Category: Horror Stories

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The White Room of the Asylum


By Luke Melia, David Anderson, Zev Zimmerman, Bobby Peñafiel, Kat Farjado, Omaik Neiv & Vinny Smith
ISBN: 978-1-50035-876-1

What really happens in our mental institutions?

Who really knows what occurs within troubled minds sequestered for their own good and too frequently at their own request?

Some answers are too appalling to stomach but thankfully political ideology, fiscal neglect and societal disinterest play no part in this inspired dark fantasy of pristine pale reflection…

As I’ve frequently proclaimed, I’m a huge fan of creators with the drive and dedication to take control of their own destinies and that’s never been more splendidly affirmed than with the chilling collaboration between writer (and letterer) Luke Melia and his six illustrative collaborators in this inventively macabre and movingly spooky psycho-drama.

When the police are called to a suicide in a quiet house, it’s just another day for most of them. However for Officer Bardy, tasked with checking the contents of six old audio cassette tapes left with the sad old geezer’s farewell note, the case soon starts to resonate and she finds herself drawn into an incredible story impossible to let go of…

The contents of each tape forms a chapter in a terrifying testament (every one uniquely rendered here by a different artist) and the fantastic voyage begins with David Anderson in ‘The Wicked Relative of the Dreamer’ as the policewoman hears recently deceased Steve describe how he was sectioned in 1982 and admitted to Soraberg Asylum displaying symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia.

Steve recounts dreams of being chased by a ferocious, distinctly female monster down an endless accusatory corridor and the relentless waking hours spent mixing with or avoiding the other strange residents.

Terrified of facing the horror again, Steve began hurting himself to stay awake but therapist Maggie stepped in and forced the issue and his inevitable return to sleep…

The tone abruptly changes as the recently deceased describes an incredible, impossible phenomenon.

One night when Steve once more found himself pursued by the monster, he was saved by a superhero who revealed himself as taciturn, unfriendly Ralph. In the outside world he was the weird, standoffish cove who had committed himself to Soraberg and spent all day playing chess with withdrawn Julia…

In the dream space Ralph became open and amiable and as they conversed both realised that the featureless limbo was a resource which they could visit at will: a communal landscape to be reshaped by every fleeting whim. Further discourse led them to conclude that the environment was the subject to a cumulative effect: the more you slept, the easier it was to access.

Steve however, as the first to discover it, harboured a strong sense of possessiveness for his “White Room” and didn’t want to share it with any other inmates…

The second tape continues the record with ‘The Suppressed Desires of the Depressive’ (with art by Zev Zimmerman) as idyllic nights of joyous shared adventure in the pale playground were disrupted by the arrival of John the Vegetable who was as loquacious and smart inside as he was comatose and inert in the physical world…

The newcomer was accommodated into the dreamscape but everything changed when Ralph created a simulacrum of Julia as a sexual plaything. After “harmlessly” slaking his desires with the construct in the White Room, the astonished and ashamed Ralph was attacked and nearly killed in the actual asylum by furious Julia, who had somehow experienced every agonising moment of his assault on her proxy…

‘The Relentless Taunting of the Saviour’ (Bobby Peñafiel), begins with another inmate finding his baffled way into the dream world. Persecuted Tim suddenly saw himself in a strange place and able to talk to Steve. The shocked newcomer recounted how Julia suddenly, inexplicably attacked Ralph but was more concerned that here at least he seemed free of the brutal incarnation of Jesus that dictated his every move in the real world: a vicious, man-sized, foul-mouthed, priapic tyrannosaur with impulse issues and a propensity for extreme violence…

When Ralph joined them from his distant hospital bed things seem to settle until Julia suddenly materialised threatening to tell the carers what Ralph had done. In a fit of fury Steve then attacked her for threatening his White World and in the real world her sleeping body died…

‘The Flawed Operation of the Condemned’ (Kat Farjado) found Steve in complete denial as more and more inmates begin continually leaking over into “his” dream world. Soon suppressed hostilities began to manifest, and after John defeated Steve in a spectacular duel of imaginations, the furious schizophrenic threatened to kill the vegetable’s immobile physical form when he went back to the real world.

The act resulted in a schism in the White Room. As everyone else avoided him and played, Steve made plans to escape Soraberg, using the psychoactive landscape to construct a facsimile asylum to practise in…

His big mistake was working with Minefield Frank whose aggressive imagination kept changing the set-up, but before he could get away everything changed again as the first member of staff made his astounded way into the fantasy zone…

With Omaik Neiv handling the art, ‘The Uncertain Conclusion of the Thinker’ saw Steve tortured by helplessness as the medical professionals took charge; methodically transforming the plasmic wonderland into a vast therapeutic environment. Despite his furious insistence that they were all trespassing on his property, the staff began an accelerated program which quickly reaped immense dividends amongst the troubled detainees.

With everyone against him Steve had no choice but to strike back in ‘The Broken Opportunity of the Vegetable’ (illustrated by Vinny Smith), but even against such a remorseless, merciless adversary some of the inmates were not willing to go down without a fight…

Available as a trade paperback and in a kindle edition, the startling events of The White Room of the Asylum are judiciously rendered in a range of palettes from full colour to black & red to overwhelmingly stark monochrome, uniting to highlight the moody power of the narrative and the mesmerising power of the shocking mystery’s conclusion.

Gripping, compulsive and unforgettable, here is a terrifying tale you’d be absolutely crazy to miss.

© 2014 Luke Melia. All rights reserved.

