Category: Horror Stories

Posted on

Spawn of Mars and Other Stories Illustrated by Wallace Wood


By Al Feldstein, Harry Harrison & Wallace Wood (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-805-2

EC began in 1944 when comicbook pioneer Max Gaines sold the successful superhero properties of his All-American Comics company – including Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern and Hawkman – to half-sister National/DC, retaining only Picture Stories from the Bible. His plan was to produce a line of Educational Comics with schools and church groups as the major target market. He then augmented his core title with three more in similar vein: Picture Stories from American History, Science and World History. The worthwhile but unsustainable project was already struggling when he died in a boating accident in 1947.

His son William was eventually convinced to assume control of the family business and, with much support and encouragement from unsung hero Sol Cohen and multi-talented associate Al Feldstein, transformed the ailing enterprise into Entertaining Comics, consequently triggering the greatest qualitative leap forward in comicbook history…

After a few tentative false starts and abortive experiments, Gaines settled into a bold and impressive publishing strategy, utilising the most gifted illustrators in the field to tell a “New Trend” of stories aimed at an older, more discriminating audience.

From 1950 to 1954 EC was the most innovative and influential publisher in America, dominating the genres of science fiction, war, horror and crime. The company even added a new type of title and another genre with the creation of parody magazine Mad …

This 12th volume of the Fantagraphics EC Library compiles a mind-blowing catalogue of cosmic wonders courtesy of Wallace Allan Wood: one of the greatest draughtsmen and graphic imagineers our art form has ever produced.

Woody was a master of every aspect of the business. He began his career lettering Will Eisner’s Spirit strip, readily moving into pencilling and inking as the 1940s ended and, latterly, publishing. After years working all over the comicbook and syndicated strip industries, as well as in legitimate illustration, package-design and other areas of commercial art, he devised the legendary T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents franchise and even created one of the first adult independent comics with Witzend in the late 1960s.

The troubled genius carried the seeds of his own destruction, however. Woody’s life was one of addiction (booze and cigarettes), traumatic relationships, tantalisingly close but always frustrated financial security, illness and eventually suicide. It was as if all the joy and beauty in his existence stayed on the pages and there was none left for real life.

Although during his time with EC Wood became the acknowledged, undisputed Master of Science Fiction art in America, he was equally adept, driven and accomplished in the production of all genres.

This enticingly evocative collection reprints some of his best early science fiction and fantasy masterpieces, re-presented as always, in a lavish monochrome hardcover edition, with supplementary interviews, features and dissertations, beginning with ‘Spawn of Wood’ by Bill Mason, which dissects and appraises the yarns included with forensic discipline and unflinching insight.

Although the usual process at this time was for Gaines and Al Feldstein to plot stories before Feldstein meticulously scripted and laid out each tale for the artists, the worlds of wonder here begin their revelatory orbits with a chilling piece written and illustrated by Wood as ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ (from Weird Fantasy #15 September/October 1950) discloses how the fist lunar landing exposes an alien city of conquerors poised to attack…

Gaines & Al Feldstein were back in charge for ‘A Trip to a Star!’ (Weird Fantasy #16 November/December 1950) as an exploratory excursion far beyond the solar system leads to an astonishing mystery whilst ‘Return’ (Weird Science #15 January/February 1951) sees survivors of an antediluvian and previously unknown race show up on the brink of humanity’s atomic Armageddon to reveal what caused them to flee the planet in ages past…

‘Deadlock!’ was another all-Wood extravaganza (Weird Fantasy #17 January/February 1951), describing a gripping stalemate in space as mankind responded to its First Contact with another star-faring species with typical suspicion. Sadly, the strangers were more like us than different…

A traumatised survivor of the ‘Sinking of the Titanic!’ (Gaines, Feldstein & Wood from Weird Science #6 March/April 1951) built a time-machine to avert the tragedy and became a helpless pawn of destiny, whilst that same month in Weird Fantasy #6 ‘Rescued!’ saw a second ship of Earthly Argonauts fall foul of the cosmic irony which devastated their bold predecessors and ‘The Aliens!’ (Weird Science #7 May/June 1951) detailed another sidereal misapprehension when two belligerent alien species confronted each other and vowed eradication of their newfound foe and its homeworld. Sadly both were on a desolate part of Earth at the time…

“Red Scare” paranoia informed many tales from this time and ‘Breakdown!’ (Weird Fantasy #7, May/June 1951) is one of the best as a distraught wife tries to inform the authorities of imminent invasion only to walk straight into the mind-shatteringly hideous clutches of the infiltrators.

‘The Probers’ (Weird Science #8 July/August 1951) turns the tables on callous human scientists who jump to the wrong conclusions regarding the latest batch of alien guinea pigs whilst that same month in Weird Fantasy #8, all-Wood, ecologically astute saga ‘The Enemies of the Colony’ saw human pioneers on the Galactic Colonization Authority‘s new territory-world drive the wrong predator to extinction – and not live to regret it…

Extraterrestrial biological horror informed ‘The Gray Cloud of Death!’ (Gaines, Feldstein & Wood from Weird Science #9 September/October 1951) as an inimical and voracious thing invades the second ship to voyage to Venus, whilst that month in Weird Science #9 a tragic misunderstanding and itchy trigger-fingers signalled the end of refugees considered ‘The Invaders’ of our world in anther stark parable from Gaines, Feldstein & Wood…

The titular ‘Spawn of Mars’ (Gaines, Feldstein & Wood and also featured in WF #9) detailed the experiences of the first woman explorer on Mars as well as the thing that came back masquerading as her husband…

A brace of yarns from Weird Science #10 November/December 1951 begins with ‘The Maidens Cried’ as spacemen from Earth find themselves beguiled into the bizarre mating processes of beautiful butterfly women whilst ‘Transformation Completed’ offers a stunning moral fable wherein a possessive father uses his new discovery to get rid of his daughter’s “unworthy” suitor by converting him into a woman.

The paranoid Prof comes a cropper because he utterly underestimates his child’s capacity for love and sacrifice…

‘The Secret of Saturn’s Ring!’ was the first of a Gaines, Feldstein & Wood double-bill from Weird Fantasy #10 (November/December 1951), revealing what lurked within that celebrated debris field and how it portended horrific consequences for mankind, whilst ‘The Mutants!’ depicts our selfish bigotry in all its cruelty as the aberrations born in the atomic age are hounded off Earth…

‘The Conquerors of the Moon!’ Weird Science #11 January/February 1952 is a quintessential classic of the form as greedy industrialists steal a portion of Earth’s atmosphere to make the Moon cost-effectively habitable, destroying the birthplace of humanity and consequently laying the seeds of their own destruction, after which Weird Fantasy #11 from the same month offers both the irony-drenched tale of generational colonists undertaking ‘The Two-Century Journey!’ and a time-bending prophecy of inescapable atomic incineration in ‘The 10th at Noon’…

Wry and trenchant black humour resurfaced in ‘A Gobl is a Knoog’s Best Friend’ (Weird Science #12 March/April 1952) as the relationship between Earth spacers and the ship’s dog is misunderstood by aliens before – from the same issue – ‘The Android!’ showed that desire, deception and murder weren’t just facets of mere biology. That month in Weird Fantasy #12 ‘Project… Survival!’ played word games with mythology as mankind sought to survive Armageddon by selecting fragments of Earth to survive aboard rocketship A.R.C.-1 and ‘The Die is Cast!’ gets crushingly literal as explorers find doom and destruction on a desolate flatland plagued by moving mountains…

Shock SuspenStories launched in 1952 and was an anthological anthology – by which I mean that Gaines and Feldstein used it to highlight their other short-story titles by having horror, crime and sci fi yarns in each issue. From #2 (April/May) comes grisly parable ‘Gee Dad… It’s a Daisy!’ which saw explorers find a planet where the inhabitants are as capricious and inadvertently cruel as any earthling 10-year old…

When Wood first began working he formed a studio with a college buddy who would eventually go on to become one of America’s most popular science fiction authors. Working together as writers, pencillers, inkers and letterers it was often impossible to tell who did what.

