-covered roots.

This particular tome gathers a recent return to adaptations of the classic Poe canon; all-new, 21st century, often rather radical reinterpretations of the troubled author’s greatest works, as published in The Fall of the House of Usher #1-2, one-shots The Conqueror Worm, The Raven and the Red Death, The Premature Burial and Morella and the Murders in the Rue Morgue plus some short tales originally published in Dark Horse Presents #9, #16-18 and #28-29; collectively spanning the period November 2012-April 2014.

The horrific hagiography – each tale attributed with its year of publication and adapted with the colouring assistance of Beth Corben Reed and lettering expertise of Nate Piekos of Blambot® – opens following an erudite, informative and compelling Introduction ‘Masters of the Macabre: Edgar Allan Poe and Richard Corben’ by university professor, author, Poe expert and comics scholar Thomas M. Inge and the mood-setting poem ‘Spirits of the Dead (1827)’ before the artistic extravaganza unfolds with aged, one-eyed crone Maggy as host and guide to the selection which follows.

In ‘Alone (1828)’ morbid, death-haunted Solomon discusses his distressing dreams with the intoxicating but strangely unmoved Liea whilst ‘The City in the Sea (1831)’ sees a shipwrecked sea captain forced to explain his recent dramatic actions to a dank and unforgiving tribunal who have markedly different views to him on what constitutes duty, business sense, cargo and humanity…

Many of these interpretations employ embedded lines of Poe’s verse, such as ‘The Sleeper (1831)’ which sees a well-deserved fate meted out to a rich philanderer who had his wife and her murderer killed to further his own carnal desires whilst ‘The Assignation (1834)’ examines a toxic relationship where husband and wife cannot live together… or apart…

‘Berenice (1835)’ is one of Poe’s most stomach-churning, nerve-jangling yarns and Corben does it full justice as bereaved Egaeus watches over the corpse of his recently-deceased betrothed. However, even in death he cannot turn his mind away from an overwhelming fascination with her perfect teeth…

The deeply unsettling story of ‘Morella (1835)’ reveals how a vain witch orchestrates her own death and resurrection as her own daughter to keep her husband properly seduced and in line, before focus shifts to ancient Greece and the inevitable approach of death amongst the warriors at a funeral: a wake tainted by the unquiet dead and an oppressive ‘Shadow (1835)’…

In the luxuriously expansive ‘The Fall of the House of Usher (1839)’ artist and traveller Allan is broaches a befuddling, bilious and deadly swamp to reach the ancestral seat of the ancient Usher clan and visit an old school chum.

Like the family, the vast manse is slowly dissolving into the mire that surrounds and supports it. The decadent, failing blood of melancholic master and obsessive portraitist Roderick Usher masks many bizarre behaviours, but not even that can excuse his vile attitude to his seemingly subjugated, clandestinely closeted, sumptuously seductive deranged sister Madeline whose essence he is determined to capture on canvas at any cost…

As he stares at the too-intimate pencil studies, Allan too is drawn to the girl: a feeling only intensified once they actually meet…

By secret means she makes the visitor aware of a unique plight and urges him to assist her escape but Roderick will go to any lengths to keep his sister with him and would rather extinguish the family line rather than lose her.

That is unless the repelled, rebellious Earth doesn’t reclaim the crumbling house and the decadent Ushers first…

Infamous for his dark, doom-laden horror stories, Poe was also a pioneer of crime fiction and next up is a grimly effective and trenchantly black-humoured adaptation of the debut tale starring French gentleman detective Le Chevalier C. Auguste Dupin and his partner in peril Beluc.

Here the dandified dynamic duo put their heads together to solve an impossible locked room mystery which resulted in the brutal dismemberment of two women in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)’: a crime with a callous perpetrator but no culpable killer…

‘The Masque of the Red Death (1842)’ then returns to classical themes and supernal horror as plague grips the lands of regal Prospero. Faced with difficult choices, the lord opts to bring his richest cronies within his opulent castle to safely disport themselves in debauched revelry whilst the contagion burns itself out on the peasantry. Sadly, the foolish sybarite has made one grave and arrogant error which will cost him everything…

Under Corben’s imaginative purview, grim gloomy ode ‘The Conqueror Worm (1843)’ is transformed into a salutary saga of inescapable vengeance as proud Colonel Mann kills his errant wife and her lover but is tainted with a maggot that burrows into his body and soul.

Feigning innocence and ignorance, Mann salves his “tragic loss” by employing an itinerant puppet show for a family party but the mummers expose that most proper paragon’s sins before utterly consuming him, whilst in ‘The Premature Burial (1844)’ a close shave with attempted murder and molestation of the dead turns Lucian into a man obsessed with being buried alive and Arnold‘s inability to forget his dead Lenore leads to an unforgettable encounter with ‘The Raven (1845)’ in a visual tour de force every inch as potent as Poe’s poem.

Wrapping up the journey into mysteries is a deft retelling of ‘The Cask of Amontillado, (1846)’ wherein aging Montressor at last shares a long-held secret with the wife of his old friend Fortunato, now missing for many a year.

As he guides her through his deep vaults, filled with the remains of his ancestors and his precious wine collection, gloating Montressor tells the increasing nervous widow of her husband’s ghastly fate and why and how the poor, bibulous buffoon vanished so completely that long-ago night…

Accompanied by a stunning Cover Gallery, this compelling collection of classic chillers is a modern masterpiece of arcane abomination and human horror no shock addict of mystery lover will want to miss.
Spirits of the Dead™ © 2012, 2013, 2014 Richard Corben. All rights reserved.

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B.P.R.D.: Plague of Frogs volume 2


By Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Guy Davis, Herb Trimpe, John Severin, Peter Snejbjerg, Karl Moline & various (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-672-5

Hellboy is a creature of vast depth and innate mystery; a demonic baby summoned to Earth by Nazi occultists at the end of Word War II but subsequently raised, educated and trained by parapsychologist Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm to destroy unnatural threats and supernatural monsters as the lead field-agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

After decades of unfailing, faithful service in 2001 he became mortally tired and resigned. Itinerantly roaming the world, he still managed to constantly encounter weird happenstances, never escape trouble or avoid his own sense of duty. This book is not about him.