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Springheeled Jack


By David Hitchcock (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-129-7

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: an Xmas scary story in the Grand Tradition… 9/10

Britain can lay claim to impressive and ingenious achievements far too numerous to mention, but the ones I’m honing in on here are our prodigious appetite for inventing myths, our gift for telling scary stories and our plucky tendency to want things done right and thus often Doing-It-Yourself…

In 2005 cartoonist, antiquarian and fright fan David Hitchcock (Spirit of the Highwayman, Whitechapel Freak, Gothic) crafted an intense and beguiling small press yarn in three chapters which went on to win the Eagle Award for Favourite Black & White Comic Book.

Originally released under the Full Circle banner, Springheeled Jack was subsequently released as a collection from Black Boar Press and is now available in a luxurious oversized (295 x 222mm) definitive monochrome hardback from Titan Comics.

The astounding suspense is handily preceded by the author’s introduction, recapitulating the historical reports of the original Urban Legend from the first sightings and police reports in 1838 in ‘At the Heels of the Devil’ before the dark graphic enchantment opens in 1861 with an arcane monstrosity roaming the foul, begrimed rooftops of London to the accompaniment of excerpts from the journal of Sir Jack Rackham.

Although still not without influence, the esteemed Sole Benefactor of Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum has been a broken man since his beloved Evelina was snatched from his helpless arms one foggy night by a monstrous insectoid fiend from Hell…

The thing’s depredations still continue but the authorities scoff at the administrator’s suppositions and ignore his protestations, leading the nigh-deranged Rackham and the few allies he has made to take matters into their own hands.

Although the red-eyed thing primarily snatches women, its malevolent, toxic influence, unbeknownst to all, has seeped into the highest echelons of the empire and the monarchy itself is currently in the greatest peril imaginable…

One person Rackham believes he can count upon is Dr. Henry Jekyll, whose own incredible metamorphic discoveries also stem from encounters with the beast – or, as they speculate, perhaps some being from beyond the stars – but when the physician visits his old comrade he is appalled to se how far Sir Jack has fallen into despair and madness.

Jekyll can do nothing for his friend, however, as he has been summoned as a matter of utmost urgency to the side of the mysteriously ailing Prince Consort…

In an attempt to keep pace with the monstrous leaping travesty of nature, Rackham has constructed a bat-winged suit which allows him the glide after the beast when he eventually finds it, and now he waits for his opportunity.

In Windsor, upon examining Prince Albert, Jekyll sees something which shakes him to his soul and the doctor consequently dashes back to Rackham to join in his pursuit.

The thing has been going about its secret purposes incessantly, and its influence now even extends deep inside Rackham’s troubled Bedlam Hospital where confined savant Professor Graham claims to have discerned all there is to know about the threat…

That night Jekyll and Sir Jack rendezvous in a graveyard and lay a trap for the horror. The plan apparently works and they follow it to its lair, discovering the shattering secret of its depredations. They set to derailing its plans, but in the struggle a hero is infected and a shocking mutation begins to take hold…

The saga then kicks into ghastly high gear as a game of cat-and-mouse finds the police unjustly hunting the wrong “man”, as all over the capital nature itself rebels from the hideous and almost completed incursion…

The tension rises to fever pitch in ‘The Last Chapter’ which sees a final desperate roll of the dice and a good man is seemingly lost forever before ‘Transmogrify’ finds humanity itself on the verge of its greatest triumph or defeat…

Also included in this titanic tome is a copious 22 page ‘Sketchbook’ section which comprises roughs, layouts, previous covers, physical models and constructions, plus an exploration of Hitchcock’s unique art style which involves preliminary pencils, full inks and a final layer of moody, mediating pencil tones on top of it all to capture the grimy sooty atmosphere of Victorian London.

Stark, gripping and chillingly compelling, Springheeled Jack is a grand, old-fashioned fearsome fantasy no lover of dark tales can afford to miss.

Springheeled Jack © 2014 David Hitchcock & Black Boar Press.

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The Penny Dreadful Collection: Frankenstein, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Dracula


Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: What Every Home Should Have… 10/10

Generally I’m wittering on about a specific story or book but today I’m recommending a combined artefact which should reinvigorate some of the greatest, most mythic modern fantasy tales for a new generation – and which communally comprise an ideal gift for Halloween or Christmas for anyone of a literary bent or who just loves books and stories.

We’re in the midst of a minor Gothic revival at the moment, and in April of this year Showtime and Sky Atlantic began broadcasting Penny Dreadful: a dark mash up of Victorian fantasy icons which seemed to push all the right buttons for a substantial portion of the global audience.

In conjunction with that small screen event Titan Books reissued the original prose masterpieces which between them pretty much invented the genre of scary stories.

On TV the protagonist of each groundbreaking classic has been craftily re-imagined for the jaded and sophisticated tastes of contemporary viewers but to my mind there’s nothing better than the originals, and these are books everybody should have read…

I’m not going to waste my time, or insult your intelligenced with detail précis of these landmark tomes, but I will assure you that each complete and unabridged, substantial and luxurious prestige hardback is a joy to read and possess.

Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus
By Mary Shelley with 8 original illustrations by Louie de Martinis (Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-78329-363-6

Written by the precious and formidably bright Mary Shelley when she was 18, the prototype horror novel was originally published anonymously in 1818.

The result of a traumatic dream, it details the life and follies of an obsessed scientist who succeeds in his dream of creating life and learns over hard, painful years to repent his folly.

Utterly gripping, it lays claim to being both the first true horror and science fiction novel…

The Picture of Dorian Gray
By Oscar Wilde with 6 original illustrations by Ian Bass (Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-78329-365-0

Oscar Wilde’s only novel began life as a serial in Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine in 1891 where it scandalised London Society despite being savagely censored before publication.

Undaunted, Wilde revised and expanded his Faustian tale of art and philosophy into a scathing social critique as it described the cautionary tale of a decadent young man whose outer beauty remained unchanged whilst a prefect portrait gradually recorded and showed every punishing mark of his debauched life.