Short text feature ‘The Enigma of Harrison the Artist’ by Bill Mason covers that uniquely fertile collaboration and includes a glorious Harry Harrison cartoon of his new colleagues in the pulp sci fi watering hole “the Hydra Club” before this volume concludes with a selection of Wood/Harrison EC collaborations beginning with ‘Dream of Doom’ (Harrison script & pencils, Wood inks from Weird Science #12 March/April 1950).

Here a pair of comic creators fall out over creator credit and persistent nightmares after which ‘Only Time Will Tell’ (possibly Gaines, Feldstein with Harrison & Wood from Weird Fantasy #13 May/June 1950) finds a scientist caught in an inescapable time-loop after popping back in time to help himself invent time travel…

Weird Science #13 July/August 1950 unleashed ‘The Meteor Monster’ (Harrison & Wood) which saw a small town slowly succumb to the mental domination of a thing from another world whilst ‘The Black Arts’ (with Harrison inking Wood from Weird Fantasy #14 July/August 1950) offered a rare supernatural horror outing wherein a mousy man tried to used sorcery to get a girlfriend… with disastrous results.

The comicstrip chronicles conclude with an all-Harrison affair as the ‘Machine From Nowhere’ (Weird Science #15 September/October 1950) offers an extremely rare upbeat ending as two scientists stifle their perfectly natural suspicions to help a little flying robot steal uranium for purposes unknown…

Following a delightful ‘Wallace Wood’ caricature by EC colourist and “office girl” Marie Severin, historian S.C. Ringgenberg provides a detailed history of the flawed genius in ‘Wallace Wood’ and this truly captivating compilation closes on another set of ‘Behind the Panels: Creator Biographies’ by Janice Lee and Bill Mason and Ted White’s ‘Crime, Horror, Terror, Gore, Depravity, Disrespect for Established Authority – and Science Fiction Too!: ‘The Ups and Downs of EC Comics: A Short History’ – a comprehensive run-down of the entire EC phenomenon.

The short, sweet, cruelly curtailed EC back-catalogue has been revisited ad infinitum in the decades since its demise. Those amazing yarns changed not just comics but also infected the larger world through film and television to convert millions into dedicated devotees still addicted to New Trend tales.

Whether you are an aged EC Fan-Addict, just a nervous newbie, or simply a mere fan of brilliant stories and sublime art, Spawn of Mars is a book no sane and sensible reader can afford to be without.
Spawn of Mars and Other Stories © 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. All contents © 2015 Fantagraphics Books, Inc. unless otherwise noted. All comics stories and illustrations © 2015 William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., unless otherwise noted. All other material © 2015 the respective creators. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Chronicles of Legion volume 2: The Spawn of Dracula


By Fabien Nury, Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso translated by Virgine Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-094-8

The epic war between immortal blood-drenched brothers continues in the second translated volume of Fabien (Once Upon a Time in France, I Am Legion) Nury’s inspired reinvigoration of the Dracula legend, with illustrators Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu and Tirso Cons each allocated a separate epoch of the centuries-spanning and intertwined vendetta.

The dread duel began in 2011 as Les Chroniques de Legion: a generational saga which put a new spin on the monster-myth, and The Spawn of Dracula further unravels a triptych of mysteries…

What You Need to Know: Vlad Tepes Dracula and his brother Radu possess the power to extend their lives beyond apparent 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 in three theatres of war with their unceasing attempts to destroy each other centred in three separate eras, but rather than disparate clashes over time and space these duels are all part of an extended and never-ending campaign of terror with mere mortals their callously disposable tools, weapons and cannon fodder…

The opening act occurs in 1885 as gambling addict and thorough swine Victor Douglas Thorpe enters the palatial home of reclusive immensely wealthy aristocratic 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 Victor Douglas Thorpe…

Centuries earlier in 1521, Gabriella, Doña Del La Fuente bore the same scarlet sigil as she was escorted through the green hell of the New World to a meeting with powerfully placed future husband Hernan Torres.

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 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 natives who seem immune to pain and mortal harm, fighting on even after 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 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 Torres 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 his faithful subordinates Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to the Wallachian Mountains in search of the Lost Treasure of Vlad Dracula Tepes but the long-suffering peasants there quickly 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 which leads to the death of his mortal host…

As his men abandon his corpse to the snows, the embarrassed immortal summons 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…

Unfolding in a luxurious oversized (211 x 282mm) full-colour hardback, superbly illustrated and beguiling told, this intoxicatingly absorbing jigsaw of terror and tragedy is a stunning and ambitious treat for all fans of fang and fear…
The Chronicles of Legion and all contents © Éditions Glénat 2011. Translated edition © Titan Comics, 2015

Posted on

Lenore: Pink Bellies


By Roman Dirge (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-131-0

Lenore is a sweet little girl who has cute, if somewhat surreal, little adventures. Did I mention that she is also dead and has been for quite some time? Well she is, and her friends are just as outré…

Wittily weird, aggressively eccentric and darkly hilarious comic strips featuring this edgy little charmer and her fluctuating coterie of arcane acquaintances have been entertaining audiences since 1992 when she first appeared in San Diego’s alternative arts magazine Xenophobe.

Slave Labor Graphics picked up “the Cute Little Dead Girl” and featured her eerie escapades in a proper comicbook from February 1998 to July 2007, which led to a series of 26 Flash-animation shorts on Sony’s ScreenBlast website in 2002. There’s toys, game merchandising stuff and a movie in the works…

In 2009 Titan Comics took up the publishing option on Lenore’s uniquely unreal print excursions and have subsequently repackaged and remastered her entire career in a series of hardcover chronicles.

This sixth collection (re-presenting issues #8-11 of the second volume) offers more mercurial madness and even an origin of sorts which all begins after an elucidatory Introduction from current editor David Leach, describing the author’s creative process. ‘Some Things Are Best Left Unseen’ highlights a big change in status for Lenore and her most enduring associates. Former vampire and current not-so-cuddly toy Ragamuffin, bucket-headed demon/on-sabbatical bounty hunter Pooty Applewater and indescribably enigmatic arms-length protector Taxidermy have been with the beguiling tot for ages now…

Lenore died a hundred years ago in the little town of Nevermore but Taxidermy’s story begins much earlier: either in 1880 when a very foolish French archaeologist opened the wrongest tomb in Egypt or else millennia before that when the almighty gods locked one of their own exalted pantheon within it.

