Category: Horror Stories

Posted on

Gabriel


By Jim Alexander, David Hill & Mick Trimble (Planet Jimbot)
No ISBN

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Home-Grown Feast of Wonders… 8/10

There’s a wonderful intensity to creator-owned comic tales which is all too often lacking in slicker projects from major outfits with all the financial resources in the world at their fingertips.

When just the right creative elements are in place it can be like seeing The Buzzcocks playing live at a sweaty, heaving college gig in 1976 but then going home to watch to “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”, all seamlessly schmaltzed-out and over-produced to buggery by some cosmetically-enhanced, über-styled photogenic twinkie on X-Factor…

Past masters of getting the very best out of finite resources, fresh talent and strong ideas, Jim Alexander and his compadres at Planet Jimbot (whose new periodical release APP-1 will star in our next Small Press Sunday feature) have been crafting superbly enthralling graphic narratives for a wee while now and have recently added to their roster this smart, magnificently chilling – and, arguably, cheekily blasphemous – intellectual challenge to complacent Christianity…

Packaged as a slim, starkly effective monochrome trade paperback, Gabriel is an archly askew urban drama touted as “a true story taking place in an alternative Scotland”. The only noticeable difference I can see is that demons and angels are real and regularly meddle in mortal lives and matters.

…That and the fact that the Church is still supremely powerful: publicly operating its own secret service and special police force which supersedes regular Rozzers in matters both spiritual and temporal…

Writer Alexander’s prodigious back catalogue includes Calhab Justice and other strips for 2000 AD, Star Trek the Manga, GoodCopBadCop and bunches of stuff for The Dandy, DC, Marvel, Metal Hurlant, plus loads of other places and here – bolstered by carefully understated illustrator David Hill (Luther: Echoes of the Hammer) – he turns his mercurial imagination to troubled soul Stewart Gabriel: a poor sinner in another Glasgow with more than his fair share of burdens…

Stewart is an introspective, isolated chap who doesn’t want any bother but has trouble relating to his surviving relations. That’s not uncommon, but he’s also afflicted with terrible dreams of past lives and demonic darkness. Perhaps it’s all because he and his estranged wife Donna are trying to get a shameful, nigh-sacrilegious divorce…

Of course that major doctrinal misdemeanour can’t explain why he is somehow being irresistibly drawn to scenes of carnage and chaos involving the extremely excessive Saint Templar Church militia or why he’s suddenly started walking through walks, doors and other solid objects and even blinking out and rematerialising at scenes of infernal atrocity…

Glasgow is under siege these days: not just from increasingly violent protestors demanding sexual equality and abortions but also reeling from a series of savage serial killings by a particularly gruesome and determined demon.

The beast has decidedly dark “mommy-issues” and is gleefully causing a stink and slaughtering the faithful, especially if they’re partial to a little sin or hypocrisy…

In the higher ecclesiastical echelons, the synod of church leaders known as the Living Saints are fiercely debating how best to quell The Abomination’s sanguine spree and when one of their number prophetically divines Gabriel’s name in connection to the crisis and moves to have him brought in for a little inquisition, the demon is listening…

Despite the growing movement agitating for personal freedoms and responsibilities, this is still a world with no need for faith.

God is. The Devil is. Nobody is asked to believe anything because the spiritual is in fact all physical. So why does Gabriel believe there’s something going on that can’t be explained?

With chaos in the streets, events spiral to bloody climax when The Beast invades the church sanctum and confronts Gabriel, Donna and the Living Saints with a testament and revelation of his own…

First seen in the fabled 1990s thanks to much-missed pioneering publisher Caliber, this modern Mystery Play has been properly remastered for the 21st century and concludes here with an all-new palate cleansing whimsical addendum deftly illustrated by Mick (Bloodfellas) Trimble.

Set six months later, ‘I Am the Resurrection’ follows a good-natured beardy-bloke as he spends one eventful day and night washing the feet of hookers, avoiding death and giving dodgy traders in Temple Market a bit of a kicking. Naturally he ends up in jail – the regular nick, not the Templars’ stronghold – and has a remarkable interview with dying priest Father Salmon, who felt so very much better after giving the stranger the all-clear…

Things only really start to make sense after the unworldly weirdo pops by Gabriel’s place…

Smart, incisive and fictively fascinating, Gabriel builds a brilliantly enticing world before asking all the right questions and offering just enough answers to make readers hungry for a sequel.