Dracula
By Bram Stoker with 6 original illustrations by Martin Stiff (Titan Books)
ISBNs: 978-1-78329-364-3

Released in 1897, this pivotal novel of mystery and terror found few fans during the author’s lifetime, but achieved global acclaim during the early days of cinema.

This epistolary tale of an undying, debased and demonic noble from the feudal Balkans who attempts to create a new kingdom at the heart of the British Empire, opposed by a Man of Knowledge a girl of fierce determination and band of heroic stalwarts reshaped popular literature and remains unsurpassed in terms of influence to this day.

Text design throughout © 2014 Titan Books. All Rights Reserved. Illustrations ™ and © 2014 Showtime Networks Inc. All Rights reserved.

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Void


By Herik Hanna & Sean Phillips, with colours by Hubert; translated by Nora Goldberg (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-084-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Proper Seasonal Shocker… 8/10

Dedicated to diversity from its earliest days, Titan has in the past published kids comics, resurrected and preserved classic newspaper strips, brought crucial manga tales to Albion and, most importantly, shared some of Europe’s best graphic narratives with a jaded British readership.

That tradition continues to this day and one of their most impressive recent additions is a slim but oversized (282 x 206 cm) deluxe hardback edition featuring chilling deep space psycho-chiller Void by Herik Hanna and our own Sean Phillips.

Originally published by French publisher Guy Delcourt in 2012, this bleakly absorbing tale is a dark psychological horror yarn in the manner of Ridley Scott’s Alien, set in the most claustrophobic and hostile environment imaginable…

The terror commences in the silent, blood-splashed observation bay of Goliath 01, a colossal prison transport spaceship wrecked by astronomical mischance and human frailty.

Battered and terrified survivor John pauses to take stock of his precarious position. With ears pricked for any hint of danger he reviews how, following a mass penetration by a storm of micro-meteorites, the monolithic penal vessel suffered a massive systems failure.

That however was not the real problem. In the aftermath of the one-in-a-billion accident, iconic war-hero and infallible mission commander Colonel “No Mercy” Mercer suffered some kind of breakdown and began stalking the corridors, indiscriminately executing prisoners and crew alike with a space axe…

Now, as John keeps frantically moving in a desperate cat-and-mouse gamble to stay ahead of the maniac, he starts experiencing vivid hallucinations: reliving the deaths of his comrades and helpless charges, conversing with food and animals and even arguing with long-gone ex-girlfriend Nancy…

Can it simply be pressure and appalling peril, or is there some unfathomable aspect to the nature of space that drives everyone to madness? More importantly, will he be able to find an escape route before the relentless, remorseless Mercer catches up to him?

…And then Nancy suggests that he should stop running and kill the colonel first…

Rendered in a compulsive style reminiscent of the most powerful work of Richard Corben, this sharp, suspenseful, astoundingly atmospheric explosive tale unfolds in a grimy, gritty intoxicating manner, but cunningly holds in reserve a devastating double twist…
Void and all contents © 2012 Guy Delcourt Productions. Translated edition © 2014 Titan Comics.

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The Eldritch Kid: Whisky & Hate


By Christian Read & Michael Maier (Gestalt Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-980782-35-6

There was a time, not so very long ago, when all of popular fiction was bloated and engorged with tales of Cowboys and Indians.

As always happens with such periodic populist phenomena – such as the Swinging Sixties’ Super-Spy Boom or the recent Vampire Boyfriend trend – there was a goodly amount of momentary merit, lots of utter dross and a few spectacular gems.

Most importantly, once such surges have petered out there’s also always a small cadre of frustrated devotees who mourn its passing and, on growing up, resolve to do something to venerate or even revive their lost and faded favourite fad…

After World War II the American family entertainment market – for which read comics, radio and the rapidly burgeoning television industry – became comprehensively enamoured of the clear-cut, simplistic sensibilities and easy, escapist solutions offered by Tales of the Old West; at that time already a firmly established standby of paperback publishing, movie serials and low-budget feature films.

I’ve often ruminated on how and why simultaneously, the dark, bleakly nigh-nihilistic and left-leaning Film Noir genre quietly blossomed alongside that wholesome rip-snorting range-&-rodeo revolution, seemingly only for a cynical minority of entertainment intellectuals who somehow knew that the returned veterans still hadn’t found a Land Fit for Heroes… but perhaps that’s a thought for another time and a different review.

Even though comics had encompassed Western heroes from the get-go (there were cowboy strips in the premier issues of both Action Comics and Marvel Comics) the post-war boom years saw a vast outpouring of titles with new gun-toting heroes to replace the rapidly dwindling supply of costumed Mystery Men, and true to formula, most of these pioneers ranged from transiently mediocre to outright appalling.

Despite minor re-flowerings in the early 1970s and mid-1990s, Western strips have largely vanished from our funnybook pages: apparently unable to command enough mainstream support to survive the crushing competition of garish wonder-men and the furiously seductive future.

Europe and Britain also embraced the Sagebrush zeitgeist and produced some extremely impressive work, with France and Italy eventually making the genre emphatically their own by the end of the 1960s. They still make the best straight Western strips in the world for an avid audience still possessing a vast appetite for them…

Fantasy and Horror stories, on the other hand, have never really gone away and this superb entertaining entry from Australian graphic raconteurs Christian Read & Michael Maier superbly blends time honoured tropes of the wild west with sinister sorcerous sensibilities to create a bewitching alternate reality where dark bloody deeds are matched by dire demonic forces and the decent guys called upon to combat them have to dabble in the diabolical too…

Following the tantalising Introduction ‘Our shadow goes where we go’ from author K. J. Bishop, the full-colour mystic mayhem begins with the recollections of an Oxford-educated shaman detailing his life following his return to the land of his birth.