Taxen-Ra was a small god dedicated to avenging small wrongs done to children. Over centuries he became busier redressing balances and grew mightier with each punishment, but eventually he was forgotten until a plague wiped out so many young ones that he snapped…

Determined to wreak bloody vengeance on everyone who had allowed children to suffer he attacked his fellow deities and had to be put away forever…

Once fame-hungry modern historians freed him, however, he resumed his task: an impossibly efficient serial killer dubbed “Orphanage” who slaughtered the parents and guardians of abused kids all over the world…

Now TV ghost-hunting show Ghosty Toasty has tracked Orphanage to Nevermore, and a dilapidated old house which none of the crew can see is occupied by a little dead girl and her friends.

Well, cameraman Big Joe can, but nobody will listen to him so he’s staying safely locked in the van whilst his butt-hole bosses all endure their well-deserved fates…

Always happy to indulge in a few high-spirited pranks and japes, the kids are blithely unaware that thanks to modern technology their antics as well as Taxidermy’s highly imaginative dispatch of the intruders has been streaming live to the entire planet…

More long-sought-for revelations are forthcoming in the three-chapter ‘Downfall’, beginning with ‘Part #1′ as the true circumstances of Lenore’s tragic demise are revisited.

The little miss quickly returned to her happy home after she passed and she has never accepted her beloved mama’s horrified rejection of her. All this time the frequently forgetful waif has been waiting for Mother’s inevitable return, unaware that Orphanage long ago ensured that it could never happen…

In the present – but over in France – a mysterious woman sends an army of well-equipped agents to capture Lenore and her chums but sadly the best that science and money can provide is less than effective against the unquiet – and rather mischievous – dead. The worst that happens is the pals experiencing the trippiest hallucination imaginable, before Lenore finds herself at the Rainbow Bridge explaining herself to every pet she’s ever accidentally killed (and in a century that’s a lot)…

The super-soldiers are just unleashing their next level of technological ingenuity when Taxidermy shows up, but before he can get going there’s a big bang and a couple of very annoyed Egyptian gods materialise…

‘Downfall Part #2: Downfall…ier’ escalates the craziness as Nevermore turns into a thaumaturgical ground zero impossible to describe, with outrageous gags trumping appalling supernatural carnage whilst Ragamuffin and Pooty argue over who’s going to tell Lenore the shocking secret they’ve just uncovered about her revenant rebirth…

Acting as grotesquely bad-taste scatological palate cleansers, short tales ‘Lenore in Old Mother Hubbard’ and ‘Lenore in Goldilocks and the 3 Bears’ gives those of us who still need oxygen a breathing space before everything comes to a spectacular conclusion in ‘Downfall Part #3: DownfalliestAlottaBunches’ with the warring gods ending their millennial duel in the only way they can before little Lenore reaches her own unique accommodation with all those unhappy inconvenient truths…

To Be Continued…

There’s still plenty of fun to be had however and ‘Bonus Section’ holds more variant and unused covers – 11 in total throughout this tome of terror – plus ‘inside cover-art’ from #8-11 and the death-affirming scene ‘Mr. Gosh Sucks’.

Also included is ‘Guest Art’ by Maxwell Vex, a crafty ‘Lenore Puppet Tutorial by Bonnie Burton’ (never run with scissors and be careful not to prick your fingers – you never knows who’s watching or hungry) and a selection of ‘Cover Concepts for #11’ closes out our Easter Eggs Incubated in Hell section…

Impossible to fairly describe but so absolutely necessary to read, these stories are richly dipped in the traditions of Charles Addams: scary, poignant, grossly frat-boy funny and appealing to the same skewed and twisted audiences who adore Jhonen Vasquez’s Squee! and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac or goth-inspired series such as Gloom Cookie or Giffen & Roman’s i Luv Halloween – not to mention the animated films of Tim Burton.

These weird and wonderful fables are an unwholesome treat for those kids of all ages with a taste for the richer, darker and less wholesome flavours of life – and its inevitable end, if not cessation. Ever so much better for you than giving poisoned candy to kids who bang on your door.
Lenore is ™ & © 2015 Roman Dirge. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Chronicles of Legion volume 1: Rise of the Vampires


By Fabien Nury, Mathieu Lauffray, Mario Alberti, Zhang Xiaoyu & Tirso , translated by Virgine Selavy (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-093-1

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 writer 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 which put a new 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 & Tirso Cons (Eye of the Devil, Le Manoir murmurs) and opens here (in good old English) 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 ravished his despised enemy’s beloved, Dracula’s implacable sibling rival was 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 was gone, overwritten by the undying Impaler…

Nor could Radu not stop the horror escaping and after “Selim” murdered the Sultan and vanished, the Transylvanian turncoat endured all the anger and hatred of the Ottomans. Of course since his blood was just as accursed as Vlad’s, Radu’s story didn’t end with his body’s death either…

In 1521 Vlad was on the move once more, inhabiting the body of Gabriella Del La Fuente. This recent orphan was travelling to the New World, contracted to marry the audacious conquistador Hernan Torres. A flower of the aristocracy, her perfect beauty was only marred by the strange red 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 had no idea Radu had reached the Americas first and transformed them to a hell of his own devising. The other brother had 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 for the longest time…

In Russia in 1812, an undying warrior sprit was wearing French Hussar Armand Malachie. As Napoleon’s broken armies fled before the vengeful Cossacks, he convinced his faithful subordinates Kholya, Stern, Hartmann and Feraud to desert with him. Detouring to the Wallachian Mountains they hunted for valuable loot Armand had heard about: the Lost Treasure of Vlad Dracula Tepes…

It was all a lie. The true reason for the diversion was that Dracula sensed far-distant Radu had allowed an unprecedented atrocity to be created and the time had 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…

Lavishly presented in an oversized (211 x 282mm) full-colour hardback, evocatively illustrated and told through contiguous strands in many concurrent times, this epic, intoxicatingly absorbing horror mosaic depicts a constant battle between two remorseless foes inextricably linked by blood to grip and delight lovers of all things dark and demonic…
The Chronicles of Legion and all contents © Éditions Glénat 2011. Translated edition © Titan Comics, 2014.

Posted on

The Tower Chronicles: DreadStalker


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

To Be Continued…

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

Posted on

Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness


By John Layman, Fabiano Neves, Fernando Blanco, Sean Phillips & various (Marvel/Dynamite Entertainment)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-4243-0

Swiftly catching a cultural wave to become one of modern Marvel’s most popular niche-franchises, a canny blend of gratuitous violence, sharp wit and arrant buffoonery led to the Marvel Zombies taking the comics-reading world by storm in the mid-2000s.

So big was the concept that, like a flesh-eating infection, it even escaped the confines of corporate continuity to engender an inter-company crossover with another hugely popular horror franchise…

In one of the many Marvel universes an intruder from beyond brought an extra-dimensional curse to one tragic reality: a pestilence that without exception instantly turned the infected (for which read “bitten”) victims into ravenous, undead eating machines.

Confronted by wave after wave of valiant superheroes, “patient zero” defeated them all and his all-conquering contagion spread exponentially as defenders fell to rise as voracious monsters. Before a day was out a chain-reaction of hungry terror had devastated the world, leaving its costumed champions nothing more than the apex predators atop a rapidly diminishing food source…

Ash Williams – as played onscreen by actor Bruce Campbell – is the implausible demon-killing star of the Evil Dead/Army of Darkness movies devised by Sam Raimi. A horny, misogynistic oaf and charmless goon, he is nonetheless chosen by fate to destroy all “deadites”: ravening evil ghosts intent on ending all life, spawned by a malignant, malevolent sentient tome known as The Necronomicon.

For a total butthole, Ash is surprisingly competent at his job…

Dark Horse Comics produced the first Evil Dead comicbook series in 1992 and Dynamite Entertainment picked up the license in 2004 with dark and daft miniseries Army of Darkness: Ashes 2 Ashes. It led to 2005’s Army of Darkness: Shop Till You Drop (Dead) and Army of Darkness vs. Re-Animator before an on-going series was commissioned in 2006.

Considering his predilection for gory, sardonic splatter-tainment, the dimension-hopping, time-jumping Ash was a dead cert to visit Marvel’s funerary fun house…

This slim and sinister inter-company chronicle collects Marvel Zombies Vs. Army of Darkness #1-5 (May – September 2007), courtesy of scripter John Layman and illustrators Fabiano Neves with Fernando Blanco, Sean Phillips and colourist June Chung all contributing to the mix.

Unusual for such intersecting universe imbroglios, the events of this yarn are “in-continuity”, occurring during, contiguous with and affecting the tragic happenings seen in ‘Marvel Zombies: Dead Days’: even offering key story points not revealed in the exclusively Marvel tales…

It begins after Ash arrives on Earth in the hours before the infection first hits. A no-nonsense blue-collar kind of guy, the Deadite Destroyer can take demonic monsters and time-travel in his stride but is flabbergasted to see grown men in tights beating each other up.

Watching Daredevil battle super-villain Thunderball the nonplussed wanderer is unable to discern who is good and who evil but his amazement is suspended after the wicked spirit of the Necronomicon appears and taunts him with a prophecy… “This world will die and an army of the dead will rise”…

Stuck in a world of costumed clowns, Ash decides to go straight to the top and seeks out Avengers Mansion, but the assembled heroes refuse to believe his warnings of doom. Being dumped in a lake by the Scarlet Witch only serves to jog his memory however and he recalls his last moments before arriving in this fruity, steroid-infested madhouse…

He was dead and about to enter Heaven when a costumed maniac attacked, biting the deceased, turning them into flesh-eating horrors and wrecking the entire Afterlife. Ash escaped back to the lands of the living, but the creature followed him…

The heroes are leaving to investigate reports of a monster when Ash finds them again, and Colonel America orders Spider-Man to take the raving lunatic away for his own safety. By the time the traveller convinces the Wallcrawler that he isn’t crazy, the damage has been done. Almost all of the World’s Mightiest Heroes are ravening undead horrors and Ash is ‘Earth’s Mightiest Zero’…

Stunned, the late-arriving webspinner is easy meat for the Star-Spangled zombie, leaving Ash helpless before a hungry rabble of former heroes…

Events kick into grisly top gear in ‘Marvel Team-Ups’ as Spider-Man, frantically fighting the hunger that’s killing him, whisks Ash to temporary safety before fleeing, leaving the extra-dimensional demon killer all alone until seeming kindred spirit The Punisher shows up.

The man with the skull on his chest doesn’t care about undead monsters: he’s busy killing a few living ones like The Kingpin, Hammerhead and The Owl…

Once his current job is completed however he comes around to Ash’s way of thinking, but his confrontational manner of only dealing with things head on soon ends his usefulness. The vigilante does however leave Ash with a lot of serious ordnance, which the cocky Mr. Williams uses to save hot babe Dazzler from imminent death by superhero bite…

Ash is convinced that the Necronomicon is summoning Deadites to this Earth and, after informing her that an evil magic book is behind all the grief, Dazzler takes him to the home of Doctor Strange, reasoning that if the chronicle of chaos is to be found anywhere it will be in the library of Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme…

They are too late: ‘Night of the Livid Dead’ finds Ash meeting again the Scarlet Witch (now the only still-breathing Avenger) and encountering his Marvel Earth counterpart as well as a flesh-eating humanoid duck named Howard, but the mystic they’re seeking is long gone.

Ash and his new team do however convince the other tormented tomes in the library to tell them where the Necronomicon is currently located and, leaving scenes of escalating horror behind them, the mortals fly to Latveria to confront a foreigner with the unlikely name of Doctor Doom…

By the time they get there the plague has gone global and the Balkan kingdom is under siege: possibly the only place on Earth where humans still live – and only then behind the straining force-fields of Castle Doomstadt.

‘The Book of Doom’ opens with the Iron Dictator disregarding Ash’s warnings of infernal invasion in favour his own conclusions of a simple pan-dimensional virus, before dumping him in the pens where a breeding stock of humans is cached, ready to repopulate Earth after Doom inevitably destroys the zombie hordes.

Unconvinced by his captor’s arrogant assurances, Ash busts out and meets Scarlet Witch on her way to the dictator’s library. Soon they are interrogating the Devil Doctor’s copy of the Necronomicon and Ash discovers he been played from page one…

Reeling with despair and defeat he then releases a hot chick in a glass tube who calls herself Amora the Enchantress, blissfully unaware that she is both an evil goddess and a plague-carrying zombie Doom has been experimenting on…

The tale and the world comes to an explosive, blood-drenched end in concluding chapter ‘The Stalking Dead’ wherein an army of undead heroes converge on Latveria, but not before Ash and Doom pull a minor rabbit out of their combined hats, ferrying the last humans to a place of other-dimensional safety. The hapless Deadite Hunter, however, is less lucky and lands in a dimension with a monster problem even he hasn’t encountered before…

Fast-paced, irreverent, raucous and gorily outrageous, this laugh-out-loud saga of no-guts-and-less-glory will sit well with readers hungry for immature entertainment and all comicbook completists, and comes with a splendid gallery of covers-&-variants by Arthur Suydam, recreating eight classic scenes from Marvel history. Also included are those inspirational originals by John Byrne, Terry Austin, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru, Dick Giordano, Jim Lee, Jim Starlin and Frank Miller.

© 2007, 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved. All Marvel characters, names and distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Marvel Characters, Inc. Army of Darkness and all characters, names and distinctive likenesses are trademarks of Orion Pictures ™ & © 1993-2009 Orion Pictures Corporation, Inc. All rights reserved. Licensed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. to Dynamic Forces Inc. Dynamite, Dynamic Entertainment & its logo ™ & Dynamic Forces Inc. Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Marvel Zombies: the Complete Collection volume 1


By Mark Millar, Robert Kirkman, Reginald Hudlin, Greg Land, Sean Phillips, Francis Portela, Mitch Breitweiser & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8538-3

Swiftly catching a cultural wave to become one of modern Marvel’s most popular niche-franchises, the canny blend of gratuitous measured sarcasm and arrant cosmic buffoonery compiled here traces all the early appearances of the deadly departed, flesh-eating superheroes from an alternate universe which wasn’t so different from the one we all know – at least until a dire contagion killed every ordinary mortal and infected every super-human upon it…

This mammoth volume re-presents the first appearances of those chompy champions as seen in Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-23 and #30-32, Marvel Zombies #1-5, Marvel Zombies: Dead Days #1 and Black Panther volume 4 #28-30 (plus material from Marvel Spotlight: Marvel Zombies/Mystic Arcana collectively spanning September 2005 to October 2007) and leaps into sinister high gear following Robert “The Zombie Guy” Kirkman’s informative introduction ‘Marvelous Zombies’…

In many ways a highly entertaining one-trick pony, these tales all depend on a deep familiarity with the regular Marvel pantheon, a fondness for schlock horror and the cherished tradition of superheroes beating the stuffings out of each other.

This time however, it’s for keeps, with beloved icons actually eating the stuffings out of each other – and just about everyone else – until only a handful of living breathing folk remain, desperately seeking a cure or a way to escape their universe without bringing the hunger plague with them…

It all begins with the first chronological appearance of the brain-eaters: a bleak and subtle exploit which appeared in Ultimate Fantastic Four #21-23. This team is a retooled version of the Lee/Kirby stalwarts created as part of the Marvel Ultimates imprint which began in 2000.

After Marvel’s near-demise in 1996, the new management oversaw a thoroughly modernising refit of key properties: fresher characters and concepts to appeal to a new generation of “ki-dults” – perceived to be a potentially separate buying public from those readers content to stick with the various efforts that had gradually devolved from the Founding Fathers of the House of Ideas.

This super-powered quartet are part of a corporate think-thank tasked with saving the world and making a profit, and in ‘Crossover’ by Mark Millar, Greg Land & Matt Ryan, wünderkind Reed Richards is contacted by a smarter, older version of himself offering the secrets of trans-dimensional travel.

Defying his bosses and comrades, Reed translates to the other Earth only to find he’s been duped by adult, zombie versions of the FF, looking for fresh fields to infect and people to digest…

Breaking free, young Richards discovers a devastated, desolate New York populated solely by manic monster superheroes, all eager to eat one of the last living beings on the planet. Suddenly rescued by Magneto, Reed meets other survivors as they prepare for their last hurrah. Offering them a chance to escape, Reed is blissfully unaware that he’s already allowed the Zombie FF to invade the still living world he came from…

Culminating in a bombastic battle on two planes of reality and a tragic heroic sacrifice, this creepy chronicle ends with the zombie FF imprisoned on Ultimate Earth…

The concept evolved into a franchise in February 2006 with the launch of 5-part miniseries Marvel Zombies, by Robert Kirkman & Sean Phillips, which returned to the infected alternate Earth to detail the final fall of humanity and the improbable things that happened next…

With the living all gone or infected, Earth’s former heroes and villains are at a loss. Fighting and bickering whiles away time but since nothing can kill them and only living flesh will sate their hunger for even a second, all hope seems lost until a strange glowing alien on a surfboard appears in the sky…

Unaware that Giant-Man has keeping a stash of live humans (including former friend Black Panther) to eat in secret and one piece at a time, the zombies are united by Colonel America and Iron Man into an army to capture and consume the cosmic skyrider.

As the living ruin who was the Panther escapes and fortuitously unites with Magneto’s remaining mutant acolytes, the Silver Surfer falls to a happily distracted army of zombies who devour him and somehow absorb his cosmic energies. But as they finish, the planetary devourer Galactus arrives, demanding to know where his herald is…

The star god eats entire planets to survive but even he has never encountered hunger such as possesses the zombies. Hundreds of the massed undead launch themselves at him and although he destroys many he cannot kill them all…

As Earth’s remaining human and mutants form an uneasy alliance and flee to a hidden sanctuary, Galactus readies himself to consume Earth but is unprepared for the ingenuity of the zombie Avengers who turn the tables and eat the eater.

Now the whole universe is at risk since Iron Man, Hulk, Luke Cage, Wolverine, Giant-Man and Spider-Man – fuelled by Galactus’ limitless cosmic energy – can travel from planet to planet to assuage their unceasing appetites…

Following a few tantalising snippets culled from intervening UFF issues with the undead quartet describing what they’ll do when – not if – they get loose, the saga finally explodes into high gear in ‘Frightful’ from Ultimate Fantastic Four #30-32, by Millar, Land, Ryan & Mitch Breitweiser.

Here the Ultimate Universe Dr. Doom enacts a subtle plan to crush his arch-rival Reed Richards, but the imprisoned, lab-rat zombie FF have their own agenda: one which includes escaping and eating every living thing on the planet…

A far more serious tale of revenge and obsession, this yarn is a real chiller in a volume far more silly than scary and culminates in an unlikely sacrifice to save the world from the one person nobody expected to give a damn……

Events take a lighter tone if not turn when events on the original Marvel Earth impinge on the zombieverse.

Here a Civil War had erupted between costumed heroes after the US government ordered all superhumans to unmask and register themselves. From that period comes ‘Good Eatin”, a light-hearted, grotesquely slapstick 3-part hoot from Black Panther #28-30 (July-October 2007).

The tale revealed how, on undead Earth, the six victorious zombies – Tony Stark, Luke Cage, Giant-Man, Spider-Man, Wolverine and the Hulk – ate Galactus and absorbed all his power. With every other food source exhausted they then ranged their entire reality for forty years, killing every thing and every person in every civilisation they could find.

Convened for a brief time as the “New Fantastic Four” of our Earth, X-Man Storm, Human Torch, Thing and the Panther went time- and dimension-hopping at just the wrong moment and ended upon a hidden citadel of the shape-shifting Skrulls just as the Galactal Zombie Diners Club discovers what just might be the last edible planet in their universe.

‘Hell of a Mess’, ‘From Bad to Worse’ and ‘Absolutely No Way to Win’ (by Reginald Hudlin & Francis Portela) comprise an action-packed, hilariously bad-taste splatter-fest to delight the thrill-seeking, grossness-engorged teenager in us all…

The story portion of this chronicle of the damned concludes with a one-shot prequel which concentrated on the tragedy of the final hours of that doomed alternity. In Marvel Zombies: Dead Days (May 2007), Robert Kirkman & Sean Phillips detailed exactly how humanity ended after Earth’s heroes all gathered to battle a super-villain from another dimension.

This intruder had unfortunately imported an extra-dimensional curse to this reality: one that turns the infected (for which read “bitten”) victims into ravenous, undead eating machines. Before a day was out a chain reaction of terror had devastated the world, leaving its costumed champions nothing more than the apex predators atop a rapidly diminishing food source…

This tome is as much art book as graphic narrative and also includes an incredible range of alternate and variant covers as well as a gallery of the landmark original covers used by zombie illustrator Arthur Suydam as the basis for the 50 new spoof and pastiche images he created: all referencing key moments from Marvel’s decades-long-history and adding so much to the project’s success.

These include Jack Kirby & Steve Ditko’s Amazing Fantasy #15 (from August 1962), Spider-Man #1 by Todd McFarlane (August 1990), Amazing Spider-Man #50 (July 1967 by John Romita Sr.), Hulk #1 by Kirby & Paul Reinman (May 1962), Avengers #4 (March 1964 by Kirby), Daredevil #179 (February 1988 by Frank Millar & Klaus Janson), X-Men #1 (September 1963, by Kirby & Sol Brodsky, Silver Surfer #1 (John Buscema, August 1968), Fantastic Four #1 (November 1961 by Kirby), Avengers #87 (April 1971 by John Buscema & John Verpoorten), the other X-Men #1 from October 1991 by Jim Lee & Scott Williams, Secret Wars #1 (May 1984, Mike Zeck & John Beatty) and so many more, all accompanied by the artist’s fascinating insights and commentary

As well as Suydam’s fiendish fifty reinterpretations there are 42 covers by Land, Matt, Frank D’Armata, Justin Ponsor, Jay Leisten, Phillips, Juan Bobillo, Kaare Andrews, David Aja, Leonard Kirk, Aaron Lopresti, Jeromy Cox, Carlo Pagulayan, Romita Sr., Ed McGuinness, Jason Keith, Richard Corben, Ariel Olivetti, David Yardin, Matt Milla, Scott Clark, Boris Vallejo, Earl Norem, Kyle Hotz and Dan Brown, all adding to the devilish dark art delights and augmenting the feature-packed prose section at the end.

Essays and snippets here include ‘Interview Excerpts from Marvel Spotlight: Robert Kirkman/Greg Land’, ‘A Gruesome Good Time: The Story of the Marvel Zombies’, ‘Whose Stomach Are You In?’, ‘Undead Again’ and ‘Life Among the Zombies’ – all by Dugan Trodglen – plus a picture-&-sketch packed expose of ‘The Crazy World of Arthur Suydam’ as explained to John Rhett Thomas, all adding to the comprehensive overbite overview of things ..

By no means to everyone’s taste, this blending of ferocious fangtastic fable with gross-out comedy mixes the sentiments of American Werewolf in London, the iconography of Shaun of the Dead and the cherished hagiography of the Marvel Universe to surprisingly engaging effect. Not for the squeamish or continuity-cherishing hardliners, there might be a loud laugh or frisson of fear awaiting the open-minded casual reader…
© 2005, 2006, 2007, 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

The Veil


By Greg Rucka & Toni Fejzula, with Aljoša Tomić & various (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-492-7

It’s January and the nights are long and cold. Good thing there’s plenty of scary stories and coolly creepy graphic novels to while away the midnight hours…

Written by Greg Rucka and chillingly illustrated by Toni Fejzula with additional colour work from Aljoša Tomić, Veil collects the introductory 5-issue miniseries (March to July 2014) which saw the debut of one of the more intriguing femme fatales in modern comics history…

It all begins in an abandoned, desolate subway station where a beautiful, naked and extremely confused young woman awakens on a bed of most surprised rats. Babbling incoherently but not at all scared, she makes her way above ground and finds herself in a modern Sodom and Gomorrah where her nubile helplessness soon attracts the attention of the pimps and other two-footed predators…

Big mean Vincent especially seems unable to resist his most basic urges but the victim-to-be is rescued by unlikely hero Dante who inexplicably – and unlike every other John on the street – seems compelled to shield rather than covet her…

Covering her nakedness, Dante takes her to his shabby apartment and tries to get some sense out of the girl who calls herself “Veil”. Vincent and his homies, however, are not the types to defer gratification and come looking for her with plenty of guns and bad attitudes…

It’s the last mistake of their short, violent lives but in the bloody aftermath Dante knows more than ever that, whatever she is, this girl must be protected. As they go on the run through the seedy backstreets and alleys of the city Veil seems to grow more clear-headed even as she displays ever-greater impossible abilities.

Elsewhere men wielding a different kind of irresistible power are discussing her. In the gory detritus of a satanic ritual, money-man Mr. Scarborough unwisely chides the black magician he and his consortium have hired – with apparently negligible return…

Despite apparent failure and the clear absence of the thing they paid for, insouciant Cormac remains aggravatingly untroubled. Just why is revealed after Scarborough’s thugs try to kill him for his presumed failure and the scheming wizard displays some of the other powers at his command…

The demands of ego satisfied on both sides, Cormac assures Scarborough that he will find the missing vessel of unfettered power he was hired to summon. He never actually specifies who will profit from it, though…

Back in the nasty part of town, cops have arrested Dante and Veil, but the girl’s uncanny allure compels one of them to force himself upon her as he has so many other street girls. His partner will never sleep easy again after seeing what she left of him…

With Veil vanished, the still-handcuffed Dante flees whilst in an empty, deconsecrated church Cormac works, summoning a rat familiar to scent out his target and draw it to him. If he knows that Scarborough and his billionaire business associates have sanctioned an assassination hit team to take him out, he doesn’t care…

The killer elite arrive soon after the mesmerised Veil and are on site when the mage binds her with a mystic chain, ordering her to change to her true form. The hit squad doesn’t stand a chance…

Dante meanwhile has hooked up with an old friend who has rid him of the handcuffs, if not his obsession to help the strangely compelling Veil. The poor sap isn’t that surprised when a rat bites Gabriel and something terrifying starts talking through his mouth. It seems the Devil wants his property back and is prepared to help Dante save her from the mad mortals who currently possess her…

Sharply scripted and superbly illustrated, this rocket-paced rollercoaster ride to Hell and back is a superb blend of corporate chicanery, sinister sorcery, grimy street crime, gory excess and unlikely heroism that delivers a bloodbath of spooky, sexy action even as it promises more revelations to come.

This classy full-colour hardback edition also includes a copious ‘Veil Sketchbook’ section depicting the evolution and intriguing multiple aspects of the enigmatic star to astound art lovers and all aficionados of the darkly exotic.
© 2014, 2015 Nervous Habit, Inc. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Treasury of Mini Comics volume 2


By many and various, edited by Michael Dowers (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-807-6

The act of stringing pictures and/or words together is something almost everybody has done at some stage of their lives. It’s a key step in the cognitive path of children and, for an increasing number of us, that compulsive, absorbing euphoria never goes away.

Whilst many millions acquiesce to the crushing weight of a world which stifles the liberation of creativity, turning a preponderance of makers into consumers, a privileged, determined few carry on: drawing, exploring, and in some cases, with technology’s help, producing and sharing.

Michael Dowers, the force behind not only this compilation but also Brownfieldpress and Starhead Comix, adores the concept of crafting and disseminating mini comics and his books Newave!- The Underground Mini Comix of the 1980 and volume one of this series described and reproduced hundreds of examples: spotlighting with enticing, encouraging exuberance those incurably driven artisans who came out of the “anything goes” 1960s and 1970s Underground Commix movement still craving a vehicle of expressly personal expression.

Such creators aren’t really in it for the money – although a few have moved on to find a modicum of mainstream comics fame, at least – and, in an era before computers, they found time to write, draw and compile artwork (small press people are notoriously generous, contributing to projects at the drop of a hat) before laboriously photocopying, cutting, folding, stapling and then distributing the miniscule marvellous results.

Just by way of definition: most mini comics were and still are home-produced pamphlets using borrowed – or when necessary paid for – print processes. The most popular format was an 8½ x 11inch sheet, folded twice, and printed at local copy-shops (or clandestinely churned out on school/work repro systems like early Xerox, Photostat, Mimeo or Spirit Banda machines) on any paper one could lay hands on.

Because they weren’t big, they were called “mini commix”. Inspired, no?

Thanks to a seemingly inexhaustible modern appetite for such uniquely individualistic endeavours here’s a superb sequel tome – one more massive paper brick of fun (848 monochrome and colour pages, 178 x 127mm) – compiling and sharing many of the very best mini masterpieces from the 1970s to right here, right now…

Many key figures in the proliferation of this uniquely eloquent people’s medium are included here, not only through examples of their groundbreaking work, but also through statements, interviews and fond reminiscences.

If human beings have access to any kind of reproductive technology they seemingly cannot resist making copies of their own private parts or creating their own comics, and here content comes from all over the North American continent – and even beyond – covering everything from superhero spoofs, monster-mashes, robot rampages, animal antics, autobiography, recreational drugs, religious, spiritual and philosophical diatribes and polemics, surreal experimental design and just plain fun stories, chatter and gags: all as sexually explicit, violent, strident or personally intimate as their creators wanted them to be…

As usual I’ll deliver here my standard warning for the easily offended: this book contains comic strips never intended for children. If you are liable to be offended by raucous adult, political and drug humour, or illustrated scenes of explicit sex or unbelievable comedy violence, don’t buy this book and stop reading this review. You won’t enjoy any of it and might be compelled to cause a fuss.

I’ll probably cover something far more wholesome tomorrow so please come back then.

It all starts with Michael Dowers’ introduction wherein he brings the history of the sub-medium up to date and posits a connection with the legendarily scandalous “Gentlemen’s under-the-counter” publications known as Tijuana Bibles which livened up life for our forebears in the early part of the 20th century with explicit and illegal cartoon cavortings featuring famous stars of screen and newspaper strips.

That proposition is upheld and further explored following ‘The Hundred Year Old New Waver in “Damn Punks Got it Easy Today”’: a hilarious graphic diatribe (dis)courtesy of Brad W. Foster from Time Warp #3 (2007) after which a genuine, authentic and anonymous Tijuana Bible inclusion offers erotic relief to ‘The Van Swaggers’.

Then follows a batch of modern tributes and reinterpretations beginning with masked wrestler/guitarist The Crippler by Fiona Smyth (2007) and the astoundingly disturbing, politically punishing ‘Obliging Lady’ from Ethan Persoff & Scott Marshall’s The Adventures of Fuller Bush Man & John McCain (2009)…

A splendid faux pastiche of the original pamphlets, Hairy Crotch & Rim Johnson in ‘The Interview’ is an anonymous entry from 1995, whilst Lilli Loge abandons the form but ramps up the spirit for the tale of a girl and her slave in ‘A Blessing in Disguise’ from Ben & Jenny from 2009.

That same year clean-cut Euro icon Lucky Luke got homo-erotically spoofed as ‘Hunky Luke in Calamity Jack’ by Anna Bas Backer after which Antoine Duthoit (2013) plunders Jim Woodring’s style and character cast for the outrageous Spank.

From 1972 Trina Robbins delivers classic pastiche ‘Sally Starr Hollywood Gal Sleuth’ solving a “Minit Mystery” whilst Bob Conway offers classic cartoon capers ‘Out to Lunch’ and ‘Chicken Shit’ in 1980’s Tales of Mr. Fly, and David Miller & Par Holman venerate the disaffected teen outsider experience in a blast of vignettes in Punkomix #1 from 1982.

Clark Dissmeyer laments the life of a Two-Fisted Cartoonist (#1 1983) after which Steve Willis’ 1983 Sasquatch Comix #3 details a strange encounter in the wild woods and R.K. Sloane & Jeff Gaither noxiously explore a life in hell with Fresh Meat from 1985.

A genuine small press big noise reveals all in the ‘Jeff Nicholson Interview’ after which the creator’s infamous cartoon polemic Jeff Nicholson’s Small Press Tirade (1989) still proves to be astoundingly powerful and the ‘Dan Taylor Interview’ segues neatly into some of his superbly eclectic Shortoonz from 1990 and the deliciously vulgarian Unleashed #1 from 2010.

John Trubee’s 1990 Vomit! #1 is a captivating manifesto of the politically baroque and philosophically bizarre whilst from 1992 Jason Atomic’s Wongo Batonga pt. 2 gloriously celebrates the magnificent freedom of superheroic imagination in a lengthy explosion of power-packed battles before Patrick Dowers explores human diversity in Marvels of the Sideshow Freaks.

Corn Comics #1 (Marc Bell, 1993) provides a hilarious laugh-ride of bitter twisted types after which the ‘Tom Hart Interview’ precedes his wittily poignant 1993 slice-of-life saga Love Looks Left and all-star line-up J.R. Williams, Pat Moriarity & R.L. Crabb collaborate on the 1994 cautionary tale ‘Devil Stay Away From Me’.

Impishly shocking Ellen Forney & Renée French then reveal how The Exquisite Corpse Bakes a Pie (1994), after which a ‘Molly Kiely Interview’ is stunningly supplemented by her rendition of a bevy of female music and movie icons who all possessed that indefinable sense of Sass! (1995).

Jeffrey Brown’s 1998 paean to hopelessness and confusion ‘To Wenatchee’ is followed by Pshaw’s whimsical story of a little robot in The One Eyed World (1999) after which ‘Colin Upton Presents A Short Guide To the Care and Production of Mini-Comics’ provides everything anyone needs to know about making story-art stories.

Contemporary cartoon wild child Johnny Ryan 2002 exposes guilty secrets from Shouldn’t You Be Working? #5, before the ‘Souther Salazar Interview’ leads to the artist’s wide-ranging ‘In Case of Emergency Only’ (2003) and Max Clotfelter’s eerily post-apocalyptic Snake Meat #1 from 2004.

Her smartly evocative 2004 Science Fiction Affliction is preceded by an ‘Alison Cole Interview’ after which Thought Cloud Shrines from 2007 perfectly displays Theo Ellsworth’s astounding graphic imagination and meticulous penmanship; gifts shared by Lisa Hanawalt and revealed in a stunning fashion parade of freaks in Stay Away From Other People from 2008, augmented by her hilarious ’12 Things To Do When you Are Stuck in Traffic’.

Travis Millard’s ‘Sad Dad’ introduces a deucedly depressing modern pantheon in Who Let the Gods Out (2008) whilst Bobby Maddness explores a variety of baffling annoyances in Too Small Comics #2 (2010) and Esther Pearl Watson describes a ghastly future populated solely by pop stars and fashion models in Eric Parris World from 2009.

The marvellous Jim Rugg contributes a stunning and outrageous pop at America’s dumbest President and most moronic national symbol in the delirious ‘Rambo 3.5’ (2009) after which, from 2010, Donald & Daniel Zettwoch mesmerise with their incredible personal history of phone exchange technology in ‘Cut Lines and Intricate Minds’ as seen in Tel-Tales #1 and Tom Neely employs dozens of bootlegged Popeyes in a surreal spinach-fuelled Battle Royale for his Doppelgänger…

The ‘Jason T. Miles Interview’ leads naturally enough into his 2010 tale of terror ‘Dump’ from Pines 3.

The irrepressible manga marvel DJ Cat Gosshie goes through a series of adorable “totally-street” trans-Pacific short story syncopations as delineated by Harukichi in 2011 before Pakito Bolino then relates the hyperkinetic end of everything with the ‘Male of the Future’ from D.O.C. (2012)

DemonDust #10 by Bernie McGovern (2012) lyrically explores the poetry of atomic theory and human interactiveness whilst from the same year Shuttlecakes reveals the stunning dexterity and artistic facility of Susan Belle before the ‘Caroline Paquita Interview’ leads to her seductively gender-political compilation Womanimalistic #3 from 2013 to close the monochrome section of this collection.

However, following the ever-so-useful ‘Artist website and contact info’ pages, there’s even more compelling cartoon self-expression all crafted to make use of carefully considered colour, commencing with Kristyna Baczynski’s travails of a pretty kitty in ‘Nine Lives’ from 2012, Leah Wishnia’s disturbing exploration of women’s lives from Spithouse #1 (2008) and an even more distressing tale of psychological brutality from Nick Bertozzi in ‘5/4’ from 2000 before Ethan Persoff concludes the challenging cartoon content with a stunning graphic potpourri from Plastic Tales and Stories #2.

This tremendous tome features some of the host of pioneering craftsmen who worked in the self-printing movement which became today’s thriving Alternative/Small Press publishing industry as well as the current internet comics phenomenon, and this book has incredible appeal on an historical basis.

However, that’s really not the point: the real draw of such collections is that creativity is addictive, good work never pales or grows stale and the great stories and art here will make you keen to have a go too.

I’ve done it myself, for fun – even once or twice for actual profit – and it’s an incredible buzz (I should note that I am still married to a wife not only tolerant but far more skilled and speedy in the actual “photocopy, cut, fold, staple” bit of the process and willing, if not keen, to join in just so she might occasionally be with the compulsive dingbat she married…)

The sheer boundless enthusiasm and feelgood rewards of intellectual freedom from making such comics celebrated in this astoundingly vast, incredibly heavy and yet still pocket-sized hardback is a pure galvanic joy that will enchant and impel every fan of the art-form: as long as they’re big enough to hold a pencil, old enough to vote, and strong enough to lift the book.
Treasury of Mini Comics volume 2 © 2015 Michael Dowers and Fantagraphics Books. All contents © 2013 their respective creators or authors. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Greenberg the Vampire – a Marvel Graphic Novel


By J.M. DeMatteis & Mark Badger (Marvel)
ISBN: 0871350904                 ISBN-13: 978-0-8713-5090-9

During the 1980s and following the organic development of a Direct Sales Market, the American comics industry was transformed by a magical proliferation of new titles and companies.

With publishers now able to firm-sale straight to specialist retail outlets rather than overprint and accept returned copies from non-specialised shops, the comics biz was able to support less generic titles whilst creators were able to experiment without losing their shirts and even to own the concepts and characters they invented.

In response Marvel developed a line of creator-owned properties and concentrated a lot of resources into the development of high quality original graphic novels: mixing said creator-owned properties, licensed assets such as Conan the Barbarian and new proprietary Marvel Universe tales launched in extravagant over-sized packages (286 x 210mm rather than the now standard 258 x 168mm, in imitation of the European format albums of the times) which always felt and looked like far more than an average comicbook no matter how good, bad or offbeat the contents might have been.

Even the regular comicbook line upped its game, searching for material which would appeal to a broader customer-base than the provably false traditional marketing concept of an “average” teenaged boy…

From 1986 comes a quirky Marvel Graphic Novel line (#20 if you’re counting) which mixes horror fantasy with the unique comedy of New York’s Jewish community, cannily crafted by Thinking-Man’s funnybook scribe J.M. DeMatteis and lavishly painted by the inimitable Mark Badger.

Oscar Greenberg is a famous writer of horror novels and something of a recluse. He is also, since a night of diligent research went slightly awry, a vampire.

Attending a Satanist’s meeting in search of useful material, he picked up a beautiful, eager and very willing lady who later, in a fit of overly-amatory passion, gave him the wrong sort of bite and ended his life. They’ve been together ever since…

Don’t get Oscar started on Bram Stoker. For every fact the “expert” got right about vampires he got three wrong. For a start, although they all need a certain amount of blood to survive, the undead much prefer animal to human and only the deranged go around deliberately biting people – and then only until the aberrant’s night-living kin can catch and stop them.

Vamps are highly shy, deeply spiritual, intellectual folk who don’t want to be bothered or be a nuisance: it’s the only way they can face themselves in the mirror in the evening. Yes, they do reflect and you can photograph them: something Oscar has been ducking paparazzi to avoid for over a decade…

The modern-day literary hermit is in a stable, loving relationship with Denise Keaton, the bitey lady who accidentally “turned” him and most of his loving family know about his condition – all except poor frail, often confused Mama, whom he’s sure couldn’t stand the shock of learning her beloved boy had predeceased her, even if he still comes calling every chance he gets…

Oscar even hired his obnoxious wannabe-journalist nephew Morrie as his assistant, but the lad hasn’t got that much to do since Uncle Oscar is not having a good time lately. As the city reels and writhes under the escalating terror of a bloody serial killer dubbed the “New York Ripper” the master of gory fictive horror is suffering the cruellest, most long-lived bout of writer’s block ever recorded…

The frustration is killing him, so after another explosive, typewriter-trashing bout of petulance, he takes a welcome break by attending a full-family feast at Mama’s (vampires eat and drink – even garlic – the blood-drinking is strictly for medicinal purposes).

However, en route in a heavily screened limousine, Oscar spots a streetwalker who sends his mind racing back to the day of his Bar Mitzvah…

On that day in 1954 as he rehearsed for the life-changing ceremony to come, a beautiful woman appeared and made him a man in a much more pleasant and supremely physical manner, before vanishing with a promise that they would meet again…

Back in the now the dinner is going well, and doting, oblivious Mama is in her element until she has some sort of fit, screaming at a darkened window and swearing that “she” can’t have “him”. Before passing out Henrietta Greenberg‘s final whispered word is “Lilith”…

Later, as young Morrie waits in a bar for his latest flame Arlene, she becomes the latest gory incident in the Ripper’s campaign. The crushed and despondent youth is utterly unaware how the killing is connected to his own close-knit family…

Oscar meanwhile has been pushed to the edge of insanity by his inability to create and in desperation accepts a longstanding offer to write the screenplay for one of his old stories. The entire family visits the set of “The Blood of Mrs. Morris” where unctuous producer Thad Turkel introduces his captivating ingénue discovery Evie Adams and assures them all of astounding future success…

Oscar is instantly beguiled by the waif and his fall from grace is confirmed. His temperament changes: he’s angry all the time, avoids Denise and all he can think about is the starlet. He doesn’t even notice when Morrie goes crazy and Mama recognises that her grandson’s been possessed by a Dybbuk…

She may be senile sometimes, but Mama Greenberg knows things and has never been a fool. Instantly shelving a decade of maternal disapproval she aligns with “Shiksa” Denise and takes Oscar’s true love into her confidence, revealing how when her baby-boy was just a baby she managed, through love and prayer and ancient rites, to drive off an ancient evil known as Lilith as she tried to steal the child.

The profane First Woman and Mother of All Monsters laughed as she left, promising to possess him one day. Clearly that moment has arrived…

Elsewhere Oscar is fully under the spell of the sorceress who has earmarked him to provide the creative spark she needs to make the world her own, beguiling him body and soul. However as Lilith discards such old worn out toys as the Ripper and concentrates on dominating her glamoured writer, humanity’s last hope is marshalling her own forces…

With her son’s soul on the line, Henrietta Greenberg has dropped all pretence and gathered Denise, her faith and her family about her. Not even the eternal forces of rage, greed and lust will keep a son from his mother…

Poignant, moving, funny and exceptionally entertaining, Greenberg the Vampire is at once a superb light-horror parable and sardonic but sincere paean of praise to the unshakable power of Family expressed through the happily inexhaustible well of literature known as “Jewish Voices”.

As such it compellingly taps into the Jewish-American experience most famously represented by authors as varied as Philip Roth, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller or Michael Chabon and comedians/entertainers like Woody Allen, Billy Crystal, Mel Brooks and even Lenny Bruce.

Most enticing, though, is that it easily rests within the small but constantly growing sub-genre of graphic novels like The Golem’s Mighty Swing, The Big Kahn, Hereville, Maus and most clearly the epic and astounding canon of semi-autobiographical tales such as A Contract With God and Other Tenement Stories, The Dreamer and Will Eisner’s New York the Big City.

An enchanting tale of timeless relevance to all people who love happy endings.
© 1986 Marvel Comics Group. All Rights Reserved.