The massive full-colour hardback collection under review here (also available in digital formats) instead features the trusty comrades he left behind: valiant champions of varying shades of human-ness who also deal with those occult occasions which typically fall under the remit of the Enhanced Talents task force of the B.P.R.D.

If you’re having trouble with the concept, think of a government-sanctioned and internationally co-sponsored Ghostbusters dealing with Buffy-style threats to humanity.

The B.P.R.D. rapidly established itself as a viable publishing premise in its own right through a succession of interlinked miniseries, confronting an ancient, arcane amphibian menace to humanity in an immense epic which spanned eight years of comicbook releases.

Periodically collected as a series of trade paperbacks during that time, the entire supernatural saga – latterly dubbed Plague of Frogs – was remastered as a quartet of monumental full-colour volumes, of which this is the sinister second.

Gathering material from Hellboy Premiere Edition, MySpace Dark Horse Presents #8-9, B.P.R.D.: The Dead, B.P.R.D. volume 5: The Black Flame and B.P.R.D. volume 12: War on Frogs, this macabre triumvirate of terror opens with a handy recap page identifying key personnel of the B.P.R.D. before an equally handy Introduction from series editor Scott Allie provides context and background in the organisation’s struggle against the eons-old supernal force mutating humans into terrifying frog-monsters…

From there it’s a short hop (sorry, sorry!) to ‘Book One: The Dead’, written by Mignola and John Arcudi, illustrated by Guy Davis, lettered as always by Clem Robins and with colours from Dave Stewart. Firstly though that supernatural storm of woe is preceded by the prologue ‘Born Again’ (from Hellboy Premiere Edition) wherein pyrokinetic Liz Sherman, amphibious Abe Sapien, man-made marvel Roger the Homunculus and disembodied psychic Johann Krauss break into a secret tomb beneath a suburb of Chicago and arouse an extremely angry monster spirit warning of worse to follow.

In the aftermath of their spectacular triumph, Roger casually pockets a weird little artefact…

B.P.R.D. volume 4: The Dead properly begins a little later in North Dakota, when an investigation team is wiped out after discovering another nest of Frogs. At the organisation’s HQ in Fairfield, Connecticut the assessment is that the amphibian incursions are growing too rapidly and drastic measures are now called for…

Johann suggests that rather than instant eradication perhaps the answer is translating the bizarre glyphs found at every site. Abe is absent from this meeting, having travelled to Littleport, Rhode Island with psychologist Kate Corrigan in search of his own obscure origins…

Back at base the team meet new field commander Benjamin Daimio, a former marine and Green Beret officer. His qualifications for the new militaristic role include an impressive but classified record in covert operations and the still-unexplained fact that he came back to life on a morgue slab three days after dying in the line of duty…

A brusque man with deep pentagon connections, he quickly arranges for the entire B.P.R.D. to relocate to a super-secret, mothballed military complex in Colorado, much to the suspicious disgust of volatile Liz…

In Littleport, Abe locates the long abandoned house of Langdon Everett Caul and ponders its disturbing but undisclosed link to his own shrouded past…

The next few days are filled with busywork as the B.P.R.D. relocate to Colorado and strive to bring the vast Cold War mountain fortress up to speed and into the 21st century.

Tensions are high in the Enhanced Talents unit as Liz constantly rails against the new military style of working whilst worrying that impressionable Roger is being unduly influenced by Daimio’s forceful, take-charge personality.

Johann is also a cause for concern as his psychic talents seem to be drawing him into himself after he casually mind-scans the ancient edifice they now occupy…

Back in Rhode Island, Abe disturbs a ghost and is drawn into a trap baited with past happiness and bitter memories whilst in Colorado Liz awakens from a nightmare to find Johann acting as if possessed. With Roger in tow, she follows the bodiless medium down into the bowels of the base: a level not listed on any official map or blueprint, blocked by a colossal door covered in strange markings…

Breaking into a hidden chamber, Daimio and the investigators discover a huge cavern filled with skeletons covered in mushrooms, strange machinery and an old German who has been living there since the 1950s…

Quantum physicist Dr. Gunter Eiss worked for the Nazis on mystic science projects. He was sidelined after Hitler ditched his “Operation Himmelmacht” in favour of the Ragna Rok operation which brought Hellboy to Earth. The fringe scientist was scooped up by American forces and brought to Colorado when WWII ended to work on alternative energy research.

Then there was a catastrophic disaster which devastated the still under-construction base and when he regained consciousness Gunter had been entombed with all the dead: lost and forgotten…

Although Eiss seems harmless, nobody is comfortable with his inexplicable survival and reappearance and, all too soon, those misgivings prove well-founded as strange events start plaguing the fortress. Clarity comes when Johann, pressured by odd notions and weird warnings, makes contact with the spirits of Eiss’ dead colleagues.

It’s too late, but as the aged revenant unleashes a storm of insectile horrors inside the base and tries to complete his long-delayed Himmelmacht project, Johann and the recovered dead men are frantically cobbling together a countermeasure of last resort.

…And whilst the team strive to prevent a disaster of literally biblical proportions, in Rhode Island, Abe Sapien struggles to free himself from a ghostly prison of memories and, to his eternal regret, at last succeeds…

War on Frogs began life as a series of one-shots issued in 2008 and 2009. They were collected with ‘Revival’ from MySpace Dark Horse Presents #8-9 as the 12th B.P.R.D. trade paperback volume in April 2009, but as those tales are all set in 2005 during the early days of the battle against the manphibians, they appear next in this remastered compilation.

Each story focuses on one character and many are by guest illustrators, but the “bug-hunt” begins with an all-action engagement from Mignola, Arcudi, Davis, Stewart & Robins featuring Daimio, Liz, Roger and Johann as the enhanced heroes and an army of military specialists clear out a tunnel system overflowing with Frogs only to discover the site is a breeding nest…

Davis then inks Marvel superstar artist Herb Trimpe on an Arcudi script as Abe Sapien removes himself from active duty for a desk job, leaving an increasing martial-minded and bellicose Roger to lead the ground war. The struggle takes him back to Lake Talutah, New York where Hellboy and Abe first battled the Frog things and where the Homunculus discovers those original monsters never left…

Mignola, Arcudi, Davis & Stewart then combine in ‘Revival’ as travelling faith healers spread the Frog contagion throughout the American heartland until Captain Damio tracks them down and deals with the problem in his usual lethally efficient manner…

Arcudi, Stewart and Robins are then joined by the astounding John Severin, who etches a macabre masterpiece as a strictly human team of soldiers attempts to clear out a Frog-infested warship and succumb one by one to the terrors in the darkness.