This is another dark delight for all those who seek some intellectual meat in their reading matter, so why not break bread here and now?
Gabriel © 2015 Jim Alexander (story) and David Hill (art). I Am the Resurrection © 2015 Jim Alexander (story) and Mick Trimble (art).
Planet Jimbot has a splendid online shop so why not check out: https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/244444294/gabriel-tpb

Posted on

Heart in a Box


By Kelly Thompson & Meredith McClaren (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-694-5

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: A Fearsome Mature Fable for the Family Season… 8/10

Let’s face it kids, Love Hurts and this mesmerising modern parable demonstrates that maxim with stunning audacity and devilish charm as author Kelly Thompson (Storykiller, The Girl Who Would be King, Jem and the Holograms) and illustrator Meredith McClaren (Hinges) take a young woman on a harsh yet educative road trip to learn a life lesson regarding ill-considered wishes and Faustian bargains…

After young Emma had her heart broken by her unforgettable “Man with No Name” she foolishly listens to an insistent stranger who promises to make the shattering pain go away forever.

He’s as good as his word, too, but within nine days Emma realises that what she feels after he’s worked his magic is absolutely nothing at all and that’s even worse than the agony of loss and betrayal which nearly ended her…

The aggravating Mephistophelean advisor – she calls him “Bob” – is still popping in however, and promptly offers her a way to can reclaim the seven shards of sentiment/soul she threw away. There will of course be a few repercussions: as much for her as those folks who have been enjoying the use of a little feeling heart ever since Emma so foolishly dispensed with it and might not want to relinquish that additional loving feeling…

But as she doggedly travels across America, hunting down those mystically reassigned nuggets of passion, she discovers not only how low she’ll stoop to recover what’s hers but also where and when all the moral boundaries she never thought she had can’t be bent, bartered or broken…

A dark delight, Emma’s literal emotional journey takes her into deadly danger, joyous cul-de-sacs and life-changing confrontations with her past and future in a clever reinvigoration of one of literature’s oldest plots and probably mankind’s most potent and undying philosophical quandaries…

Funny, sad, scary and supremely uplifting Heart in a Box is a beguiling rollercoaster ride to delight modern lovers and every grown-up too mature to ever be lonely or dependent…
© 2013, 1979 Semi-Finalist Inc. & Meredith McClaren. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Zombillenium volume 3: Control Freaks


By Arthur de Pins (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-956-4

Arthur de Pins is a British-born French filmmaker, commercial artist and Bande Dessin̩es creator whose strips Рsuch as adult comedy Peccadilloes (AKA Cute Sins) and On the Crab Рhave appeared in Fluide Glacial and Max.

In recent years his superbly arch and beautifully illustrated supernatural horror-comedy Zombillénium has become his greatest success (keep your eyes peeled for the upcoming movie!): a truly addictive comics cult classic which began in 2009 (serialised in Spirou from #3698 on) and has now filled three albums released in English thanks to Canadian publisher NBM.

Rendered with beguiling style and sleek, easy confidence, the unfolding saga details the odd goings-on in a horror theme park run by real monsters and operated by capitalistically-inclined infernal powers and, with this latest volume, we finally get to peek behind the curtain a little to see who – and what – is pulling the strings…

Zombillenium is a truly magical entertainment experience celebrating all aspects of the spooky and supernatural, where (human) families can enjoy a happy day out rubbing shoulders with werewolves and witches and all breeds of bogeyman. Of course, those enthralled visitors customers might not laugh so hard if they knew all the monsters were real, usually hungry and didn’t much like humans … except in a culinary fashion…

The inaugural volume introduced hard-working, humane Director/vampire Francis Von Bloodt, newly-reborn Aurelian Zahner (a pathetically inept thief until he expired at the park and returned transformed into a demonic indentured employee of the business) and quirky British Witch Gretchen: a young newcomer interning at the park whilst secretly advancing her own agenda.

As they individually toiled away at the vast entertainment enterprise its true nature was slowly revealed: for unwary, unlucky mortals the site is a conduit to the domain of the damned and its devilish overlord Behemoth: an intolerant horror ever-hungry for fresh souls…

For the uncanny undead workers in Zombillenium, conditions of employment worsen every day: it is one of the least profitable holiday destinations on Earth and The Board are always threatening to make sweeping changes…

Despite the incredible bargaining power of the many monster Trade Unions, the only way out of a Zombillenium contract is the True Death and a final transition to Hell; yet for some reason the shop-stewards prefer to blame Aurelian for all their woes and seem determined to drive him out.