Spring 1877 and the great Indian Wars are over. Custer is dead but so is Crazy Horse. The Whites are greedily covering the entire country and an erudite, educated man with the wrong coloured skin is reduced to playing scout for a bunch of barely literate morons wagon-trekking across the plains to California. They need him but regard their supremely capable guide with suspicion, disdain and barely-disguised disgust…

One particular incident of second-guessing his decisions involves a detour around a stony butte that simply reeks of bad magic. Accusing him of leading them into an ambush and other dishonourable deeds, the lazy, work-shy Christians drive him to ignore his instincts and better judgement and reluctantly check out the pinnacle personally…

Wicasa Waken, outcast Shaman of the Oglala Lakota, Ten Shoes Dancing of the mighty Sioux and lately graduated Master of Arts and Literature, Oxford, England 1875, always knew devil magic when he smelled it but, since his teachers taught him to treasure human life, he remained faithful to their training and climbs a mountain into hell…

At the top he encounters five-headed snakes and zombies and a strange white man they were taking their time killing…

Losing their lands to the pale invaders has soured many of his people and allowed a growth of bad spirits and corrupted medicine like the long-fled Bloody Knife to control many points on the map, but the man these horrors are torturing jangle the shaman’s mystic senses in way nothing ever has before.

Piling in he begins killing monsters and the “victim”, once freed, eagerly joins in, his accursed guns making short work of the ravening Heyokas. Soon they are all dispatched and Ten Shoes Dancing – after exorcising and sanitising the spiritually defiled butte – realises he has made the rather prickly acquaintance of a modern Western Legend…

The settlers are ecstatic to have celebrated dime novel hero The Eldritch Kid join their party and, whilst still treating his rescuer like a barely housebroken monkey, fête the grim gunslinger like a messiah.

It’s hard for even the most enlightened man to watch a surly, taciturn, creepy freak basking in hero-worship, hot vittles and wanton female attention…

It’s not just this becoming-nation America that is awash with blood and wickedness. The entire world is swamped with boggles, spectres and worse, but since the War Between the States the Kid has achieved a certain notoriety for dealing harshly and permanently with all things supernatural and predatory.

Nevertheless he’s a mean, mercenary bastard and a tough man to like for the philosophically inclined, poetry-loving Ten Shoes until the wagons arrive at a thriving prairie town that the shaman knows wasn’t there a month previously.

Opting to investigate the bustling hamlet together, the mismatched heroes are soon fighting for their lives against an army of hungry ghosts and the Lakota learns that although his personal patron god Lord Hnaska is grossly offended by the crawling things that hunger for human morsels, he is more worried by the cold, dark deity who sponsors his avatar’s gun-toting partner in peril…

A loveless alliance is forged in that ghastly spirit-trap and, as the wagon train proceeds towards California, the kid finally opens up enough to share the history that made him the most feared gunhawk in the West.

The story began in 1865 at Camp Elmira, New Jersey where Confederate prisoners were held. The detention centre was a hellhole even by human standards, but when a ravenous demon began taking the inmates, one of the terrified, beaten sitting duck captives was offered a deal by an invading ancient northern god…

This grim King of Death was unhappy with the beasts and night things increasingly infesting the Earth and offered a trade: power for service…

After a suitably painful and gory “offering” the prisoner was given just enough of a supernatural advantage to kill the monsters – human and otherwise – and escape. He has been doing his Lord’s work ever since…

At trail’s end the settlers naturally bilk the generally good-natured Ten Shoes who chalks it up to experience. However his new associate still has many secrets unshared and exacts his own brand of instant karma.

…And thus is born another legend of the Wildest West Ever…

Bleak, moody, spectacularly action-packed and cathartic, Whisky & Hate is a smart, blackly funny yarn that will astound lovers of genre fiction and witty mash-ups.

The Western tale has long been a part of world culture and perhaps that fact has relegated the genre in too many minds to the status of a passé fascination of a bygone generation. However this fresh, hypnotically beguiling look at an overexposed idiom prove there’s still meat to found on those old bones, and cow-punching aficionados, fear-fans, lovers of nostalgia-tainted comics and seekers of the wild and new alike can all be assured that this range-riding rollercoaster of thrills and macabre mystery proves that excitement and terror still lurk in those hills and on that horizon…

Black hats, white hats, alternate worlds, haunts and horrors, stunning visuals and macabre twists – what more could you possibly ask for?
© 2011 Christian Read, Michael Maier & Gestalt Publishing Pty Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Torn


By Andrew Constant, Nicola Scott & Joh James (Gestalt Publishing)
ISBN: 978-0-9807823-7-0

If you think you’ve seen everything in werewolf comics think again. A wealth of graphic novels from Australian creative powerhouse Gestalt Publishing have just begun hitting our stores and one of the most intriguing features is a gripping, hyper-expressive take on the curse of lycanthropy that will delight fear aficionados.

Written by Andrew Constant (a man who’s worn many occupational hats in his life before settling on comics) ,Torn traces the hellish journey of a devoted father and provider whose cosy life is shattered when his family is slaughtered by a kill-crazy maniac.

As seen in the stunning prologue sequence by Nicola Scott (Wonder Woman, Birds of Prey, Secret Six), the enraged parent takes bloody vengeance on the murderer, but in the struggle becomes infected with his curse.

The maniac was a man, and the wolf who kills him is soon transformed into one of the crazy, bipedal horrors too. Confused, mute and experiencing reality in a way he can’t process, the new creature instinctively heads for the city…

Joh James (Borderlands: Origins, Mars Attacks!) takes over the stark monochrome illustration for the body of the tale as the bewildered outsider forages in alleys and dumps encountering homeless street girl Sarah who takes pity on the naked, inarticulate weirdo.