Then Arcudi & Peter Snejbjerg (with colourist Bjarne Hansen and letterer Robins) depict a turning point in the conflict as psychic Johann realises he can see and communicate with the spirits of dead Frog monsters. Compelled to help the horrors move on, Krauss’ attempt only opens the door to greater terrors and deeper mysteries…

Moving on to B.P.R.D. volume 5: The Black Flame, Mignola, Arcudi, Davis, Stewart & Robins reveal how corrupt and complicit Zinco Industries executive Mr. Pope tries to convert Nazi sympathies and closeted secret knowledge into personal power by using the Frogs’ magic to turn himself into a super-villain.

Beyond his laboratories, the war seems to be going well. Roger has become a fierce and effective warrior, leading many sorties to stamp out the amphibian invaders. However that is about to change as Pope succeeds in cracking the language barrier and learning how to talk to the Frogs. Now, as the Black Flame, he seems to be their uncontested master…

During one battle Liz is given a strange blossom by a bystander and falls into a coma. In a misty dreamworld she is approached by a shrouded stranger who reveals that things are not as they seem and that the war is about to take a very bad turn as far as mankind is concerned…

Further research triggers a panic in B.P.R.D. boffin Professor O’Donnell who flies into a panic after realising Liz’s vision is a warning that antediluvian demon-deity Katha-Hem is coming back and all living things will transform at his vile touch. Suitably chilled, firestarter Liz tries to rouse and warn the Enhanced team, but is too late to save one of them…

As the Black Flame leads his gathered amphibian legions into a cavern system in Idaho, Abe, afflicted by guilt, returns to active duty even as Liz succumbs to further astral communications. The shaken team is far from combat-ready when news comes that Lincoln, Nebraska has been overrun. Before they can react, news comes of concerted attacks all over the North American continent. The Frogs are inexorably on the move and the summons has gone out. Katha-Hem is coming…

As a colossal horror beyond imagining starts destroying man’s cities, Pope realises he is a pawn in a far greater, incalculably older game, whilst Liz confronts her mystery informant before a clue to destroying the monster is grudgingly given. All she has to do is find an artefact Roger once idly picked up on an early mission against the Frogs…

The scene is set for an incomprehensible last battle, but the will the beaten and broken Black Flame remain a thrall of the foe or find redemption and his lost humanity in the final accounting…?

Wrapping up the strip thrills and chills, Arcudi and illustrator Karl Moline focus on the repercussions of the team’s victory in a trenchant Epilogue as shell-shocked, traumatised Liz goes through the motions of mopping-up, possibly finding a new significant other to lean on, but still plagued by visions of the enigmatic man in the mists…

Bonus features included here comprise an informative Afterword by Arcudi describing the behind-the-scenes scripting system he shared with Mignola, plus Notes from Scott Allie and a huge Sketchbook section offering roughs, designs and preliminary artwork from Davis and Mignola on The Dead, The Black Flame and War on Frogs.

With supernatural fantasy now a staple of TV and movie fashion, these unlikely heroes must be a top pick for every production company out there. Until then, why not stay ahead of the rush by reading these truly magical tales?
B.P.R.D. ™: Plague of Frogs volume 2 © 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2015 Mike Mignola. Abe Sapien™, Liz Sherman™, Hellboy™, Johann™, Lobster Johnson™ and all other prominently featured characters ™ Mike Mignola. All rights reserved.

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Hellboy volume 6: Strange Places


By Mike Mignola with Dave Stewart & Clem Robbins (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-475-3

Hellboy is a creature of vast depth and innate mystery; a demonic child summoned to Earth by Nazi occultists at the end of World War II. Intercepted and rescued by allied troops, the infernal infant was reared by Allied parapsychologist Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm. After years of devoted intervention, education and warm human interaction, in 1952 Hellboy began destroying unnatural threats and supernatural monsters as lead agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

As the decades of his career unfold, Hellboy gleans snatches of his origins, learning he is an infernal creature of dark portent: born an infernal messiah, somehow destined to destroy the world and bring back ancient powers of evil. It is a fate he despises and utterly rejects…

This sinister sixth spellbinding compendium of pictorial paranormality and grave wit collects micro-series Hellboy: The Third Wish #1-2 (July-August 2002) and Hellboy: The Island #1-2 (June and July 2005); the latter augmented with a new 6-page Epilogue for this trade paperback edition.

Following an engaging Introduction from fellow multi-talented macabre-ist Gary Gianni, Mignola briefly explains the origins and antecedents of the marine marvel which follows after which the eldritch enigmas unfold.

At the bottom of the sea three mermaid sisters implore the mighty Bog Roosh to grant their wishes. Her compliance comes at a cost however: the marine maidens must somehow hammer a mystic nail into the head of her great enemy…

Hellboy is currently in Africa, estranged from the B.P.R.D. but still encountering mystic menaces that need stopping. Eventually he stops to listen to the tales of witch-man Mohlomi and is soon under the spell of the tale-teller. Falling into a deep sleep, he dreams of lions who foretell his future…

He awakens to find they have somehow moved to the coast. When Mohlomi tells him the ocean is calling, the baffled but resigned parapsychologist enters the roaring surf and is promptly dragged under the waves, protected only by a bell-charm the witch-man has given him…

Attacked by sea creatures and the three sisters, Hellboy is overcome as soon as he lets go of the jingling trinket and is helpless to prevent them driving in the nail…

Bound and helpless in the Bog Roosh’s power, Hellboy can only watch as the sisters are given theirs hearts’ desires and – in the usual manner of such things – suffer the cruel consequences of double-dealing demonry.

Wise in such matters, Hellboy tries to help the third mermaid avoid her fate but is powerless to prevent the sea witch granting the last wish. The kind act touches the mermaid’s heart and – whilst the witch tries to dismember Hellboy and all the powers of The Pit stand helpless to prevent the end of all their hopes and dreams – she sneaks back and frees him.