Stuck between a rock and a hot place, Zahner gradually adapts to his new (un)life of constant sorrow and grows closer to Gretchen after she shares with him her own life-story; revealing what he has become whilst disclosing what she’s really doing at the Park. The big boob has no idea how much she left out…

The saga moves into apocalyptic high gear with Control Freaks as Gretchen’s private plot gathers pace after she makes contact with a loved one currently confined in Hell. The bold sorceress promises a seemingly impossible liberation before sneaking out, whilst in the mortal world a long-dreaded day dawns and all the arcane artisans and supernatural staff quail at some really Big News…

A Consultant has been despatched to “observe” how the park is run but everybody from Von Bloodt to the Shop-Stewards know that elite vampire Bohémond Jaggar de Rochambeau is actually here to take the business by the throat and shake things up. They have no idea just how much everything is about to change…

One of the most unfortunate aspects of the fearsome funfair is that any human who dies on Zombillenium property is instantly reborn as a monster, owned by Behemoth and compelled to work eternally in the theme park until the master takes them below. Under Francis’ governance that’s been wisely offset by a set of stringent rules, the first of which states that no employee is ever allowed to attack a human…

Jaggar has other ideas. Before long he has impetuously killed a little girl and delivered in no uncertain terms the new working time directives to Francis and the astounded staff. The Park is a pump designed to generate money for the shareholders and a steady supply of souls to Behemoth. Now the old, timid tolerant ways championed by Von Bloodt have been superseded by more robust policies which demand bigger returns on both sides of the investment…

The news is met with mixed feelings by the workforce: most are scared, appalled and resistant. For some however it’s the opportunity they’ve long argued for: a chance to feed and feast and hunt all those obnoxious yet tasty human morsels…

With isolated attacks reported all over the park Aurelian suddenly goes into a rage-fuelled meltdown and Gretchen uses his colossal rampage to trigger an evacuation of Zombillenium. Casualties are kept to a minimum even though Jaggar is openly egging on the demonically transcendent Zahner to cut loose. With the park emptied by panic, however, the cutthroat Consultant is temporarily stymied…

Unfortunately, his new business model very much piques the greedy interest of the Board and before long Francis is out and Jaggar is Director; actively encouraging the killing of unattached or unaccompanied humans, who now come in droves to the most exciting entertainment experience in the world.

It’s all too much for ambulatory Egyptian Mummy Aton who enlists the aid of change-resistant union boss Sirius Jefferson to orchestrate an inspired industrial action which closes the Park. Management’s retaliation is swift, decisive and infernally effective and, as Gretchen and Aurelian get a message from an ally in Hell, in Jaggar’s Zombillenium irrevocable lines are drawn for a final battle to win the stilled hearts and captive souls of the enslaved employees…

To Be Continued…

One of the most engaging candidates in a burgeoning category of seditiously mature and subversively ironic horror-comedies, this superb and deliciously arch tale combines pop-cultural archetypes with smart and sassy contemporary insouciance and a solid reliance on the verities of Nature, Human and not…

Sly, smart, sexy and scarily hilarious, Zombillenium achieves that spectacular trick of marrying slapstick with satire in a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Cerebus the Aardvark, whilst easily treading its own path. You’ll curse yourself for missing out and if you don’t there are things out there which will. © Dupuis 2013 by De Pins. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Something at the Window is Scratching


By Roman Dirge (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-349-9

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Gloriously Skewed, Marvellously Inventive… 10/10

Roman Dirge is the multi-award winning, creatively twisted auteur behind the epically eccentric and deliriously disquieting Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl, but like quicksand and scabs he also has a hidden, softer, side.

Way back in 1998 he first compiled a compendium of poetic paeans to the weirder side of life, death and all points betwixt; all superbly synched with a wealth of his uniquely unsettling, chillingly cute Graphic Grotesques and this has now been remastered and re-released as part of Titan Comic’s sinisterly sublime full-colour hardback line archiving his entire canon.

Scaring and simultaneously delighting kids with poetry has always been a popular sport and this turbulent tome echoes with the ghosts of such luminaries as Roald Dahl, Edward Lear, Ogden Nash and Berke Breathed (he’s not actually dead yet, but his kids stuff is so good, he’s certain to be one day…) as it exposes a host of hidden wonders ranging from single page epigrams to extended verse sagas, beginning with ‘The Coo Coo Lady’ whose love for her clock knew no bounds and was – apparently – mutual, before a brief digression reveals the secrets of making ‘Critter Pie’ after which vampiric brothers settle a long-held beef in ‘The Sideways Man’…

The eponymous ‘Something at the Window is Scratching’ details the death of a certain mythological creature and the lengths to which a guilty lad goes to adopt its orphaned child, whilst bear-loving ‘Mr. Seephis’ miscalculates the amount of mutuality they might afford him and ‘Little Lisa Loverbumps’ learns a thing or two about swimming safety…

‘Peter the Pirate Squid’ gets very little time to prosper before ‘The Ghost in the Spider’ exposes a most mismatched pair of travellers whilst ‘Pear Head Man and Bread Boy’ and