When she is attacked by a gang who has been periodically raping and abusing her, the stranger turns on her assailants like a rabid animal…

Later, hiding together in a deserted house, the pair form a cautious bond as he scavenges food for her and slowly learns to communicate. Unfortunately, the leader of the packrats has not forgotten Sarah or her protector though, and comes looking for her armed with a big shiny knife…

When the confrontation comes our hero is again triumphant, keeping the blade and allowing his opponents their lives.

However, the shaggy horror who has been patiently stalking him since the woods is not so lenient, and soon gun-happy cops are mistakenly hunting the wild man for an act of incredible butchery.

The follower too was also fantastically transformed by the death of the human in the woods. However, the rage, jealousy and sadistic hunger for inflicting pain is all its own. This relentless hunter has a blood relationship to the manwolf and wants nothing less than to destroy any happiness or form of family his former pack-mate could find on four legs or two…

Vicious, visceral and supremely affecting, this examination of human and animal savagery is a ferociously compelling tragedy that will leave comics and horror fans panting for more.
© 2011 Andrew Constant and Gestalt Publishing, Pty Ltd.

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Afterlife With Archie Book 1


By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa & Francesco Francavilla (Archie Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-61988-908-8

For nearly three quarters of a century Archie Andrews has epitomised good, safe, wholesome fun but the company has always been a deviously subversive one.

Family friendly iterations of superheroes, spooky chills, sci fi thrills and genre yarns have always been as much a part of the publisher’s varied portfolio as the romantic comedy capers of America’s clean-cut teens.

As you probably know by now, Archie has been around since 1941, spending most of those seventy-plus years chasing both the gloriously attainable Betty Cooper and wildly out-of-his-league debutante Veronica Lodge whilst best friend Jughead Jones alternately mocked and abetted his romantic endeavours and rival Reggie Mantle sought to scuttle his every move…

As crafted over the decades by a legion of writers and artists who’ve skilfully created the stories of teenage antics in and around the idyllic, utopian small town of Riverdale, these timeless tales of decent, upstanding, fun-loving kids have captivated successive generations of readers and entertained millions worldwide.

To keep all that accumulated attention riveted, the company has always looked to modern trends with which to expand upon their archetypal storytelling brief. In times past they have cross-fertilised their stable of stars through such unlikely team-ups as Archie Meets the Punisher, Archie Meets Glee, Archie Meets Vampirella or Archie Meets Kiss, whilst every type of fashion fad and youth culture sensation have invariably been accommodated into and explored within the pages of the regular titles.

In 2013 however the publishers took a bold and controversial step which paid huge dividends and created the biggest sales sensation in the company’s history.

It all began with a variant cover for Life With Archie #23 with illustrator Francesco Francavilla (Black Beetle, Zorro, Detective Comics, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy etc.) providing a moody spoof EC zombie graveyard scene. The variant was a sensation and cognitive cogs began to turn at the editorial offices…

When playwright, TV scripter and comicbook scribeRoberto Aguirre-Sacasa- whose many successes include Say You Love Satan, The Mystery Plays, 4: Marvel Knights Fantastic Four, Nightcrawler, Big Love, Sensational Spider-Man and Glee amongst others – got involved, it wasn’t long before a strange new enterprise was hatched.

Archie Comics is no stranger to horror titles. In the 1970s the company created the sub-imprint Red Circle for anthology terror tales during a supernatural boom time, before converting the line to superhero features as the decade progressed.

They even had a resident star-sorceress in Sabrina the Teenage Witch…

However, whereas that venture was decidedly a newsstand project, the proposed 21st century endeavour took the company into uncharted waters.

When it was released, the 5-issue miniseries Afterlife With Archie was available solely through Direct Sales outlets and the first title in the company’s history to carry a parental advisory; “Rated Teen +”…

The sinister saga was an outright sensation, selling hugely and garnering phenomenal critical approval from sources as far-ranging as Salon, Fangoria, The Plain Dealer and NPR (National Public Radio) as well as all the usual comics review pundits. Each issue spawned further printings in a desperate race to keep up with demand…

I’m not going to dwell much on the plot, but suffice to say it doesn’t stray far from the time-honoured scenaria of the best sort of teen horror movies – minus the gratuitous sex and oafish dependence on guns – but it does hone all those tropes and memes to a superbly gripping point by inflicting them upon a beloved and intimately understood cast we all think we know…

It all starts one dark and ghastly midnight with Jughead hammering on the door of Sabrina’s house. A hit-and-run driver has killed the boy’s beloved pet Hot Dog and he needs her to bring him back…

Even with the arcane aid of her spooky eldritch elders the attempt fails, compelling the deeply moved Sabrina to try a spell she knows she should not and engendering for herself a most hideous punishment…

The next day, school starts out pretty much normal. Everyone is hyped about the upcoming Halloween Dance, although loud, obnoxious Reggie seems painfully preoccupied with some guilty secret and Juggie is absent…

Concerned, Archie stops in for a visit to find his friend in a bad way. The always voracious boy is weak and sickly and his arm is infected from a nasty bite. Hot Dog just sits far back in the dark under the house, growling and snarling…

That night at the Gym the party is in full swing with kids tricked out in all their innocent gory glory. As usual tensions are high between Betty and Veronica, Dilton and Chuck are furiously debating the merits of their favourite scary movies and Devil-May-Care Reggie is still acting strange…

Things take a dark turn once Jughead appears. His costume is amazing, like a scarecrow Zombie King. As yet nobody knows he’s already eaten one of the chaperones…

The shocking scenes soon start, and lifelong friends begin falling thick and fast. With no choice but to accept the impossible, Archie leads the stunned, surviving students to the fortress-like Lodge Mansion, with the inexorably growing army of infectious dead closely following…

With danger all around, tensions lead to many revelations, as years of suppressed feelings are finally exposed like raw nerves.