Released to vent his considerable anger, Hellboy ends the Bog Roosh and decimates her power, but is ultimately unable to save his saviour…

According to Mignola’s commentary, The Island was a tough tale to write and underwent many strange transmutations and permutations. When it finally appeared it signalled the grand finale of the First Chapter in Hellboy’s life. None of that difficulty is apparent in the tale that follows though: a bleak, moody suspense saga filled with all the answer fans had been craving since the hero’s debut…

Hellboy wades ashore in a drear limbo of shattered ships and broken vessels. Anxious but resolved, he trudges on and joins a motley assemblage of mariners in a protracted boozing session, only later realising he had been drinking with dead men.

A further shock to his system is delivered by old enemy Hecate, who appears gloating and glad that the Bog Roosh failed to kill him. As long as Hellboy lives she can still corrupt or conquer him…

Shunning the Goddess of the Damned, Hellboy wanders on and enters a dilapidated castle where he is sucked into an ancient vision which offers potential clues to his past and future but now only results in him battling ferociously but with little success against yet another gargantuan monster…

He awakes an unknowable time later on a dry, dusty plain with Mohlomi who offers yet more occluded, oblique advice before a revived ghost joins the conversation with the tale of his mortality in ancient Tenochtitlan.

This story of life, death and resurrection coincidentally reveals the secret history of creation, the inevitable end of mankind, what will follow and – most terrifyingly – the truth of Hellboy’s stone hand and his intended role in the ghastly Grand Scheme of Cosmic Doom…

Wrapping up the spectral showcase is an ominous all-new Epilogue as the arcane and infernal powers confer over what the revelations mean to Hellboy. The Fated One is now armed with knowledge but is only drifting closer to his future, no matter how hard he struggles to turn away from it…

Rounding out this apocalyptic endeavour is a stunning Bonus Section which includes the decidedly different first eight pages of the original iteration of The Island – specially inked and coloured for this book – followed by seven powerfully potent, all-action pencil art pages created and then abandoned in the second attempt to tell the tale. Wrapping up the behind-the-scenes extras is a selection of character designs and roughs to sweeten the pot for every lover of great comics art.

Baroque, grandiose, alternating suspenseful slow-boiling tension with explosive spectacle, Strange Places inexorably increases the pace in the race to Armageddon. Blending revelation with astounding adventure to enthral horror addicts and action junkies alike, it is another cataclysmic compendium of dark delights no comics fan or fear fanatic should miss.
™ and © 2006, 2005 and 2002 Mike Mignola. Hellboy is ™ Mike Mignola. Introduction © 2006 Gary Gianni. All rights reserved.

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Black River


By Josh Simmons (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-833-5

After far too long way, cartoonist Josh Simmons (House, Jessica Farm, The Furry Trap) returns with another masterfully monochrome comics epic: a poetically potent, visually enthralling, ferociously challenging tale some might reasonably call a horror story.

However, despite its post-apocalyptic setting and milieu and constantly rising death-toll, Black River has more in common with the arduous privations and torturous trials of endurance and personal choice typical of a Jack London adventure novel than a slasher flick, serial killer slaughter or even last ditch stand against the zombie horde du jour.

Sacrificing plot to concentrate on character and experience, the story details how a band of people roam the wastes of Earth after the world ends.

Incessantly moving forward, the motley mixed-up band of strangers hunt for scarce supplies in wrecked cities and outpost; staying one step ahead of whatever destroyed civilisation. Of course, even as they wearily trudge the length of the continent, scavenging for necessities – and even occasional, instantly abused luxuries like booze and drugs – they cannot stop madness finding them or death from picking them off one by one.

Their years-long nomadic perambulation takes an even darker turn after they are all captured by a marauding band led by a charismatic sociopath called Benji. These brutes have reverted to little more than true beasts, but solitary, traumatised Shauna endures the worst atrocities they can commit before lethally turning the tables on them and leading the now solely female group back out into the wilds again.

Years pass, battles are fought and the group thins as life winnows them down to nothing…

Simmons doesn’t offer answers or explanations: this epic trek of unrelieved toil and raw survivalism is truly all about the journey and what happens next as the ever-shifting cast of desperately determined humans take life one day at a time, one step after another until the inescapable end comes…

Black River is bleak, unrelenting and morbid, but Simmons is a fantastically perceptive creator and realises that even in such an existence, there must be moments of rude hilarity or short-lived contentment and even unexpected joy to balance the constant fight for one more day…

A saga of grim attrition in a world without hope, Black River perfectly displays the best and worst of human nature and is a tale which, once read, will never be forgotten…
© 2015 Josh Simmons. This edition © 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

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Worry Doll


By Matt Coyle (Dover Comics & Graphic Novels)
ISBN: 978-0-486-80616-7

In the comics biz it’s not too often that something truly different, graphically outstanding and able to subvert or redirect the medium’s established forms comes along.

Sadly, when it does we usually ignore it whilst whining that there’s nothing fresh or new in view.

That’s pretty much what happened with Matt Coyle’s astounding Worry Doll when, after six years of work on the dark epic, it was published by Mam Tor in 2007 and sank from the collective audience’s sight after causing but the barest of ripples.

To be fair, British-born, Australia-based Coyle (see also, if you can, his mordant, socio-political satire Registry of Death) did win the 2007 Rue Morgue award for Best Comic Book Artist for his incredible photo-realistic line-art on Worry Doll, but the innovative delivery of one of the creepiest tales in comics history never garnered the acclaim it deserved in our superhero-saturated toy, TV and film license-loaded entertainment arena.

Now, thanks once again to Dover Books’ Comics & Graphic Novels division, another lost classic of the art form has a second chance to shine, so let’s show some proper respect and make this edition the popular success it should be…

A soft-cover monochrome landscape affair; enigmatic observations and conversations are delivered in the oldest format of pictorial narrative, with blocks of text on one page balanced by an illustrated panel or sequence of images on the facing folio, as a most distressing story unfolds…

A happy home becomes a charnel scene of slaughter and in the aftermath, amidst the bloody remains of a recently-despatched family, a trio of beloved mannequins intended to assuage anxiety take on ghastly animation and leave in search of answers – or is it actually just different questions?