‘The Alien Ballerina’ both come and go with astounding alacrity after which we all share every parent’s nightmare – just how to deal with a dying pet – in ‘The Bunny Came Back’…

The nautical misadventure of ‘The Captain’ and the infinite recursiveness of ‘Devil Bunny’ segue neatly into a doomed love between ‘The Reindeer and the Bumble Bee’ whilst old wisdom decrees – and proves – ‘Weird Family Weird Baby’ and a salutary warning is offered by the unlucky temporary inhabitant of ‘Fly Paper’…

Negotiation and resistance both prove pointless when a little bear is drawn into the ‘Dance of the Bedbugs’ but undead performers ‘Boodini and Choobie’ don’t really care, whilst neither ‘The Guy With a Thing on his Head’ or pumpkin imperilled ‘Eddie Poe’ can muster the energy to join in with the game proposed by ‘Mr. Pork Chop’ to end this eerie epistle of eclectic eccentricity.

And don’t think scrutinising all ‘About the Author’ will give you any idea about where this kind of carton craziness comes from…

Wittily weird, gorily gregarious and darkly hilarious, these vivid verses and portentous pictures blend bleak-edged charm with absurdist abstractions and arcane attractions to create visual mood music and Goth-toned glee for the culturally sated; reprising the mordant merriment of Charles Addams’ cartoons as so readily revisited by mirthful modern macabrists like Tim Burton, Jhonen Vasquez (Squee!, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac and who here provides and enthusiastic, confusiastic Foreword), Ted Naifeh & Serena (Gloom Cookie) and Jill “Scary Godmother” Thompson.

These odd odes are an unwholesome treat for kids of all ages with a taste for the richer, darker, more full-bodied flavours of life and its inevitable final consequences.

Ever so much better for you than absinthe, idolatry or unsanctioned unicorn safari …
Something at the Window is Scratching ™ & © 2015 Roman Dirge. All rights reserved.

Posted on

If You Steal


By Jason (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-854-0

Christmas Gift Recommendation: A comics lover’s dream made real… 9/10

Jason is secretly John Arne Saeterrøy: born in Molde, Norway in 1965 and an overnight international cartoon superstar since 1995 when his first graphic novel Lomma full ay regn (Pocket Full of Rain) won that year’s Sproing Award (Norway’s biggest comics prize). He won another Sproing in 2001 for the series Mjau Mjau and in 2002 turned almost exclusively to producing graphic novels.

A global star among the cartoon cognoscenti, he has won many major awards from all over the planet. Jason’s work always jumps directly into the reader’s brain and heart, utilising the beastly and unnatural to gently pose eternal questions about basic human needs in a soft but relentless quest for answers. That you don’t ever notice the deep stuff because of the clever gags and safe, familiar “funny-animal” characters should indicate just how good a cartoonist he is…

The stylised artwork is delivered in formalised page layouts rendered in a minimalist evolution of Hergé’s Claire Ligne style, solid blacks, thick outlines and settings of seductive simplicity – augmented by a deft and subtle use of flat colour which enhances his hard, moody, suspenseful and utterly engrossing Cinema-inspired world.

The superbly understated art acts in concert with his dead-on, deadpan pastiche repertoire of scenarios which dredge deep from our shared experience of old film noir classics, horror and sci fi B-movies and other visual motifs which transcend time and culture, and the result is narrative dynamite.

This latest hardback compilation collects eleven new short yarns and opens with the eponymous and eerie ‘If You Steal’, wherein cheap thug Paul perpetually risks everything and the one person who keeps him feeling alive in search of quick cash, only to lose it all in the end after which ‘Karma Chameleon’ finds a small desert community dealing with the discovery of a giant, carnivorous and extremely predatory lizard which nobody seems able to see. Good thing masturbation-obsessed boffin Dr. Howard Jones and his long-suffering daughter Julia are in town…

The deliciously wry and whimsically absurdist Samuel Beckett spoof ‘Waiting for Bardot’ then segues neatly into a dashing mystery of masked derring-do as ‘Lorena Velazquez’ eventually tires of waiting for her ideal man to finish off a necessarily interminable and horrific army of villains prior to doling out a maiden’s traditional rewards whilst a fugitive murderer narrates his own paranoia-fuelled downfall after his ‘New Face’ briefly tempts him with love and the never-to-be-achieved promise of peace and safety…