Although safe within the palatial citadel, the grieving Andrews boy needs to get out and discover what has happened to his parents and the rest of the town. As yet nobody is aware that one of the cowering kids is already carrying the unstoppable necromantic taint of the grave…

Bold, uncompromising, suspenseful, powerfully shocking and genuinely scary, this yarn is also astoundingly moving (there’s nobody more sentimental than a comicbook geek, but I’m not ashamed to admit that twice during this tale I teared up and had to reach for the tissues) as it takes a cast as familiar as your own family and puts them through hell and into damnation.

Literally nobody is safe and by the end of this first story-arc – comics fan or not – you will be gobsmacked and hungry for more.

Happily there is a Book 2…

This grim graphic grimoire also comes with an unholy host of extras beginning with the story behind the phenomenon in ‘Covers from the Darkside’ which talks about the genesis of the project, a full gallery of the 22 covers, variants and subsequent reprint covers by Francavilla, Tin Seeley, Andrew Pepoy, Tito Peña, Robert Hack and Jason Millet and is rounded off with ‘Sketches of the Dead’ which reproduces Francavilla’s glorious pencil layouts for much of the entire five chapter saga…

Dark gripping fun and one of the very best comicbook horror stories ever created, Afterlife With Archie is a brilliant experience no Funnybook Fan or Fear Aficionado should miss.

© 2014 Archie Comic Publications, Inc. All rights reserved.

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The Weirding Willows volume 1: What the Wild Things Are


By Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri & various (Atomeka/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-78276-035-1

Phillip Jose Farmer’s Tarzan Alive (1972) and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life (1973) are probably the earliest modern examples of our current fascination with concatenating assorted literary icons and fictive childhood companions into heroic associations and fantasy brotherhoods, but as fantasy consumers we’ve always wanted our idols to clash or team up.

So many comics from Scarlet in Gaslight (Sherlock Holmes and Dracula) to Planetary (pulp vigilantes and other companies’ superheroes cheekily retooled) to the magnificent League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (everybody you’ve ever heard of and some you haven’t) and an uncountable number of TV shows, books and movies have mined this boundless seam of entertainment gold.

The Weirding Willows by Dave Elliott, Barnaby Bagenda, Sami Basri and an army of colourists continues that topical trend; recombining the innocent headliners of many a beloved British children’s book into a slick, harsh, creepily adult reconfiguration…

One cautionary note: as with every entry into this amalgamating sub-genre, if you are a literary purist you are going to hate this – or indeed any – contemporarily-toned, edgily in-your-face interpretation. Nothing I can say will change your mind, so don’t bother.

There are plenty of other graphic novels and albums around that will better suit your temperament. Please try one of those…

The series launched in the latest iteration of anthology title A1 and this collection of first story-arc What the Wild Things Are also includes a whole new chapter exclusive to this lush and beguiling hardback compilation.

Rural, bucolic Willow Weir is a quintessentially English hamlet with a big secret. The riverside association of houses and farms intersects a number of portals to numerous other Realms and Dimensions, and things strange and uncanny are often seen – if not discussed. The human folk who abide there are not so simple and frequently as odd as the creatures that roam the wild woods and harmless-seeming riverbanks…

Following author Elliott’s Introduction a handy map offers the geographical lowdown on the green and pleasantly deceptive land before the tale unfolds with ‘A Wicked Witch This Way Comes’ wherein we meet worldly wise teen totty Alice Moreau, a girl greatly at odds with her father’s scientific preoccupations.

Dad and daughter reside in the house abandoned by Professor Donald H. Lambert when he rode his time machine into the future, and the abrasive single parent soon filled the vacant dwelling with an assortment of animals for his experiments.

This particular morning he is dickering with Dr. Henry Jekyll who has provided formal introduction for a green-bedecked dowager temptress named Margareete Marche; a traveller from a distant land who wishes to commission the radical surgeon to construct for her an army of winged monkeys…

Insolent Alice isn’t impressed: she’s far more concerned that sheep are going missing from nasty Farmer McGregor‘s spread. Naturally darling Daddy is the prime suspect. There’s no love lost between father and daughter, ever since she followed a rabbit through a portal to Wonderland and told her father all about it. He didn’t believe a word and has mocked her ever since…

The unpleasant confrontation with McGregor is cut short when a trio of talking rabbits summon her away to deal with another crisis. She doesn’t get far, though, as Montgomery Doolittle arrives with a barge full of fresh beasts for the operating table…

The cargo has also drawn a new player to the dell of domesticity. This black-maned wild child is desperate to rescue his beloved companions Baloo and Bagheera from the clutches of the obnoxious white man who can talk to animals…

‘If You Go Down to the Woods Today…’ sees Alice finally follow her bunny buddies as enraged Mowgli tries – and fails – to free his wild brothers: becoming instead more prospective raw material for Doctor Moreau. As Alice slips away no one pays any attention to a bizarrely grinning cat named Cheshire, and her own attentions are soon fully occupied by the rampages of an extremely angry example of the surgical efforts of an earlier modern Prometheus…

‘The Prisoner of Doctor Moreau’ finds Mowgli imprisoned with an exotic young woman named Kamaria, as across the river Alice brokers a peace between the rabbit race and Frankenstein’s Monster. As usual he has been gravely misunderstood: his frantic acts were merely the result of extreme concern for a lost companion.