Making their way across familiarly picturesque and simultaneously terrifying country, the dolls increasingly depend on the kindness of strangers, until their nightmare road-trip is eventually subsumed in someone’s story. As our perspective shifts, we get clues that other hands are working these puppets and the story is not as it seems nor quite done yet…  

Spooky and subversive, blending classic noir mood and tone with storybook quests and psychologically daunting introspection, Worry Doll operates on multiple layers of revelation, both in the staggeringly detailed illustration and the prose accompaniment; constantly offering hints and forebodings if not answers…

With a new Foreword from comics author and filmmaker Shaun Tan (The Lost Thing, The Red Tree, The Arrival) who sagely deconstructs the journey and Coyle’s virtuosity with line and form, this is a complex, engaging and ominously beautiful masterwork no true lover of comics or addict of sinister suspense can afford to miss.
© 2007 by Matthew Coyle. Foreword © 2016 by Shaun Tan. All rights reserved.

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Memetic


By James Tynion IV & Eryk Donovan (Boom Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-1-60886-743-1

Even people who love to be scared can get a bit jaded. Terror tales come in many forms and formats, from Sophisticated Suspense to J-Horror to no-holds-barred graphic splatter and torture-porn, but at the heart of them all is the power to connect with an audience and make them nervously wonder. Thankfully, thus far creators are keeping just ahead of consumers and still seem able to enact new notions with great style and captivating facility whenever we need a little extra anxiety in our lives…

Embracing all the old adages whilst thinking far outside the box, in 2014 writer James Tynion IV (The Eighth Seal, Batman Eternal) partnered with old associate Eryk Donovan (The House in the Wall), colourist Adam Guzowski and letterer Steve Wands to put a fresh, clever and thoroughly post-modern spin on the overused doomsday scenario of the Zombie Apocalypse with 3-issue miniseries Memetic.

If you need a little definition here: A meme is an idea that starts with individual, spreads to many and potentially is taken up by entire communities or societies, like not eating yellow snow, washing behind the ears or voting for the worst possible candidate in any given election…

Aaron Sumner had a bad start in life but simply persevered. Despite the congenital illness which messed up his eyes and left him needing hearing aids and daily medication, he made friends, worked hard and now leads a relatively normal life at Jefferson State College.

He even had a boyfriend until recently, but was totally unprepared for the role he was about to play in the last act of humanity…

Aaron is still fretting about recently gone-but-not-forgotten beloved Ryan Nowak, and petulantly surfing the web when someone forwards an image that promises to “change everything”…

Intrigued, he opens the file and agrees that it’s a pretty picture, unaware that he is one of the few humans on the planet immune to its secret power…

Everybody else who sees the image is immediately besotted and cannot stop looking at it, but baffled Aaron soon tires of not getting it and goes to sleep. He’s woken up by best friend Sarah Bentley who totally feels the tingle of friendly companionship the picture generates. Together they reason that it’s Aaron’s medical deficits which are preventing him from sharing the togetherness.

In mere hours the image has gone beyond viral. It has been copied and pasted on walls and even made it onto regular news channels. Nobody can grasp just why it has such a feelgood factor, but it looks like before the day is over everybody on Earth will be sharing the joy…

That’s disturbing news for Marcus Shaw. The former military specialist was one of the Pentagon’s biggest military brains until macular degeneration rendered him practically sightless, and the effect he hears of on the news and from speaking to his increasingly distracted friends reminds him of an old project proposed by Weird Science specialist Dr. Barbara Xiang.

When he contacts his old bosses he quickly realises it’s too late. Someone has succeeded where they failed and created a weaponised Meme…

All over the world progress pauses as people see the picture, disseminate the picture and perpetually stare at the picture.

Aaron is baffled and growing concerned. That turns to total terror when the second-stage kicks in. Twelve hours after initial exposure, the image addicts begin bleeding from the eyes and take to the streets in lemming-like mass marches. Screaming mindlessly, they surge through the streets ripping apart anyone not sharing their mindless union and converging in towering masses of melting flesh…

Elsewhere, last-ditch action is being taken. Dr. Xiang has managed to avoid seeing the image and linked up with Marcus. She knows full well the potential threat and wants him to lead a reconnaissance mission to find the originator of the meme and, if possible, create a counter-measure.

Aaron’s world is crumbling. Sarah stays with him until she starts to feel the scream building inside her, and even a last-minute reunion with Ryan is doomed to end badly…

Using now-abandoned government and military resources, Marcus and Xiang locate the origin point of the meme and a team heads off to confront their hidden enemy. They cannot help but speculate on who – or what – could have created such a complex thought weapon: one which is clearly evolving and forcing humanity into its final moments…

The answer, when it comes, is beyond anything they could possibly have imagined…

And Aaron ostracised, alone and again an outsider makes one final act of free will…

Engaging, engrossing, fearsomely believable and utterly compelling, Memetic also offers behind the scenes bonuses including sketches, model sheets, a feature showing the creative process from ‘Script to Page’, commentary and ‘Afterwords’ from author and artist, plus a cover and variants gallery by Donovan.

Unfolding at a frenetic pace – 72 hours from start to a doom-drenched finish – this a yarn to chill the hearts of blasé Generation Tech and the most timid of silver surfer alike: one you also will have extreme difficulty turning away from…
™ & © 2015 James Tynion IV. All rights reserved.

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Hellboy volume 5: Conqueror Worm


By Mike Mignola with Dave Stewart & Pat Brosseau (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-092-2

Hellboy is a creature of vast depth and innate mystery; a demonic child summoned to Earth by Nazi occultists at the end of the Second World War but rescued and reared by Allied parapsychologist Professor Trevor “Broom” Bruttenholm. After years of devoted intervention and education, in 1952 Hellboy began destroying unnatural threats and supernatural monsters as lead agent for the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense.

This fifth fearsome grimoire of graphic terrors and grave wit re-presents the award-winning 4-issue miniseries Hellboy: Conqueror Worm, originally seen from May to August 2001 and featuring earth-shattering battles, cosmic revelations and a crucial turning point in the life of the “world’s greatest paranormal investigator”.

Following an effusively appreciative Introduction – ‘Mike Mignola is a Genius’– by fan and filmic collaborator Guillermo Del Toro, the eerie epic begins on March 20th 1939 when Hunte Castle is invaded by a select force of American soldiers intent on disrupting the plans of “Nazi Einstein” Ernst Oeming.

In the Austrian alpine fortress fanatical scientists and occultists are counting down to Earth’s first space shot when the crack unit – led by two-fisted mystery man Lobster Johnson – storm in with explosive repercussions…

Sixty-one years later the ruins are the scene of careful scrutiny by the B.P.R.D.