A series of six faux horror comics covers combines to relate the trials of chilling romances in ‘Moondance’ and the classic fear theme extends into a rip-roaring battle against the undead in ‘Night of the Vampire Hunter’ and ‘Polly Wants a Cracker’ follows the other unique career path of artistic legend/assassin-for-hire Frida Kahlo whilst a junkie musician pushes his luck against some very bad guys because ‘The Thrill is Gone’ before ‘Ask Not’ takes a trawl through history from Stonehenge in 2583 BC to Salon de Provence in 1554 AD (courtesy of Nostradamus) to 1960s Cuba, revealing the truth behind the assassination of JFK and Abraham Lincoln and what parts Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby actually played in that millennial plot: a parallel worlds yarn like no other…

The book ends with a stunning, deeply moving graphic examination of dementia which is both chilling and oddly-heart-warming as aging Emma deals with the scary creatures who keep taking away the names of things in ‘Nothing’, proving once more that behind the innocuous-seeming cartoons and contemporary fairy tale trappings Jason’s work is loaded with potent questions…

If You Steal resonates with Jason’s favourite themes and shines with his visual dexterity, and skewed sensibilities. disclosing a decidedly different slant on secrets and obsessions. Primal art supplemented by sparse and spartan “Private Eye” dialogue, enhanced to a macabre degree by solid cartooning and skilled use of silence and moment, all utilised with devastating economy, affords the same quality of cold, bleak yet perfectly harnessed stillness which makes Scandinavian crime dramas such compelling, addictive fare.

These comic tales are strictly for adults yet allow us all to look at the world through wide-open young eyes. They never, however, sugar-coat what’s there to see…
If You Steal is © 2015 Jason. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Zombillenium: Volume 1: Human Resources


By Arthur de Pins (NBM)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-850-5

Arthur de Pins is a British-born French filmmaker, commercial artist and Bande Dessin̩es creator whose strips Рlike adult comedy Peccadilloes (AKA Cute Sins) and On the Crab Рhave appeared in Fluide Glacial and Max. His beautifully illustrated Zombill̩nium began serialisation in Spirou #3698 (2009) and has filled three albums to date which are being released in English thanks to Canadian publisher NBM.

Rendered in a beguiling animated cartoon style, the saga features stories set in a theme park, run by the revived dead and operated for unspecified reasons by nebulous demonic powers.

Zombillenium is a truly magical entertainment experience celebrating all aspects of horror and the supernatural, where families can enjoy a happy day out rubbing shoulders with werewolves and witches and all manner of bogeymen. Of course, the customers might not laugh so much if they knew all those monsters were real, usually hungry and didn’t much like humans … except in a culinary fashion…

The first volume introduced Director Francis Von Bloodt, newly-created monster Aurelian Zahner (a former human and pathetically inept thief) and oddly secretive young British Witch Gretchen – who is “only” an intern at the park – all toiling away at a place which reeks of inhospitable working conditions.

The employees are literally little more than slaves and conditions continually threaten to get worse: Zombillenium is one of the least-profitable holiday destinations on Earth and “the Board” are always threatening to make draconian changes…

Despite the incredible power of the Zombie Trade Union, the only way out of a Zombillenium contract is the True Death and for some reason the shop-stewards blame Aurelian for all their woes and are determined to drive him out.

As Zahner adapted to his new indentured (un)life, Gretchen once shared a strict confidence with him, relating her life-story, revealing what he has actually become and explaining what she is really doing at the Park. The big boob has no idea what and how much she left out…

Human Resources begins amidst seething and escalating local troubles even as an obnoxious family find their day-trip to the park plagued by minor mishaps, missed turns and lost opportunities until they come across Aurelian out jogging. He graciously offers to guide them through the ever-shifting roads to their destination…

Little Tim’s “present” has already driven mum and dad back into their old, well-practised arguments but the lad is too busy being fabulously spooked and enthralled by the ever-so-convincing “performer” sitting beside him in the back. They’re all equally unaware of the tensions mounting in the human town just beyond the attraction.

In this region unemployment is 25% but the only even-remotely thriving concern refuses to hire anyone local. Animosity and suspicion has led to vandalism and worse, but would the ill-informed protestors even apply for jobs if they were offered? After all, the primary qualification for employment at the park is a total lack of all medically-recognised life-functions…

As Aurelian gives Tim the VIP tour, Gretchen passes by and is shocked to realise that the kid’s mum is not all she seems to be. When the surly and abrasive visitor then attacks one of the smaller employees and is taken into custody, Von Bloodt too is taken aback: he knows the bullying, bossy virago from somewhere long ago…

There’s not really time however to solve her baffling mystery though, since a fresh crisis is brewing. A few hours earlier animated skeleton Sirius Jefferson went for a bike ride and was abducted by disgruntled, unemployed skinheads. Using portions of his dismantled anatomy they have since surreptitiously invaded the complex workings under Zombillenium carrying explosives and determined to wreak havoc.

Most critical of all is that little Tim has gone missing. Despite a big search by all the staff not engaged in tracking down the saboteurs, the kid just can’t be found. Then, in a moment of aghast clarity, the Vampire-In-Charge realises exactly who his mother is and why the boy must never, ever meet radical young demon Astaroth: the prime advocate and most strident supporter the sport of human hunting, who bears an uncanny but horrifyingly explicable resemblance to the missing child…

From this point on things can only go badly, and not all Gretchen, Aurelian and Von Bloodt’s efforts might be enough to prevent chaos turning into bloody Pandemonium…

One of the most engaging candidates in a burgeoning category of seditiously mature and subversively ironic horror-comedies, this superb and deliciously arch tale will appeal to fans of such films as Hotel Transylvania and Igor and such graphic narrative classics as Boneyard, Rip M.D. and especially Melusine or The Littlest Pirate King, all of which combine pop-cultural archetypes with smart and sassy contemporary insouciance.

Sly, smart, sexy and scarily hilarious, Zombillenium achieves that spectacular trick of marrying slapstick with satire in a manner reminiscent of Asterix and Cerebus the Aardvark, whilst easily treading its own path. You’ll curse yourself for missing out and if you don’t there are things out there which will.
© Dupuis 2011. © NBM, 2014 for the English translation.

Posted on

Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier & the Vampire


By Mike Mignola & Christopher Golden (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-61655-803-1

As well as being involved with some of the very best superhero yarns of the late 20th century, Legendary fantasist and comics-creator Mike Mignola has carved himself a splendid and memorable niche in the industry’s history by revitalising the sub-genre of horror-heroes via such macabre mayhem-mavens as Hellboy, B.P.R.D. and Lobster Johnson, creating his own very special dark place where thrill-starved fans can wallow in all things dire and dreadful…

Clearly he has far more ideas than he can successfully manage in one lifetime. As well all those sequential art endeavours he has expressed a deep and abiding love for the classical supernatural-thriller medium through illustrated prose novels such as Joe Golem and the Drowning City (co-crafted with long-time writing associate Christopher Golden) and this potent tribute to the writings of pioneers of the dread and uncanny H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and Clark Ashton Smith, with perhaps just a touch of Jack London…

Baltimore, or, the Steadfast Tin Soldier & the Vampire was first released as a luxurious Random House hardback 2007 and the captivatingly dark, doom-drenched blend of martial steampunk and classic vampire horror-yarn subsequently led to Mignola & Golden sporadically concocting further exploits of the titular hero in comics form from 2010 onwards, beginning with 5-issue miniseries Baltimore: The Plague Ships, illustrated by Ben Stenbeck.

This sturdy oversized paperback edition from Dark Horse re-presents that initial textual sortie into the outer reaches of imagination whilst also offering a brace of chilling comicstrip shockers by Mignola, Golden and Stenbeck culled from the 2013 one-shot Baltimore: The Widow and the Tank.

With constant and effective allusion to Hans Christian Andersen’s heartbreaking fairytale The Steadfast Tin Soldier, the eerie epic relates the transformative tale of dutiful if unimaginative Scion of Albion Lord Henry Baltimore who answered England’s call to arms in 1914 only to be severely wounded during the battles in Ardennes.

When he fell history took a horrific turn which began when the terrified officer awoke amongst a crater full of dead men being fed on by ghastly bat-like vampires who had for centuries abandoned their predator roles for the safer niche of clandestine carrion-feeders. When the appalled aristocrat lashed out, taking an eye from the leech prematurely consuming his life’s blood, it roused the creature and its disgusting brethren to a fury of vengeance-taking which cost Baltimore his entire family, unleashed a plague which decimated all humanity and roused a demonic force intent on reclaiming the Earth after contentedly quiescent millennia…

The one thing the obsessed Nosferatu’s sustained campaign of cruelty did not do was break Baltimore. Instead it honed the once-effete and ineffectual product of civilisation into an unstoppable hammer to smash the reawakened vampiric forces wherever they could be found – although not before the world was reduced to a pitiful, disjointed and primitive killing field on the edge of utter obliteration…

For most of the novel Baltimore is an enigmatic, unknown force far from the spotlight, given shape and form by three strangers who meet in a befouled hostelry in broken city at the behest of a man they have all benefited from knowing…

As the day passes, former Army Surgeon Dr. Lemuel Rose, merchant seaman Demetrius Aischros and Baltimore’s childhood companion Thomas Childress Jr. compare notes on the currently missing monster-hunter and share their own horrendous intimate brushes with various agencies of diabolism that have left all three maimed, wary but resolutely prepared for the worst the magical realms can throw at them. Or so they think…

Constructed like a portmanteau novel as a series of linked short stories and told in the manner of Victorian after-dinner raconteurs, the drama and tension build slowly but inexorably towards the inevitable appearance of the transformed and unwavering vampire-killer and a confrontation years in the making and steeped in the blood of millions…

Ponderous, inexorable, moodily despondent and completely captivating, this aggregation of singular horrors experienced alone and perpetual perils shared is complemented by two short comics vignettes illustrated with cool understatement by Ben Stenbeck.

‘The Widow’ harks back to the days after the plague brought The Great War to a unofficial halt when Baltimore returned to England in search of a new breed of gore-drinker hiding amidst the mortal populace, whilst the second episode sees the implacable hunter ally temporarily with a bloodsucker to escape even worse paranormal predators lurking around ‘The Tank’.

Moreover the scintillating saga contained within this supremely satisfyingly tome is graced with 146 grittily monochrome full, half, third and quarter-page illustrations by Mignola to complete a joyous homage to the necromantic good old days.

Miss it at your peril, fright fans…
© 2007, 2015 Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Abe Sapien: The Drowning


By Mike Mignola & Jason Shawn Alexander (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1-59582-185-0

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

After decades of unfailing, faithful service the big red rover became mortally tired and resigned. Itinerantly roaming the world, he still managed to encounter strange deaths and weird happenstances, never able to outrun trouble or his sense of duty.

This book is not about him.

The collection under review here instead notionally features the first solo exploit of his trusty amphibian associate Abe Sapien: a valiant yet deeply unsure and insecure champion whose origins and experience with those occult occasions typically handled by the Enhanced Talents Task Force are at this time still largely theoretical…

Originally released as a 5-part miniseries from February to June, 2008, The Drowning is scripted by creative head honcho Mike Mignola and moodily realised by Jason Shawn Alexander who also provides a fabulous and informative Abe Sapien Sketchbook at the back of this full-colour walk – or is that swim? – on the weird and wild side. Also involved in this tribute to black arts is letterer Clem Robins with the magical colours coming from Dave Stewart.

The action opens with a glimpse into demonic deeds of the past as, in 1884, occult detective Edward Grey boldly and bombastically defeats mighty warlock Epke Vrooman before sinking his hellish ship sixty miles off the French coast near the former leper-colony of Isle Saint-Sébastien.

In (contemporary) 1981 Hellboy is gone from the B.P.R.D. and Chief Bruttenholm pushes reticent Abe into leading a milk-run mission to retrieve the fabulous, lore-laden Lipu Dagger Queen Victoria’s Most Special Agent used to end the malevolent mage almost a century before.

With experienced agents already in place, all the merman has to do is dive deep and fetch back the prize artefact. Sadly, with magic nothing is ever easy…

As the on-site proceedings get underway none of the B.P.R.D. team are aware that unquiet spirits are already undertaking their own recovery mission and whilst horrific monsters intercept Abe at the sunken wreck, back on land an ancient crone puts into motion the ceremony she has waited her entire life to complete…

By the time the battered aquatic investigator struggles ashore almost everyone on Saint-Sébastien is dead and a pack of wizened devils are attempting to resurrect their diabolical master. Cut off from the outside world and unable to pass this mess on to somebody more qualified, Abe is flailing until the old woman takes charge, instructing him in some deeper truths about the Isle, the god the benighted inhabitants chose to worship and what truly moved and motivated Epke Vrooman on the last night of his former life…

Armed with appalling information and the knowledge that there’s no one to save the day, the neophyte agent turns to face his greatest challenge and worst nightmares…

Mignola has an incredible knack for creating powerfully welcoming mythologies and this escapade effectively dragged Abe Sapien out of the overwhelming shadow of satanic superstar Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. and set him on his way as a celebrated solo star.

Potent, powerful and utterly drenched in uncanny atmosphere, this is a terrific tale of an irresistible horror hero to haunt your dreams.
© 2008 Mike Mignola. All rights reserved. All key and prominently featured characters ™ Mike Mignola.

Posted on

The Cat with a Really Big Head


By Roman Dirge (Titan Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-78276-287-4

Roman Dirge is the multi-award winning, creatively twisted auteur behind the gloriously gruesome and deliriously disquieting Lenore: the Cute Little Dead Girl, but like quicksand and unpronounceable foreign cheese he also has a hidden, softer side.

Collected in this haunting hardback compilation are a brace of the mordant maestro’s lesser known works – as well as a bonus short vignette – all deviously masquerading as innocuously innocent if lavishly lurid illustrated fables and poems which nice kids might enjoy…

Eponymous tale of domestic tragedy and karmic comeuppance ‘The Cat with a Really Big Head’ was first released by Slave Labor Graphics in 2002 and details with charming indulgence the story of a poor macrocephalic kitty whose life is ruined by an awesome overabundance of cranium. You’d think that having eight more might be some comfort but you’d be wrong…

Following that there’s a brief doggerel divertissement as ‘A Big Question’ rhythmically relates what happened to little Alisa McGee after she asked the Autopsy Man what he was doing with her cadaver…

As revealed in Dirge’s Foreword, the agonised aftermath of a romantic break-up inspired ‘The Monsters in my Tummy’, originally seen as a black-&-white Slave Labor special in 1999.

Now remastered into resplendent rainbow hues, the grisly treatise on one man’s internal logistics and gory grieving process offers a certain sort of hope and lots of vicarious spleen for the newly heart-sore who still retain a smidgen of poesy and particles of a sense of humour…

Wittily weird, excessively eccentric and darkly hilarious, these fanciful fairytales for gloomy grownups readily blend whimsical charm with surreal introspection to create visual mood music and gothy glee for the down-at-soul; rekindling the mordant merriment of Charles Addams’ cartoons and so readily revived by modern macabrists such as Tim Burton, Jhonen Vasquez (Squee!, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac), Ted Naifeh & Serena (Gloom Cookie) and Jill “Scary Godmother” Thompson.

These fearsomely funny fables are an unwholesome treat for those kids of all ages with a taste for the richer, darker and less anodyne flavours of life and its inevitable final consequences.

Ever so much better for you than alcohol abuse, suicide pacts or stalking that certain someone in all weathers…
The Cat with a Really Big Head and The Monsters in My Tummy ™ & © 2015 Roman Dirge. All rights reserved.

The Cat with a Really Big Head will be released on June 30th 2015 and is available for pre-order now.

Posted on

Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – the graphic novel


Adapted by Alan Grant & Cam Kennedy (Waverley Books)
ISBN: 978-1-902407-44-9

As part of the celebrations for Edinburgh’s selection in 2004 as the first UNESCO City of Literature, Scottish comics veterans Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy were invited to convert a brace of classic tales by Robert Louis Stevenson to publishing’s hottest medium…

The second appeared in 2008 with a bare minimum of abridgement or adulteration by Grant and galvanically brought to life through the stunning art of the inimitable Kennedy with colours and letters provided by Jamie Grant: all seamlessly collaborating to perfectly picture one of the most famous and groundbreaking tales of terror in the annals of storytelling.

The timeless tale opens as lawyer Mr. Utterson becomes intrigued by the ‘Story of the Door’ as related by walking companion Richard Enfield. That worthy describes how, after remonstrating with a bestial, shrivelled homunculus of a man who was thrashing a street child, he discovered a possible although unlikely and unwelcome connection to a mutual friend of superlative honour and worthiness.

However what connection a depraved creature such as Edward Hyde might have with the benevolent and brilliant Dr. Henry Jekyll was beyond either man’s conception. Blackmail perhaps…?

The multi-layered and convoluted chain of events unfolds at a beguiling pace as the pair begin a systematic ‘Search for Mr. Hyde’, even consulting the scientist’s great mentor Dr. Lanyon before unexpectedly encountering the despicable decadent himself, sneaking into Jekyll’s home through the means of his own key.

Eventually Utterson is compelled to ask the suspected extortion victim himself but ‘Dr. Jekyll was Quite at Ease’ and even extracted a promised that the lawyer would ensure that Hyde got his legal due should untoward circumstances warrant…

Events overtake everyone when details of ‘The Carew Murder Case’ become a public sensation and Hyde is hunted for killing a prominent politician in fit of unprovoked fury. Long-shrouded secrets begin to leak out after the ‘Incident of the Letter’ as Jekyll assures his distraught and apprehensive friends that Hyde will be seen no more, leaving Utterson to conclude that Henry is completely under the thumb of the desperate fugitive…

‘The Remarkable Incident of Dr. Lanyon’ precipitates further speculation as the failing sage gives the inquisitors a letter to be opened upon his (imminent) demise, prompting Enfield and Utterson to reluctant action and intervention on ‘The Last Night’ which reveals the shocking truth of the affair…

With the tragedy complete all that remains is to discover the reasons and causes which are provided by the aforementioned letter containing ‘Henry Jekyll’s Full Statement of the Case’…

Chances are high that nobody reading this is unaware of the general events of this much retold tale but the moody, evocative, dynamic and suspenseful reiteration here is a sheer pictorial triumph which adds freshness to familiarity and emerges as not simply a distillation, adjunct or accommodation but actually works as well in comics terms as the original literary ones.
Adapted text © 2008 Alan Grant. Illustrations © 2008 Cam Kennedy. All rights reserved.