Rosalind had gone missing and he has tracked her through a portal from Pellucidar – the world at the Earth’s Core – and is quite concerned. So is everybody else when they learn that Rosalind is a dinosaur…

‘What Lies Beneath Badger’s House’ introduces badger Victor Stoker, toad Dudley Cook, mole Morris Moore & ratty Terry James as well as a sinister hidden city deep down under Badger’s house, whilst in Moreau’s cellar laboratory the Cheshire Cat gives Mowgli some dangerous advice.

Meanwhile, the multi-species search party have found Rosalind on McGregor’s Farm, ferociously guarding a clutch of recently laid eggs…

That discovery only leads to tragedy as the obnoxious smallholder shoots Rosalind and claims the eggs for himself in ‘Here There Be Dragons!’ Thankfully Alice quickly deals with the farmer before monstrous Damon can get his second-hand hands on him…

Things take an even stranger turn when Victor, Morris, Dudley and Terry turn up. The Badger seems to know an awful lot about the experiments of the long-dead Dr. Frankenstein…

Night comes on and, in Moreau’s cellar as the full moon shines down on Kamaria, she begins to change and howl…

At a loss, Alice brings the whole menagerie back to her place in ‘What the Wild Things Are!’, much to the angry astonishment of her father, and at least has the satisfaction of proving that her “childish ramblings” were all true, all along…

However, when the rampant Kamaria werewolf tumultuously breaks out, strange alliances are quickly formed before the whole lethally helter-skelter hurly-burly is unconventionally settled in the low-key conclusion ‘Worlds Within Worlds’.

In the aftermath Alice at last finds time to renew an old acquaintanceship with a four-armed green man from another world…

Each chapter is concluded with an excerpt from The Weirding Willows Field Guide, detailing pertinent facts and shameful secrets about Alice, Philippe Moreau, Monty Doolittle, Damon Frankenstein, Victor Stoker, Dudley Cook, Morris Moore & Terry James, Margareete Marche, Dr. Henry Jekyll & Edward Hyde, Mowgli, The Worriers Three (talking rabbits Benjamin Buckle, Peter Pipp & Hoetoe Darwin), Professor Donald H. Lambert and enigmatic, formidable bunny-with-a-secret Norman Pipp, and the tome terminates with the author’s afterword ‘Inspirations’ and some informative creator ‘Biographies’.

Magnificently, mesmerisingly illustrated, this is a visual feast no fan of fantastic fantasy mash-ups will want to miss…

The Weirding Willows © 2014 Dave Elliott. ATOMEKA © 2014 Dave Elliott & Garry Leach. Atomeka Press, all contents copyright their respective creators.

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The Extinction Parade


By Max Brooks & Raulo Caceres (Avatar Press/Titan Comics)
ISBN: 987-1-59291-234-6

I’ve never been the keenest consumer of zombie stories but occasionally something really intriguing and different crops up and I’m compelled to re-think my position. Somehow, that usually only occurs when Max Brooks is involved.

Brooks is a successful actor and screenwriter (most notably part of the team scripting Saturday Night Live) and cartoon fans might recognize his name from the voice credits of Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Batman Beyond and Justice League. You probably laughed at a lot of his dad’s movies: High Anxiety, Young Frankenstein and the first version of the Producers amongst others.

The guy also loves to play around with the conventions of horror. His previous books include The Zombie Survival Guide, World War Z and the graphic novel The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks.

Now he’s come up with what seems a brilliant “no-brainer” concept that somebody should have had decades ago (and probably did in some old EC horror or DC story, as some veteran fright fan is sure to comment somewhere)…

In his latest charnel confection – a comicbook series from cutting (bleeding?) edge adult publisher Avatar Press – he’s also finally and thankfully returned vampires to their proper place as cold, relentless, loveless apex predators; discarding dubious modern notions of Nosferatu as chaste touchy-feely dreamboats for adolescents or pulchritudinous, perpetually priapic passion pets for hot and horny humans.

Brook’s vampires just kill and kill and kill – as much for fun as for sustenance…

The initial five issue arc of The Extinction Parade introduces us to two such bloodsuckers: haughty, disdainful, distant and aristocratically discrete female night-hunters who have dined on the best, brightest and most dangerous examples of humanity – “solbreeders” – for untold ages.

As such they have often encountered outbreaks of the slow, shambling, stupidly voracious plague-zombies which have periodically broken out amongst the human populations. They always watched with haughty amusement as the brain-dead “Subdead” mindlessly attacked until they’d exhausted their frightened food supply or some king or band of warriors wiped them out. Then the vampires usually hunted the victorious human heroes, assured at least of some thrilling sport…

The saga is set in the exotic technopolises of modern Malay peninsula where the queens of the damned look on and laugh from on high at human inefficiency as Singapore, Sumatra and Sarawak, Thailand, Cambodia and Burma and all points East are ravaged and reduced by a gory tide of unthinking mobile contagion carriers, killing and consuming everyone in their shuddering path…

Blithe and oblivious, the immortal killers carry on their sybaritic bloodletting, glorying in the carnage and delighted that to the ever-expanding wave of subdead biting beasts they are utterly invisible and undetectable. Even these monsters they can destroy with ease and no hint of fear or retaliation…

As city after city, nation after nation, continent after continent succumbs to the plague, all the vampire girls can think of is the opportunity to abandon caution and restraint, indulging in wanton public slaughter: “nights of glory” spent preying on the rapidly declining humans before the stupid but relentless subdead can…

And then with fire and death everywhere an impossible new notion finally sinks into minds stupefied by blood, euphoria and centuries of untouchable, blasé privilege…

With all parts of Earth accessible as never before, with the subdead multiplying with every bite and no sense of preservation or the future, what will vampires eat when there are no humans left?