NASA telescopes have spotted a Nazi-emblazoned capsule rocketing back to Earth, clearly a result of that clandestine commando mission’s ultimate failure. With the fallen Reich’s past track record of supernatural surprises, Director Tom Manning wants Hellboy and former foe-turned-new-recruit Roger the Homunculus to see what lost secrets they can uncover.

Guiding them is a local girl with useful connections. Lisa Karnstein grew up near the ruins and now works for the Austrian Secret Police…

Before they finally set off, Hellboy endures a distasteful interview with his new boss. The B.P.R.D. bigwigs have placed explosives inside Roger – “just in case” – and want the crimson colossus to carry the detonator with him at all times…

Furious but committed, Hellboy storms off and soon the cautious trio are nearing the summit and ominous ruins. Their way is briefly barred by an enigmatic figure begging them to turn back from the haunted site, but it quickly succumbs to Hellboy’s already short fuse and thundering fists. Before long they are picking their way towards the entrance when shots are fired from ambush and Roger plunges off the side of the mountain…

Angrier than ever, Hellboy smashes into the derelict building to discover one of his oldest enemies in charge of a restored Nazi mission control suite.

Herman Von Klempt was there when Oeming took off for the stars in 1939 and in the years since has become a major menace to civilisation through his macabre transplant experiments and cybernetic killer-apes. The latest incarnation of the latter is what smashes Hellboy into unconsciousness…

When the investigator comes to he is trussed into a typically sadistic torture device and as he screams in agony the Nazi is smugly boasting of the fruition of decades of planning. He is also congratulating his devoted mole within the B.P.R.D. operation…

Elsewhere, what remains of Lobster Johnson makes contact with a presumed-lost B.P.R.D. agent and begins a desperate counterstrike which might be mankind’s only chance of survival, even as Von Klempt’s technicians guide the vintage space capsule to a safe descent…

With Hellboy freed and liberally wreaking carnage amidst the mad scientist’s forces, a third faction then enters the fray, offering crucial intelligence into the demon-foundling’s true origins and early life.

Ignoring the many ghosts infesting the castle, he also reveals how the plan was never to send a living human into space, but to deliver a corpse which would be inhabited by an ancient, arcane monstrosity from antediluvian prehistory: a creature whose reign on Earth would signal the end and obliteration of humanity…

Before dying he finally offers a meagre weapon to oppose the beast, but it seems utterly inconsequential compared to the hideous transformative majesty of the chthonic horror Von Klempt calls the Conqueror Worm…

With all sides in play the supernatural action goes into ghastly overdrive as Hellboy and his allies strive to destroy the creeping evil and its insane acolytes. Enemies fall and allegiances shift from moment to moment, but when the gift-weapon is shattered only the greatest sacrifice imaginable can halt the monster’s domination.

Moreover, even after Hellboy’s greatest, most important triumph his anger at humankind’s madness and venality force him to make the most important decision of his unconventional life…

Wrapping up the spectral showcase is an ominous Epilogue revealing how a convocation of the Weird Warrior’s most dangerous enemies results in one less arch enemy but more trouble in store plus an expansive ‘Hellboy Sketchbook’ section, offering a variety of breathtaking drawings and roughs detailing the development and visual evolution of the beasties and bad guys populating the story.

Baroque, grandiose, rocket-paced and genuinely flavoured with the taste of imminent Armageddon, Conqueror Worm is an astounding adventure to enthral horror addicts and action junkies: another lovingly lurid lexicography of dark delights no comics fan or fear fanatic should miss.
™ and © 2001, 2002 and 2003 Mike Mignola. Hellboy is ™ Mike Mignola. Introduction © 2001 Guillermo Del Toro. All rights reserved.

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Buffy the Vampire Slayer Omnibus volume 4


By Andi Watson, Christopher Golden, Daniel Brereton, Joe Bennett, Hector Gomez, Cliff Richards, Jason Minor & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59307-968-0

It’s the height of summer here and with “Seen-it Season” well under way and nothing but old movie blockbusters and sundry other reruns flooding the TV ether, I’ve decided to join in the lazy, short-sighted scheduling process with a few comics compilations starring venerable franchise stars. At least the entertainment quality of these golden oldies is guaranteed and there are no ads to fast forward through…

Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted as a motion picture starlet, but found her home after migrating to the small screen. After securing her status as a certified media sensation, she won her own comicbook in 1998, with smart, suspenseful, action-packed yarns exploding out of a monthly series, graphic novels, spin-off miniseries and short stories in showcase anthology Dark Horse Presents – all complementing the sensational, groundbreaking and so culturally crucial TV show.

Buffy Summers resides in the California hamlet of Sunnydale, built over a paranormal portal to the Nether Realms dubbed The Hellmouth. Here, she and a small band of buddies battle devils, demons and all sorts of horrors inexorably drawn to the area: most of whom/what regard humanity as a succulent appetiser and Earth an irresistible eldritch “fixer-upper” opportunity.

With Rupert Giles, scholarly mentor, father-figure and Watcher of all things unnatural, Buffy and her “Scooby Gang” sought to make the after-dark streets of Sunnydale safe for the largely-oblivious human morsels, ably abetted and occasionally aided by an enigmatic undead stud-muffin called Angel…

Collected in this fourth of seven supremely scintillating Omnibus editions (and mirroring events on the show’s third season) are the pertinent contents of Dark Horse Presents #141, Buffy the Vampire Slayer #9-11, 13-15, 17-20 and 50, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Annual 1999, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Wizard #½, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Angel #1-3, Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lover’s Walk and Angel #1-3: collectively spanning 1999-2002 and all re-convened for your delectation as a chronological continuity rather than in original publishing order: well-nigh 400 pages of full-colour mystery, merriment and mystical martial arts mayhem.

As recapitulated in original series Editor Scott Allie’s Introduction, although stories were created in a meandering manner up and down the timeline, this Omnibus series offers them in strict chronological continuity order…

Launching the sundown action is an ambitious 10-issue epic which ran intermittently through the first two years of the monthly comic. ‘Bad Blood’ was written by Andi Watson and illustrated by Joe Bennett & Rick Ketcham and latterly Cliff Richard & Joe Pimentel, opening with a rare romantic moment. Buffy and recently-restored undead lover Angel are in the local cemetery where they are interrupted by a new type of threat. However this particular monster is too quick to be seen and apparently consumes corpses rather than living flesh…

Meanwhile, in a dingy alley formerly beautiful vampire Selke seethes. Even though her kind cast no reflections, she knows her previous clashes with the Slayer have destroyed not only her strength but also her sublime allure…

Even as Buffy’s mom idly considers cosmetic surgery to bolster her fading youth, Selke accosts plastic surgeon Dr. Flitter, offering the challenge of a lifetime and unchanging, undead eternal life in return. Obsession with appearances seems to be epidemic in Sunnydale and when Buffy is approached by talent scout Lana she seriously considers a proposal to become a model. If only it doesn’t cut into her Slaying schedule… oh, and school of course…

Whilst Giles was busy researching the elusive thing that eats cadavers, Ma Summers has regained her equilibrium and decides against going under the knife – which was lucky since Flitter has taken up Selke’s offer to restore her. However, as his normal procedures don’t work, he’s resorting to old books of magic for a solution, and is keeping the impatient nosferatu complacent by feeding her his other clients…

Buffy has prepared to battle what Giles calls “Ghouls” but faces a far worse, emotional, battering from the other models on her first day at work. Selke, meanwhile, fooling herself that Flitter’s efforts are working, has tried to recruit vampire allies from the town’s new undead overlord Rouleau and been utterly humiliated…

Later that night as Angel and the Slayer finally eradicate the ghoul gang, furious Selke puts her increasingly arcane cosmetologist on warning: succeed soon or die horribly… Issue #11 continued exploring themes of looks and sexual politics after sleazy musician Todd Dahl hits town with his band and starts looking for impressionable babes to bed.

After the Slayer forcefully turns him down, Todd brags that he has bagged Buffy and goes on to insult and rebuff more-than-willing teen witch Amy. All too soon, the repulsive love-rat is treated to a scary look at the other side of the bed when he suddenly transforms into ‘A Boy Named Sue’…

Flitter meanwhile has intercepted a grimoire intended for Giles’ lore library and deduced a way to heal Selke and even hype-up the strength of her own bite-created offspring. Unfortunately, it involves preying upon other vampires to get the raw ingredients…

The direly dangerous process succeeds and a fully restored, resplendent, deadlier than ever Selke triumphantly puts her plans into play. Soon everyone who ever crossed her will pay and pay and pay in blood and torment…

The wise-cracking action resumes with the formerly disfigured and depleted Selke paying a return visit to undead gang-boss Rouleau. The last time he saw – and spurned – her, she was a pathetic, mutilated bag of scars and bile, but now she is both beautiful and overwhelmingly powerful. She also bears a grudge…

Her pet plastic surgeon has discovered a passion for alchemy to supplement his total lack of morals. Flitter has completely taken up Selke’s cause, restoring and improving her but, since normal scientific procedures don’t work, is stuck with scouring books of magic for a solution. Although his researches turned up a way to turn vampire blood into a super-steroid for Selke and her “offspring”, now she and her newly-minted children of the night must hunt not only humans for food, but vampires for fuel…

Selke, though, is obsessed only with making the Slayer suffer…

Meanwhile, in a vain semblance of normal teen life, the Scooby Gangsters Cordelia, Oz, Xander and Buffy coach brainy, nervous Willow for an upcoming televised inter-school quiz show. Things start to come unglued when Selke incidentally consumes Sunnydale High’s resident nerd Lyle and Cordy, desperate to change her bimbo image, steals a magic charm from Giles and becomes a voracious consumer of facts. Sadly, there’s no off-switch and her brain quickly begins to overload…

Selke’s über-vamps are also making mischief with Buffy and Angel finding them almost impossible to destroy…

Now nocturnal civil war breaks out between Selke’s squad and the town’s regular fangers. Night patrols are crazily broken up by vampires constantly attempting to capture and drain each other, and things take a bleak turn when deadly demon lovers Spike and Drusilla return, keen on turning the mounting chaos to their own decadently amused advantage…

Soon, their unique talents for obtaining information have led them to the secret of the “bad blood”, with Selke and Flitter still oblivious to the new threat to their schemes. The cosmetic alchemist has now discovered a way of mystically cloning their own “Dark Slayer” to take care of Buffy, and Selke wants one right now!

Sadly Flitter’s first attempts are all woefully inadequate and promptly discarded… even the one which was still sort-of alive…

Buffy’s daylight problems are insane. Sleazy Todd spread very nasty rumours about her before he temporarily turned into a girl, but now he’s male again he’s fallen desperately in love with the girl he wronged. His misplaced passion and rekindled conscience cost him dearly…

Events reach crisis point as the war between leeches escalates. On a rare night off from slaying, Buffy hits one of Selke’s pack with her mom’s (stolen) car and is subsequently ambushed by the whole mob. Even as she impossibly stakes them all, in a hidden lab, Flitter decants his masterpiece – a Summers simulacrum physically identical to and apparently far superior to The Slayer. This sorcerous clone will relentlessly hunt down and slaughter the original…

Accursed by daylight lives approximating normality, Willow, Cordelia, Oz, Xander and Buffy are forced to join in school-type activities by building a float for an upcoming parade. Angel, meanwhile, has captured one of Selke’s new ‘Roid Rage Vamps and started obtaining answers in a manner most un-heroic…

On the midnight streets, Buffy is ambushed by her duplicate and, after a blistering battle, loses. Elsewhere Selke, unaware that a new faction has sabotaged her modified blood supply, gorges herself on the foul brew…

After disposing of Buffy’s body down a handy manhole, the doppelganger attempts to infiltrate the Scooby Gang, but although she has the Slayer’s memories, her attitudes are seriously skewed. For instance, her knowledge of fashion now rivals Cordie’s…

Tensions rise as the clone starts to degrade. Born of Bad Blood, she casts no reflection and can’t see her face, but once she notices the flesh of her shoulder coming off she heads straight back to Doc Flitter…

The cosmetic alchemist has already discovered that someone has adulterated his buckets of blood and Selke is completely out of control when the clone arrives, leaking from many lesions. None of them are aware that, deep below Sunnydale’s streets, Buffy is slowly recuperating, assisted by a shambling earlier prototype previously discarded by Flitter.