To be fair, their daylight caretaker Willem tried to tell them repeatedly that this time something was different, but when have vampires ever listened to servants or humans?  The first inkling the spoiled bloodsuckers have of a real problem is the night their major domo is not there when they awake from their red-spattered repose…

The pitifully few undead elite gather to watch an inexorable tide wipe out what might be the last vestiges of humanity in the city, and rage and frustration and perhaps fear grip the shell-shocked dowagers of doom. Without thinking they explode into action, tearing apart the unthinking oblivious subdead shamblers.

Tirelessly, methodically they dismember and destroy the Zombie pack. It is a turning point in the history of the undead. The vampires will war with the unthinking eaters for the right to consume mortals.

However, the battle has highlighted a disturbing fact: vampires are not completely immune to the taint that drives zombies to mindless endless hunger…

To Be Continued…

Narrated in an effective first person narrative with bleak deadpan delivery, this is also a visceral, visual gorefest from illustrator Raulo Caceres that no lover of shock-horror could resist. This luxurious full colour paperback compilation also includes a seventeen page covers-&-variants gallery plus a scarlet-spattered eleven page preview of forthcoming volume The Extinction Parade: War.

The Extinction Parade ™ & © 2014 Max Brooks.

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Hellboy in Hell: The Descent


By Mike Mignola with Dave Stewart (Dark Horse Books)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-444-6

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

After decades of unfailing, faithful service he became mortally tired and resigned. Itinerantly roaming the world, he still managed to encounter weird happenstances but could never escape trouble or his sense of duty.

After discovering he was the last in a line descended from Arthur Pendragon and Morgana le Fay – and therefore the Rightful King of England – he moved to the old country and died fighting a dragon…

After launching in 1993 Hellboy was swiftly attributed the status of ‘legend’ in the comics world, starting as the particular vision of a single creator and, by judicious selection of assistants and deputies, cementing a solid hold on the character in the hearts of the public.

And that’s just how it worked for Superman, Batman and Spider-Man…

Since the initial run of tales many creators have contributed to the arcane canon but at the end of 2012 Mignola assumed complete creative control once more for an ongoing – if irregularly – released series entitled Hellboy in Hell.

This initial compilation of those superb comics yarns gathers the first four-issue story arc and the beguiling notional one-shot The Three Gold Whips, which followed it.

The final fall from grace begins with ‘The Baba Yaga’ as the regal hero plunges into The Pit, willingly followed by an enigmatic robed figure. As the shade tells the ever-watching witch queen Baba Yaga, he believes he still has a chance to rescue and redeem the hell-bound hero…

Falling through a region of unspeakable horror and colossal monsters, Hellboy is saved from imminent consumption by the cloaked shade who reveals that he has stores of great mystic power and an intimate knowledge of the Nether Realms. He is even effective against furious Eligos, an old enemy of the B.R.P.D. agent who has been waiting a long time to take revenge for his earthly defeat at Hellboy’s mismatched hands…

The underworld is filled with appalling perils, dark wonders and unfolding vignettes or playlets where sinners endlessly relive the turning points of their lives, but it also holds the answers to the many mysteries of the dead hero’s life. Here a ghost warns him that he will be “haunted by three spirits”…

The journey continues in ‘Pandemonium’ as Hellboy and the shade explore the now abandoned City of Demons, utterly deserted except for the dolorous figure of Satan – Hellboy’s father. They are joined by a devilish guide who provides many answers to the questions that have plagued the hero all his life… when he was alive…

The tempter – his infernal uncle – also offers Hellboy another chance at grasping ultimate power before showing him the tortures being inflicted upon his human witch mother and revealing his own connection and identity in ‘Family Ties’…

The truth about Hellboy’s birth, the mighty magic stone right hand he wears and the fate that befell Hell after he was born is told and the lost boy meets his older brothers Gamon and Lusk, who act as brothers always do when told they aren’t the favourite one…

The family squabble escalates and is only ended by an even more terrifying horror…

In the aftermath Hellboy converses with a minor imp who tells him Hell is almost empty. All the grand Dukes and Generals and Princes are dead or gone, leaving a mere blue collar kind of devil in situ. It also reveals that someone has murdered Satan in Pandemonium, sparking a wave of unwelcome memories in Hellboy…

The first travail concludes with ‘Death Riding an Elephant’ as, in the cold and silent abyss, the redemptive revenant returns and at last introduces himself as former Victorian ghostbreaker and psychic detective Sir Edward Grey (the star of another series of Mignola macabre adventures), disclosing a few salient, if unpalatable, facts about Satan’s murder and the truth of his own current unholy situation…

Mignola is a sublime and canny raconteur and seamlessly combines tales where his star is the full focus of the action and alternately little more than a guide or witness to unfolding events. The latter is very much the case with ‘The Three Gold Whips’ which sees Hellboy wandering the deserted byways of the underworld and encountering an unquiet spirit who relates his own tale of a deal with a devil.

Once upon a time Captain Dulot and two soldierly comrades deserted Napoleon’s army and made a pact with a fiend: Seven years of living life like kings plus a whip each that, when cracked, would create a never-ending supply of gold coins. He even gave them an “out”: a means by which they could escape their fate once the seven years were up.

However, when a devil is generous, that’s the time to truly beware…

And so now, ever-helpful Hellboy offers to assist the damned fool…

This superbly absorbing, chilling chronicle also comes with a treasure trove of extras beginning with a graphic faux biography of ‘Walter Edmond Heap’ (a significant figure in the origins of Death Riding an Elphant), an extensive – 19 page – Hellboy Sketchbook section with annotations and commentary by Mignola and a glorious covers-&-variants gallery section.

Hellboy is classic of modern comics creation who has never provided anything but first rate entertainment value for fans. If you’re not one of them yet, this book will certainly change your stubborn mind…
™ & © 2012, 2013, 2014 Mike Mignola.