As Angel sneaks in and destroys the reservoir of augmented blood, the raging, oblivious Selke orders the duplicate to fetch Buffy’s body and prove she’s dead…

The gory carnival of chaos cataclysmically concludes when the clone confronts the Slayer and her earliest incarnation in the sewers, whilst above ground Willow and Giles examine “Buffy’s” blood on a discarded parade costume and uncover the awful truth…

When Selke sees the decimation wrought by Angel, she goes berserk; her form rapidly mutating into monstrosity, just as the long-awaited procession begins through Sunnydale. Her depredations are interrupted by the battered but victorious Buffy who spectacularly re-emerges to destroy Selke and end the Bad Blood menace forever. However, in the shadows, deadly demon lovers Spike and Drusilla fade from sight, taking new toy Dr. Flitter with them…

A selection of Short Stories comes next, beginning with ‘Bad Dog’ by Doug Petrie, Ryan Sook & Tim Goodyear from Buffy the Vampire Slayer Annual 1999. It depicts how the Slayer, whilst hunting for reluctant werewolf Oz on one of his “wild” nights, encounters a nasty young sorcerer determined to turn himself into a god at gal-pal Willow’s expense…

‘Hello Moon’ – written by Daniel Brereton & Christopher Golden, with art by Bennett & Jim Amash – was the first of three tales from Dark Horse Presents #141: a thoughtful vignette wherein Buffy instinctively attacks a monster on the beach only to realise she has much in common with her target.

The beleaguered fish-man also bears the weight of unwelcome responsibility for his endangered race. No sooner have these two champions made their peace, however, than a band of roving vamps attacks…

From the same source, ‘Cursed!’ by Golden, Hector Gomez & Sandu Florea then sees brooding Bad Boy Angel guiltily regaling Buffy with the horrific events he perpetrated following his rebirth as a bloodsucker in Ireland circa 1753…

Watson, David Perrin & Florea round out the DHP #141 appearances with a glimpse at Giles’ early career as a supernatural investigator tackling a nasty case of bodysnatching, resurrectionism, reanimation and ‘Dead Love’…

‘Stinger’ – by Golden, Gomez & Florea – comes from promo premium Wizard #½ – detailing how Xander’s attempts to save Willow from a bullying stalker lead to a clash with a fear-feeding scorpion-thing…

From Buffy #50, Andi Watson contributes hilarious change-of-pace gag strip ‘Mall Rats’ after which Golden & Eric Powell expose ‘Who Made Who’ (Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Lover’s Walk) with Spike and Dru’s notoriously “open” relationship going through one of those spiralling phases that always results in jealousy, spite and mass-slaughter…

Angel eventually spun off into his own TV series, but from the start was a big enough draw to earn his own comicbook title. Angel: The Hollower was a 3-issue miniseries (May-July 1999) and detailed how, even after reverting to exquisite evil before being redeemed again, his past would always haunt him…

It begins in present-day San Francisco where a pair of vampires is attacked by a monstrously tentacled horror. Veteran vamp Catherine barely escapes with her unlife and, having seen the horror before, knows there’s only one being she can turn to…

Back in Sunnydale, Buffy and Angel have resumed their after-dark partnership, even though Giles and the rest of her in-the-know friends are still wary of the recently re-redeemed night-stalker. However, once their monster-killing “date” ends, Angel is jumped by a band of fangers and sees once more a girl he slaughtered and “turned” over a century past…

Although their sworn enemy, his undead captors treat Angel with kid gloves. Catherine only wants to talk, and she wants to talk about ‘The Hollower’ …

A flashback turns to Vienna in 1892 where Angelus and his pack-mates Spike and Drusilla were amongst many vampires preying on the populace in complete security; oblivious of and immune to all threat or challenge.

However, soon after turning Catherine, Angelus was confronted by starving, terrified vampires fleeing some unimaginable horror that actually preyed on bloodsuckers…

Back in the now, Catherine reminds her sire of the cost the last time the creature manifested and warns him it has undoubtedly tracked her to Sunnydale…

Convinced, Angel agrees to a truce and prepares to battle the thing again. Typically he considers this something he cannot share with Buffy…

In end-of-the-century Austria the first fight against the Hollower unsatisfactorily stalled with only a few undead survivors, whilst now in Sunnydale Angel secretly consults eldritch expert Giles and learns the truth about the beast. He also discovers that, blithely unaware, Buffy is already hunting a huge, subterranean tentacle-horror that prefers vamps to human meals…

Watcher archives reveal a chilling scenario. Everybody knows vampires are actually human corpses with the departed soul replaced by a reanimating demon, using blood to fuel the composite creature. The Hollower, however, sucks out those demonic riders and ingests them. That wouldn’t be a bad thing, except once it’s full – about 3,000 demons is its limit – the horror explosively regurgitates them and the partially digested devils will infect the nearest LIVING body.

If the Hollower succeeds in satiating itself in vampire-infested Sunnydale and subsequently pops, most of the town’s mortal souls will suddenly become rabid, blood-crazed killers…

Despite being fully engaged in the hunt, Buffy can’t shift a nagging, tempting and unworthy notion: if the Hollower sucks out the vampiric part of Angel, will she be left with a normal human lover…?

Whatever the outcome, the Hollower has to be stopped at any and all costs…

The manic mystic mayhem then concludes with a comicbook postscript to the Season 3 TV finale as ‘Graduation Day’ (by Petrie, Jason Minor & Curtis Arnold, from Buffy #20) simultaneously follows Angel as he heads for his new mission in Los Angeles and stays in Sunnydale with Buffy when a demon who feeds on lost hope targets both monster-hunters at once, eager to destroy them both at their lowest emotional ebb…

Supplementing this compilation of mystic madness are Title Page and Cover Galleries with material from Jeff Matsuda, Jon Sibal, J. Scott Campbell, Alex Garner, Liquid! & Guy Major to complete the eerie excitement experience.

Visually compelling, winningly constructed and racing along at hell-for-leather pace, this arcane action fearfully funny fright-fest is utterly engaging even if you’re not familiar with the vast backstory: a creepy chronicle as easily enjoyed by the most callow neophyte as every dedicated devotee.

Moreover, in the era of TV binge-watching, with the shows readily available on TV and DVD, if you aren’t a follower yet you soon could – and should – be…
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ™ & © 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2008 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved.