Horror Stories – Page 42

November 26, 2012November 25, 2012

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Origin

By Joss Whedon, Christopher Golden, Daniel Brereton, Joe Bennett & various (Dark Horse/Titan Books Edition)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-105-2

Blood-drenched doomed love is still something of a hot topic these days so let’s take another look at one of the ancient antecedents responsible for this state of affairs – in the shape of Dark Horse Comics’ sequential reinterpretation of the cult B-movie which launched the global mega-hit TV franchise Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Starring Kristy Swanson, Donald Sutherland, Luke Perry and Rutger Hauer, the film was released in 1992 with a modicum of success and to the lasting dissatisfaction of writer/creator Joss Whedon.

Five years later he got to do the thing right and in the manner he’d originally intended. The ensemble action horror comedy series became something of a phenomenon and inspired a whole new generation of gothy gore-lovers and many, many â€œhomagesâ€ in assorted media – including comics.

Dark Horse won the licensing rights in the USA, subsequently producing an engaging regular comicbook series and a welter of impressive miniseries and specials. In 1999 the company – knowing how powerfully the inclusivity/continuity/completism gene dominates comics fan physiology – revisited the troublesome movie debut. Scrupulously returning to the author’s script and core concept, restoring excised material, shifting the tone back towards what Whedon originally intended whilst subtly reconfiguring events until they better jibed with the established and beloved TV mythology, adaptors Christopher Golden and Daniel Brereton and artists Joe Bennett, Rick Ketcham, Randy Emberlin & J. Jadsen produced a new 3-issue miniseries which â€“ finally – canonically established exactly what the former vapid Valley Girl did in her old hometown that got her transferred to scenic Sunnydale and a life on the Hellmouthâ€¦

The story opens in ‘Destiny Free’ as shallow but popular teen queen and cheerleader Buffy Summers shrugs off her recurring nightmares of young women battling and being killed by vampires throughout history to continue her daily life of smug contentment. Even a chance meeting with grungy stoner badboys Pike and Benny can’t dent her aura of self-assured privilege and studied indolence.

The nightmares keep mounting in intensity however, and all over town teenagers are disappearingâ€¦

Things come to a head the week her parents leave town for a trip. In a dark park, a maniac attacks Pike and Benny and is only driven off by the intervention of a mysterious, formidable old man. Even so the assailant manages to take the screaming Benny with himâ€¦ Next day the old geezer is at school, annoying Buffy. She is blithely mocking until he tells her about her nightmares and explains that she has an inescapable destinyâ€¦ as a slayer of monstersâ€¦

Deep in the bowels of the Earth a monster is marshalling his forces and making terrifying converts out of the spoiled worthless children of Californiaâ€¦

Buffy’s stranger is exceedingly persistent and that night, despite her disbelieving misgivings, she and Merrick – an agent of an ancient, monster-hunting secret society – lurk in a graveyard waiting for a recently murdered man to rise from his fresh graveâ€¦

When he does – along with unsuspected others – Buffy’s unsuspected powers and battle reflexes kick in and against all odds she spectacularly triumphsâ€¦

‘Defenseless Mechanisms’ finds the altered Buffy grudgingly dropping her fatuous after-school activities – and former friends – to train with the increasingly strident and impatient Watcher Merrick. Even though her attitude is appalling and attention easily diverted, the girl is serious about the job, and even has a few new ideas to add to The Slayer’s traditional arsenalâ€¦

Even as she begins her career by luring vile vamps out by pretending to be a helpless lost girl in dark alleys, across town Pike is in big trouble. He also knows what is happening: after all every night Benny comes to his window, begging to be let in and offering to share his new life with his old, best buddyâ€¦

At school the change in Buffy is quite noticeable and all her old associates are talking and pointedly snubbing her, even as every sundown Lothos‘ legion gets bolder and bigger. A fatal mistake occurs on the night when Slayer and Watcher save the finally outmanoeuvred Pike from Benny and the Vampire Lord. Only two of the embattled humans survive and escapeâ€¦

The tales escalates to a fantastic spectacular climax when the undead army invades the long-awaited Hemery High School dance looking for Buffy and fresh meat/recruits. With his bloodsuckers surrounding the petrified revellers and demanding a final reckoning, Lothos believed his victory assured, but in all his centuries of unlife he’d never encountered a Slayer quite like Buffy Summersâ€¦

Visually impressive, sassily scripted and proceeding at a breakneck rollercoaster pace, this smart and simple action-fest is extremely engaging even if you’re not familiar with the vast backstory, and is a creepy chronicle as easily enjoyed by the most callow neophyte as by the dedicated devotee – and besides with the shows readily available on TV and DVD, if you aren’t a follower yet you soon could – and should – beâ€¦
â„¢ & Â© 1999 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

November 20, 2012November 20, 2012

Monkeywanger – the Crimes of Oscar Dirlewanger (Special Edition)

By Peeler Watt Ph.D., illustrated by MIND, Jahn Fermindoza & Red Ink studios
ISBN: 978-1-47928-230-2

As any long-time reader will attest, I’m a huge advocate of doing it yourself when it comes to making comics and this collection – gathering the first three books of an epic historical exposÃ© of one of humanity’s greatest monsters – shows just why, as it spectacularly blends harsh fact with high drama to reveal a mere smattering of the atrocities perpetrated by macabre madman Oskar Paul Dirlewanger, one of the most infamous and deviant of villains to find purpose, outlet and sanction under the Nazisâ€¦

This ambitiously oversized (280x216mm) mostly blood-red-and-monochrome horror story by historian Peeler Watt (not his real name) and animator/illustrator Mike Ian Noble Dobson (augmented and supplemented by Jahn Fermindoza and Filipino studio Red Ink Animation: Van Winkle Amaranto, Silvan Amante, Mikaela and Sharon Amaranto, Clewin Mars & Flor Villa) introduces fictionalised antagonist Untersturmfuhrer Otto Voge (an amalgam of actual people caught up in Dirlewanger’s sphere of unholy influence), a dedicated, passionate patriotic German cop with a secret who volunteered for active duty with the SS and lived to regret itâ€¦

The tale begins, after a brief and brutal comic strip prÃ©cis of the political, social and religious background, with Voge arriving in the Nazi controlled Jewish ghetto of Lublin in August 1941 and seeing first-hand the atrocities perpetrated by Penal Battalion Oranieburg – an SS division personally founded by Dirlewanger from criminal scum too debased for the regular army.

Due to a clerical error Voge was assigned to the appalling dreg unit rather than a decent and proper army division on active service and soon realises that the soldiers have their commanding officer’s full approval to loot, brutalise and torture the subjugated Poles – Jewish or otherwise.

The deviant Captain is nonetheless very impressed with his new subordinate’s obvious martial prowess. After savage skirmishes in the devastated city the Captain puts Voge forward for an Iron Cross, impressing the young leutnant with his obvious craving for real combat on the Russian Front rather than glorified guard duty in the ghetto.

Dirlewanger is an odd character, a spit-and-polish martinet with terrifying self-composure: ruthlessly cruel, fiercely passionate in his prejudices but utterly devoted to the pet monkey â€œMosesâ€ which is never far from his sideâ€¦

Voge’s fellow officers are little better than the conscripted men, but they would all be horrified if they knew their comrade’s dark secret: Voge is a Soviet sleeper agent who has been reporting to his Communist paymasters since his days as a peace-time policemanâ€¦

When Dirlewanger sends his men on another raid to rob and torment the subjugated Jews, Voge tries to curb their worst excesses but, as partisan’s attack the soldiers, the Leutnant is again forced to display his talent for combat, further cementing his commander’s favourable impressions. As Jewish women and children are rounded up Voge pushes his luck and manages to save one mother and her mentally deficient child from the fate of the othersâ€¦

As the days pass Voge learns more about his outcast fellows and their reprehensible chief. Dirlewanger was a decorated hero in WWI and the Spanish Civil War, but also a psychopathic killer, and child-molester (according to some historians he was also a sadist and necrophiliac and given the dubious distinction of being â€œthe most evil man in the SSâ€) â€¦but certainly no fool.

Voge finds it increasingly impossible to stay uninvolved and concentrate on either his ostensible duties or covert mission and soon is deeply embroiled in the criminal machinations of the Battalion whilst simultaneously secretly working with Jewish Partisans. His only concern is to save innocent civilians from his debauched and murderous German comrades, but finds that they are equally endangered by their own ruthlessly driven and fanatical Resistance fighters and Voge’s increasingly impatient Russian spymastersâ€¦

The day is swiftly approaching when the mounting, conflicting pressures will surely cause a fatal misstep, but when Dirlewanger gets word from a Jewish informant of a Catholic convent hiding Hebrew girls that should be spicing up the Nazi’s private brothel,Â it soon becomes clear that Voge’s own morality might be his actual undoing.

Painfully aware that his now suspicious commander was playing with him, Voge moves too late to save the girls and, after another ferocious clash between partisans and battalion soldiers, realises a final confrontation is now unavoidableâ€¦

Dark, brooding, painfully oppressive and grimly adult in nature, Monkeywanger is a powerful story of war, obsession and duty that will certainly impress fans of war stories, history buffs and devotees of fine storytelling, and there’s even the prospect of more to come â€¦

No Trademark invoked so I’m assuming Â© 2012 Peeler Watt. All rights reserved.
For more information and to obtain your own copy check out http://www.monkeywanger.com

October 31, 2012October 30, 2012

Showcase Presents Ghosts

By Leo Dorfman & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-836-1

Boo! Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: a perfect slice of sinister comics spookiness for everyoneâ€¦ 8/10

American comicbooks started rather slowly until the invention of superheroes unleashed a torrent of creative imitation and established a new entertainment genre. Implacably vested in World War Two, the superman swept all before him (occasional her or it) until the troops came home and the more traditional themes and heroes resurfaced, and eventually supplanted the Fights ‘n’ Tights crowd.

Whilst a new generation of kids began buying and collecting, many of the first fans also retained their four-colour habit but increasingly sought older themes in their reading matter. The war years had irrevocably altered the psychological landscape of the readership and, as a more world-weary, cynical young public came to see that all the fighting and dying hadn’t really changed anything, their chosen forms of entertainment (film and prose as well as comics) increasingly reflected this.

As well as Western, War and Crime comics, celebrity tie-ins, madcap escapist comedy and anthropomorphic funny animal features were immediately resurgent. Gradually another cyclical revival of spiritualism and public fascination with the arcane led to a wave of impressive, evocative and shockingly more-ish horror comics. These spanned the range from EC and Simon & Kirby’s astoundingly mature and landmark scary fictions to grotesquely exploitative eerie episodes from pale imitators and even wholesome, family-friendly fear tales from the industry’s biggest players.

The company that would become DC Comics bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology that nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles with the (December 1951/January 1952) release of The House of Mystery, at the same time turning venerable anthology Sensation Comics (the magazine that had starred Wonder Woman since 1942) into a fantasy vehicle with he-men such as Jonny Peril battling the encroaching unknown with issue #107.

That conversion was completed when the title became Sensation Mystery with #110 in July 1952.

Everything changed when a hysterical censorship scandal and governmental witch-hunt created a spectacular backlash (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April- June 1954 into your search engine at any timeâ€¦ You can do that because it’s more-or-less still a free country).

The crisis was curtailed by the industry adopting a castrating straitjacket of self-regulatory rules. Horror titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority became sanitised, anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, even though the appetite for suspense was still high. For example: in 1956 National introduced the sister title House of Secrets which debuted with a November-December cover-date and specialised in taut human interest tales in a fantasy milieu.

Stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which dominated the market until the 1960s when super-heroes (which had started to creep back after Julius Schwartz began the Silver Age of comics by reintroducing the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them. When the cape-and-cowl craziness peaked and popped, sales began bottoming out for Costumed Dramas and comics faced another punishing sales downturn.

Nothing combats censorship better than falling profits. As the end of the 1960s saw the superhero boom end with so many titles dead and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain too, the publishers took drastic action.

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving players in the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Worlds Beyond, the resurrection of spooky stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€

Even ultra-wholesome Archie Comics re-entered the field with their rather tasty line of Red Circle Chillersâ€¦

Thus, with absolutely no fanfare at all, spooky comics came back to quickly dominate the American funnybook market for more than half a decade. DC started by converting The House of Mystery and Tales of the Unexpected into mystery suspense mags in 1968 and followed by resurrecting House of Secrets (August-September 1969) which had been cancelled in 1966.

Soon supernatural mystery titles were the dominant force in the marketplace and DC began a steady stream of launches along narrowly differing thematic lines. There was gothic horror romance title Sinister House of Secret Love, a combat iteration in Weird War Tales and from late summer 1970 a bold new book which proudly boasted â€œTrue Tales of the Weird and Supernatural!â€ and challenged readers to read on if they daredâ€¦

This first monochrome encyclopaedia of the eerie and uncanny collects the first 18 issues of Ghosts, covering like a shroud September/October 1970 to September 1973 with lead scripter and supernatural enthusiast Leo Dorfman producing most of the series’ original material for a title he is generally credited with creating.

Dorfman was one of the most prolific scripters of the era (also working as David George and Geoff Brown) and a major scripter of comic horror stories for many DC and Gold Key titles.

The thrills and chills begin with a graphic ‘Introduction’ from Tony DeZuniga – probably scripted by editor Murray Boltinoff – before ‘Death’s Bridegroom’ (Dorfman & Jim Aparo) told of a conniving bluebeard conman who finally picked the wrong girl to bilk and jilt. Sam Glanzman illustrated the fearsome tale of a shipbuilder slain while sabotaging a Nazi U-Boat who returned as a vengeful ‘Ghost in the Iron Coffin’, after which ‘The Tattooed Terror’, by John Broome, Carmine Infantino & Sy Barry, offers a slice of Golden Age anxiety from Sensation Mystery #112 (November 1952) when a career criminal is seemingly haunted by his betrayed partner.

Broome, Infantino & Frank Giacoia then relived ‘The Last Dream’ (Sensation Comics #107, December 1951-January 1952) when a 400-year old rivalry resulted in death for a 20^th century sceptic, and this initial issue ends with a Western mystery in ‘The Spectral Coachman’ by Dorfman & Tony DeZuniga.

Issue #2 began with a predatory ghost-witch persecuting a Carpathian village in ‘No Grave can Hold Me’ by Dorfman, John Calnan & George Tuska, whilst ‘Mission Supernatural’ (art by Bob Brown & Wally Wood) revealed a WWII secret which perpetually plagued a modern English airport.

A brace of revered reprints begin with light-hearted romp ‘The Sorrow of the Spirits’ from House of Mystery #21 (December 1953, by Jack Miller, Curt Swan & Ray Burnley) wherein a plague of famous phantoms attempted to possess their descendents’ bodies whilst ‘Enter the Ghost’ (Joe Samachson & Ruben Moreira from House of Mystery #29, August 1954) found an actor endangered by a dead thespian jealous of anyone recreating his greatest roleâ€¦

With Dorfman still writing the lion’s share of the new material, DeZuniga illustrated the sorry fate of an unscrupulous diver who was seduced by the discovery of a ‘Galleon of Death’ whilst Miller & Irwin Hasen’s ‘Lantern in the Rain’ (originally from Sensation Mystery #113, January/February 1953) recounted an eerie railroad episode, and Dorfman & Glanzman reunited to tell an original tale of ‘The Ghost Battalions’ who still haunted the world’s battle sites from Gallipoli to Korea.

Dorfman & DeZuniga visited 17^th century Scotland for #3’s opening occult observation wherein a sea-born princess demanded her child back from a wicked Laird in ‘Death is my Mother’, after which ‘The Magician who Haunted Hollywood’ (George Kashdan & Leonard Starr, from HoM #10, January 1953) revealed how actor Dick Mayhew might have been aided by a deceased escapologist when he played the starring role in the magician’s bio-picâ€¦

‘The Dark Goddess of Doom’ drawn by Calnan, revealed how a statue of Kali dealt with the ruthless collector who stole her, after which the anonymously authored ‘Station G.H.O.S.T.’ (limned by Moreira from HoM #17, August 1953) disclosed how a man’s scheme to corruptly purchase a house haunted by his ancestor went weirdly awry.

Tuska drew the saga of a WWII pilot who crashed into a desert nightmare and fatefully met a ‘Legion of the Dead’, whilst after a reprinted fact file on ‘Ghostly Miners’, Jerry Grandenetti depicted the story of a French landowner who unwisely disturbed a burial ground and met ‘The Screaming Skulls’â€¦

Ghosts #4 began with the secret history of one of America’s most infamous killers in ‘The Crimson Claw’ (Tuska & cover artist Nick Cardy) before ‘The Ghostly Cities of Gold’ (Grandenetti) revealed the truth about fabled, haunted Cibola and the first reprint featured ‘The Man Who Killed his Shadow’ (Miller, Swan & Burnley, HoM #16, July 1953) wherein a murdered photographer reached from beyond the grave for justice.

Thereafter Ernie Chan drew ‘The Fanged Spectres of Kinshoro’ with a Big Game hunter pitting 20^th century rationality against an ancient Ju-Ju threat, whilst the superb team of Bob Haney, Ramona Fradon & Charles Paris had a chance to shine again with ‘The Legend of the Black Swan’ (HoM #48, March 1956) wherein three sceptical American students in Spain have an eerie encounter with doomed 17^th century sailors. This issue then concluded on ‘The Threshold of Nightmare House’ with Calnan & Grandenetti illustrating the inevitable doom of a woman who was haunted by her own ghostâ€¦

During the invasion of China in 1939 a greedy Japanese warlord met his fate – and the spirits of the Mongol warriors whose tomb he robbed. Issue #5’s lead tale ‘Death, the Pale Horseman’ (by Dorfman & Art Saaf) was followed by ‘The Hands from the Grave’ (Calnan) which somehow saved a young tourist from an early death, after which reprint ‘The Telltale Mirror’ (by an unknown author & Grandenetti from HoM #13, April 1953) showed the dread downside of owning a looking glass that reflected the futureâ€¦

Original yarn ‘Caravan of Doom’ (Jack Sparling), which told of an uncanny African warrior aiding enslaved Tommies in WWI Tanganyika, was balanced by the uncredited reprint ‘The Phantom of the Fog’ (illustrated by Moreira, from HoM #123, June 1962) wherein valiant rebels overthrow a petty dictator with the apparent aid of an oceanic apparition, before Grandenetti’s ‘The Hearse Came at Midnight’ ended the issue with spoiled college frat boys learning an horrific lesson about hazing and initiation ritesâ€¦

With Ghosts #6 the page count dropped from 52 to 32 pages and the reprint stories were curtailed in favour of all-new material. Proceedings began with Dorfman & Saaf’s cautionary tale of an avaricious arcane apothecary when ‘A Specter Poured the Potion’ before ‘Ride with the Devil’ (Calnan) told of a most unexpected lift for an unwary hitchhiker whilst ‘Death Awaits Me’ (Grandenetti) revealed the eerie premonition that marked the bizarre death of dancer Isadora Duncan.

A rare DC outing for mercurial comics genius Richard E. Hughes closed this slimline edition with ‘Ghost Cargo from the Sky’, illustrated by Sparling and exposing the incredible power of wishing to Pacific Islanders in the aftermath of WWII.

Michael William Kaluta stood in for Cardy as cover artist for #7 but Dorfman remained as writer, beginning with ‘Death’s Finger Points‘ (Sparling art) as a bullying Australian sheep farmer fell foul of the aborigines he’d abused, whilst President in waiting Lyndon B. Johnson was only the latest VIP to learn the cost of ignoring a Fakir’s warning in the Saaf-illustrated ‘Touch not my Tomb’. Calnan then closed things out with ‘The Sweet Smile of Death’ in a doomed romance between a 20^th century photographer and a flighty Regency phantom who refused to let this last admirer goâ€¦

‘The Cadaver in the Clock’ (art by Buddy Gernale) opened Ghosts #8, as a succession of heirs learned the downside of an inheritance which perforce included a mummified corpse inside a grand chronometer, but Glanzman’s ‘The Guns of the Dead’ showed a far more beneficial side to spectres when US marines were saved by their deceased yet unstoppable sergeant in 1944. ‘Hotline to the Supernatural’, lovingly limned by the wonderful Nestor Redondo, recounted numerous cases of supernatural premonition, whilst ‘To Kill a Tyrant’ (Quico Redondo) implausibly linked the incredible last hours of Rasputin to the so-necessary death of Stalin decades laterâ€¦

Issue #9 begins with Calnan’s ‘The Curse of the Phantom Prophet’ as an Indian holy man continued his war against the insolent British and rapacious white men long after his death by firing squad, ‘The Last Ride of Rosie the Wrecker’ (gloriously illustrated by Alfredo Alcala) detailed the indomitable determination of a destroyed US tank that shouldn’t have been able to move at all, and Grandenetti’s ‘The Spectral Shepherd of Dartmoor’ showed how a long-dead repentant convict still aided the weak and imperilled in modern Britain. Events end on an eerie note when vacationers see horrific apparitions but discover that ‘The Phantom that Never Was’ has created a real ghost out of a hoax disaster in a genuine chiller drawn by Bob Brown & Frank McLaughlin.

Fact page ‘Experimenters Beyond the Grave’ by Dorfman & Win Mortimer details the attempts of Harry Houdini, Mackenzie King and Aldous Huxley to send messages from the vale of shades before the storytelling resumes in #10 with the Gerry Talaoc/Redondo Studio illustrated tale of a Vietnamese Harbinger of Doom in ‘A Specter Stalks Saigon’. Increasingly a host of superb Filipino artists would take on the art chores for the ubiquitous Dorfman’s scripts such as ‘The Ghost of Wandsgate Gallows’ by Chan, which detailed the inevitable fate of an English noble who hired and then betrayed a contract killer. Although naval savant Sam Glanzman could be the only choice for the US maritime mystery ‘Death Came at Dawn’, Nestor Malgapo artfully handled the horrific saga of ‘The Hell Beast of Berkeley Square’ which for decades slaughtered guilty and innocents alike in prosperousMayfairâ€¦

Ghosts #11 opened with Eufronio Reyes (E.R.) Cruz’s contemporary thriller wherein Nazi war criminals recovering long hidden loot finally paid for their foul crimes in ‘The Devil’s Lake’, before Chan delineated a subway journey where the ‘Next Stop is Nowhere’.

Past master Grandenetti visually captured ‘The Specter Who Stalked Cellblock 13’ of San Quentin, and Bob Brown returned to illustrate the story of a church organ which killed anyone who played it in ‘The Instrument of Death’, before Jack Sparling charted the sinister coincidences of ‘The Death Circle’ which dictated that every US President elected in a year ending in zero has died in office.

Of course not everyone today is happy that the myth has been debunkedâ€¦

Ghosts #12 featured ‘The Macabre Mummy of Takhem-Ahtem’ (Calnan art) which was more a traditional monster-mash than purportedly true report, after which ‘Chimes for a Corpse’ (Grandenetti) saw a German watchmaker die for his malicious treatment of an apprentice before the always amazing Glanzman-limned ‘Beyond the Portal of the Unknown’ closed proceedings in magnificent style when French soldiers in 1915 uncover a terrible tomb and unleash a centuries old vendetta of vengeanceâ€¦

Dorfman & Brown opened issue #13 with ‘The Nightmare in the Sandbox’, which detailed a war of voodoo practitioners carried out in Haitian garden, whilst ‘Voice of Vengeance’ (Calnan) depicted the macabre vengeance of marionettes on the embezzling official who silenced their maker. ‘Have Tomb, Will Travel’ (Talaoc) sees contract killers who used a scrap yard to lose their latest corpse discover their brand new car comes with his unquiet spirit as an angry extra before Nestor Redondo depicts the inexplicable experience of two lost GIs who spend a night in a castle that isn’t there and endure ‘Hell is One Mile High’â€¦

In #14 an heirloom wedding dress that came with a curse didn’t stop Diane Chapman from marrying her young man in Gernale’s ‘The Bride Wore a Shroud’, whilst ‘Death Weaves a Web’ (by George Kashdan & Chan) found a bullying uncle live to regret destroying his little nephew’s spider collection – but not for longâ€¦

‘Phantom of the Iron Horseman’ (Talaoc) saw a young train driver and a host of passengers saved from disaster by the spirit of his disgraced grandfather and the issue ends with a catalogue of global portents that warned of the appalling Aberfan tragedy in 1966 in Cruz’s ‘The Dark Dream of Death’.

Gernale opened #15 with ‘The Ghost that Wouldn’t Die’, another case of domestic gold-digging, ectoplasmic doppelgangers and living ghosts, whilst ‘A Phantom in the Alamo’ (Carl Wessler & Glanzman) revealed the ghastly fate of the American who sold out the valiant defenders to the Mexican invaders. Alcala lent his prodigious gifts to the Balkan tale of a corpse collector who abandoned morality and began profiteering from his sacred trust in ‘Who Dares Cheat the Dead?’ and Rico Rival delineated a gripping yarn wherein a corrupt surgeon was haunted by the hit-and-run victim he’d silenced in ‘Hand from the Grave’.

Ghosts #16 told of a Spanish gypsy cursed to see ‘Death’s Grinning Face’ whenever someone was going to die in a stirring thriller from Rival, and Glanzman again displayed his uncanny knack for capturing shipboard life – and death – when after 25 years a deserter finally joins his dead comrades in ‘The Mothball Ghost’. Talaoc then delineated Napoleon Bonaparte’s services to France after the Little Corporal died and became ‘The Haunted Hero of St. Helena’â€¦

Issue #17 saw a phantom lady save flood-lost children in Dorfman & Alcala’s moving ‘Death Held the Lantern High’ after which editor Murray Boltinoff & Talaoc revealed ‘The Specters Were the Stars’ when a film company tried to capture the horror of the 1920 Ulster Uprising before Kashdan & Calnan exposed the seductive lure and inescapable power of gypsies using ‘The Devil’s Ouija’ to combat centuries of prejudiceâ€¦

This first terrifying tome terminates with Ghosts #18 and Alcala’s account of a hateful Delaware medicine chief who still lured white men to his watery ‘Graveyard of Vengeance’ centuries after his death, whilst Abe Ocampo detailed the surprising ‘Death of a Ghost’ at the hands of an very smug inventor who had just moved into a haunted mansion.

Frank Redondo described how villagers in old Austria knew young Adolf would come to a bad end because the boy had ‘The Eye of Evil’ and the spookiness at last ceases with ‘Death Came Creeping’ by Ernesto Patricio & Talaoc when a visiting Egyptian merchant and his unique pet stop an American sneak thief’s predations in an age-old mannerâ€¦

These terror-tales captivated the reading public and critics alike when they first appeared and it’s almost certain that they saved DC during one of the toughest downturns in comics publishing history. Now their blend of sinister mirth, classic horror scenarios and suspense set-pieces can most familiarly be seen in such children’s series as Goosebumps, Horrible Histories and their many imitators.

Everybody loves a good healthy scare – especially today or even on those dark Christmas nights to come – and this beautiful gathering of ethereal escapism is a treat fans of fear and fantastic art should readily take to their cold, unbeating hearts.
Â© 1971, 1972, 1973, 2011 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

September 26, 2012September 25, 2012

American Vampire Book 1

By Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque & Stephen King (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-0-85768-032-7

Here’s another welcome and long-past-due remedy to the scarlet deluge of lovey-dovey, kissey-poo tales of forbidden love between innocent modern maids and moody, tragic carriers of the Curse of the Night’s Children, and one that uses for its themes Darwinian Survival of the Fittest, old-fashioned Revenge and the ultimate grisly example of Manifest Destiny; all played out against the chillingly familiar backdrop of the bloody birth of a modern nationâ€¦

In Scott Snyder & Rafael Albuquerque’s stellar first narrative arc, augmented and supplemented here by a stunning sidebar storyline from the functionally mythical Stephen King, the kind of vampires that you should rightly beware of are introduced and explained, but although there are love stories in this series they’re probably not the sort you want your impressionable kids to readâ€¦

The sinister suspense begins with Snyder & Albuquerque’s ‘Big Break’ as, in the Hollywood of 1925, struggling but popular and ambitious would-be starlets Pearl Jones and Hattie Hargrove followed their dream of celluloid stardom working days as bit-players in movie mogul D. B. Bloch’s latest silent epic.

The girls had only been best friends for a short while but shared hardship had made them closer than sisters, even if, too often, Pearlwas distracted by itinerant musician Henry Preston and the aggravatingly persistent and obnoxious drifter who hung out near their Ladies-Only boarding house.

The actresses’ careers seemed destined to blossom when leading man Chase Hamilton invited the fame-hungry girls to one of Bloch’s legendary Producer’s parties. Despite shaded warnings from their laconic stalker,Pearl and Hattie attended but when the unctuous Chase took the Jones girl aside to meet D. B. it wasn’t for the kind of assignation she expected.

Reeling with horror the feisty actress found herself a morsel and kickback offering for a pack of wealthy European money-men who were also literal blood-sucking monstersâ€¦

King & Albuquerque then take us back to the hoary days of 1880 and Sidewinder, Colorado, as author Will Bunting relates the true story behind his novel ‘Bad Blood’ to a group of eager fans and historiansâ€¦

The ancient scribbler recounts the fantastic but apparently non-fictional tale of outlaw Skinner Sweet, a remorseless thief frustrating progress, killing good folks and stealing funds from sun-shy, Euro-trash millionaire railroad speculator Mr. Percy. When the psychotic bandit was finally captured by Pinkerton agent Jim Book and his deputy Felix Camillo, the triumphant banker laid on a special train and a gaggle of journalists to record the victory of civilisation over lawlessnessâ€¦

As the killer’s gang subsequently derailed the train and massacred everybody who survived the crash Skinner cruelly and casually took time out to reveal how he had killed Book’s wife â€¦

Sweet then gunned down Book and overwhelmed Camillo, but was utterly unprepared for the attack of the effete-seeming Percy who shrugged off the gang’s fusillade of bullets before slaughtering them all. Skinner didn’t die easily though, and in close combat with the fanged, gore-guzzling horror blew the European monstrosity’s eye out, consequently taking its blood into his own body before at last expiringâ€¦

Unknown to all, Bunting had seen everything and, as the fully-healed Percy tended to Book and Camillo, wisely decided to say nothing of the horror he’d witnessedâ€¦

The Hollywood story resumes with ‘Morning Star’ as Hattie and Henry discoveredPearl was missing. Driving to the isolated mansion they found her; ravaged, chewed to ribbons as if by some animal yet inexplicably clinging to life.

Pearlawoke in the Morgue, having been visited by her mysterious stalker. Skinner Sweet had shared his unique blood with her and now, as the once-deceased actress listened in astonishment, the smirking ghoul explained some facts of life – and death – to her.

Like himself she had been attacked by ancient, old-world vampires, but by sharing their blood – accidentally in his case but quite deliberately when Sweet bestowed his own kiss upon her – Pearl had become a new form of hybrid-bloodsucker, perfectly evolved to inhabit the New World, with completely different weaknesses to the old guard and, hopefully, sharing Sweet’s lust for revenge, taste for chaos and hunger for lifeâ€¦

After giving her a quick lesson on the differences between the European nosferatu who have carved themselves an almost unassailable position of closeted wealth and power in the young nation and the new American Vampires (now numbering two), the morally bankrupt wanderer then took off, leaving his hungry new offspring to sink, swim or stand on her own shape-shifting, taloned feetâ€¦

He did leave a present though: locked in her closet, Chase Hamilton quickly realised he was about to pay for all his many sinsâ€¦

‘Deep Water’ saw author Will Bunting also in 1925, talking about the re-issue of his fantastic novel to a store full of avid fans. The tale, which described the iconic life of heroic Jim Book and his battle against vampire outlaw Skinner Sweet, resumed at the point when the infected owlhoot woke up in his own grave. Far above him the cabal of expatriate vampires secretly dominatingAmerica’s nascent financial system continued accruing wealth and power and insouciantly turned the entire town ofSidewinder intoColorado’s latest reservoir and boating lakeâ€¦

For nearly thirty years Book continued with his peacekeeping profession and eventually Camillo became Mayor of the new town of Lakeview. Bunting had turned the tale of Sweet and the vampires into a popular dime-novel and sensation-seekers and treasure-hunters were regularly dredging the man-made mere for souvenirs of the infamous outlaw.

One day in 1909 a couple of them unearthed the now legendary bad-man’s buried, sunken coffin and unleashed a rabid horror unlike anything ever seen in the world before: a leech unaffected by running water, stakes or sunlight. Hungry for revenge and sustenance Skinner Sweet emerged into a newAmericaand began hunting old â€œfriendsâ€ he owed a debt toâ€¦

In TinselTownmeanwhile, Pearlhad returned to her lodgings and told the shell-shocked Hattie to flee before continuing her own quest for vengeance in ‘Rough Cut’. The immortal Euro-cabal were, as usual, discussing what to do about their personal nemesis Sweet and his protracted annoyance, unaware that they had a far more pressing problem. That all changed after the unstoppable and infinitely superior Pearl slaughtered three of them. Without knowing what could kill this new world species of vampire, the clique resorted to age-old stratagems even as Miss Jones – resuming mortal form – turned to Henry for a little comfort and supportâ€¦

Just then the phone rang and Bloch demanded that she surrender herself or Hattie would die horriblyâ€¦

Back in 1909 Sweet’s ‘Blood Vengeance’ eliminated every human in Lakeview and proclaimed his intentions to a horrified coterie of arrogant old-world bloodsuckers who had previously believed themselves the planet’s apex predators. Even so, the resurgent outlaw had more pressing business. Before the last man in town died, Sweet made him send a telegram to Jim Bookâ€¦

‘Double Exposure’ found Pearl desperately negotiating for Hattie’s life, knowing surrender would lead her to becoming the cabal’s eternal, experimental lab rat but utterly unaware that she had already been betrayed by someone close to her who was pitifully greedy and unable to resist the subtle pressures and obvious blandishments of the European ancients.

However even bushwhacked, mysteriously weakened and brutally assaulted, Pearl, with the aid of her last true friend, managed to turn the tables and even destroy Bloch’s fortress before escaping to prepare for one last showdownâ€¦

The writer’s tale was also approaching a climax as ‘One Drop of Blood’ found Book, Felix, the young Bunting and Camillo’s daughter Abilena hunting Sweet in the hellish ruins of Lakeview just as the bloodthirsty travesty discovered that his powers and energies were unaccountably waning. Watching unsuspected from a distant position of seclusion, the â€œEuro-Vampsâ€ bided their time and saw the shocking finale as the valiant comrades used dynamite to bury the debilitated devil in a deep mine-shaft under tons of unyielding rock – but not before the sadistic Skinner had deliberately infected Book with his own tainted, mutagenic bloodâ€¦

Pearl’s story in this first stunning volume concludes in a sustained spray of scarlet gore as she climactically confronts Bloch and his surviving comrades only to face one final tragic betrayal in ‘Curtain Call’ whilst ‘If Thy Right Hand Offend Theeâ€¦‘ discloses Jim Book’s last desperate battle against the cursed thirst Sweet had inflicted upon him, even as the unstoppable Skinner enjoyed one last chat with the Euro-leech who created himâ€¦

The time-distanced yet parallel tales then coincide and conclude with a hint of foreboding; presaging more horrors in the days and decades to comeâ€¦

This initial creepy, compelling chronicle also includes a pithy Afterword from Snyder, a welter of variant covers by Albuquerque, Jim Lee, Bernie Wrightson, Andy Kubert, JH Williams III and Paul Pope, a feature on the script-to-art process and 6 pages of designs and sketches by the supremely skilled and multi-faceted Albuquerque to delight and impress all fans of truly mature supernatural thrills and chills.

Far more True Blood than Twilight and substantially closer to Sam Peckinpah than John Ford or Tod Browning, this lightning-paced, sardonic and gory excursion into blood and sand and love and death is a spectacular and absorbing riot by two of the industry’s best and new talents, backed up and covered by an absolute master of tone and terror, combining to craft a splendid, sordid, sexy and utterly spellbinding saga, riddled with far deeper metaphors than â€œunrequited love sucksâ€.

American Vampire offers solid screams and enchantingly fresh ideas that all fear-fiends will find irresistible making this book an absolute â€œmust-haveâ€ and a certain reminder that there are such things as monsters and some beasts just should not be tamedâ€¦
Â© 2010, Scott Snyder and Stephen King.Â All Rights Reserved.

August 2, 2012July 31, 2012

Video Clips

By Liberatore & various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-015-4
(1985) ISBN-10: 0874160154 Dimensions: 8.5 x 0.2 x 11 inches

Italian arts superstar Gaetano â€œTaninoâ€ Liberatore was born in 1953 in Quadri in the province of Chieti. He went to school in Pescara and studied architecture at the University of Rome before moving into the world of work as an advertising illustrator in 1975.

He first met iconoclastic writer, artist and publisher Stefano Tamburini in 1978 and with strident activist cartoonist Andrea Pazienza, they created ‘Rankxerox’ for the magazine Cannibale. The character evolved and moved to Il Male and eventually Frigidaire, fully realised now as the RanXerox we know today.

Liberatore was rapidly developing as both artist and writer, with strips ‘Bordello’ and ‘Client’ appearing in Il Male, but when the new, Tamburini-scripted syndicated RanXerox became a star of French magazine L’Ã‰cho des Savanes in 1981, Tanino moved to Paris and began working simultaneously on short complete tales for the more prestigious Gallic market in such magazines as Tranfert, MÃ©tal Hurlant, Ã€ Suivre and Chic. A shocking hit in the US Heavy Metal magazine, RanXerox then led to Liberatore jumping the pond and producing material for Twisted Tales and men’s magazine Hustler.

Some of those aforementioned short fiction pieces comprise the contents of this bleakly disturbing, ultra-violent yet oddly philosophical exploration of the consuming effects of media and fashion.

When his great collaborator Tamburini died in 1986, Liberatore quit comics for nearly a decade. Returning to straight commercial illustration, he worked in movies and designed book and record covers. Eventually, comics captured his attention again, and he produced two new RanXerox tales in 1993 and 1996 (with Jean-Luc Fromental and Alain Chabat), and a piece in Batman Black and White, assorted covers, and illustrated Pierre Pelot and Yves Coppens’s mass-market paperback ‘Le RÃªve de Lucy’. As the Nineties closed, he finally came storming back in stunning style with the brilliant, award-winning Lucy L’Espoir in 2007, in which he and writer Patrick Norbert freely adapted a life-story for the famous prehistoric humanoid Australopithecus Afarensis remains found by anthropologists Coppens, Donald Johanson and Maurice Taieb.

Still available but desperately in need of a modern re-release, Video Clips gathers seven short, sweet and sour, vitriolic, challenging thrillers by the stylishly abrasive young Liberatore beginning with the self-authored ‘Real Vision’ in which a young celebrity-fuelled punk commits atrocious acts of violence on a mother and child simply to commit â€œsuicide by televisionâ€ after which the Tamburini-penned ‘Earth versus Saturn’ turns a wickedly sardonic eye on movie mania as a scout party for invading aliens picks the wrong bar to begin their fact finding mission. Of course, it would have helped if they hadn’t used thirties movies stars as templates for their temporary Earth-bodiesâ€¦

He also scripted ‘E.M.P.S.: Erotic Management for People’s Socialism’ – an outrageous spoof of psychology, political correctness and sexual repression in a hilarious and shocking science fiction setting, whilst the deeply disturbing ‘Shut-In’ by Bruce Jones might be familiar to older American readers as it first appeared in Twisted Tales #7, detailing the saucy, savage hidden hi-jinks of a babysitter and her abusive jock boyfriend as they mischievously tend to a stroke-paralysed senior citizen one night – and of course there’s a superb sting in this taleâ€¦

‘Bololy Folly’ is another Tamburini psycho-thriller as the latest technology to tame â€œwild chromosomesâ€ and bad behaviour cataclysmically comes a-cropper on live television whilst ‘Watch Out for Hot Flashes’ – scripted by the enigmatic G. Setbon – offers a more traditional tale as the world’s greatest fashion model offers an exclusive chance to the photographers who made her famous. Sadly she’s the one doing the shooting but her murderous motives simply defy all logicâ€¦

This powerfully compelling collection ends with another Tamburini tale as ‘Tiamotti’ describes the trials of three bomb-making anarchists as they try to defeat a security system which can read their minds and deliver a fusillade of withering gunfire in the blink of an eyeâ€¦

Crafted in a range of palettes from tension-wracked monochrome line-art to tantalising tonal washes, and even including three lush full-colour paint jobs, this sexy, severe and staggeringly violent tome is a superb introduction to the graphic genius and brutal worlds of Liberatore: places no adult fan of sequential narrative can see without being changed foreverâ€¦
Art Â© 1985 Gaetano Liberatore. All stories Â© 1985 their respective authors. English language edition Â© 1985 Catalan Communications, All rights reserved.

July 14, 2012July 13, 2012

Hellboy Junior

By Mike Mignola, Bill Wray, Stephen DeStefano, Dave Cooper, Hilary Barta, Pat McEown, Glenn Barr, Kevin Nowlan, Dave Stewart & John Costanza (Dark Horse)
ISBN: 978-1569719886

Although probably best known for revitalising the sub-genre of horror-heroes via his superb Hellboy and B.P.R.D. tales, creator Mike Mignola conceals a dark and largely unsuspected secret: he has a very dry, outlandish and wicked sense of humourâ€¦

Since 1997, whenever nobody was looking, he and co-conspirator Bill Wray have concocted outrageous, uproarious and vulgarly hilarious spoof tales which might – but probably weren’t – untold yarns of the scarlet scallywag’s formative days in hell before being drawn to earth and reared as a champion of humanity against the Things of the Outer Darknessâ€¦

Moreover, they convinced those gullible fools at Dark Horse Comics to publish them, first in the Hellboy Junior Halloween Special and again in an eponymous 2-issue miniseries in 1999 which also included many scurrilous and hilarious spoofs, pastiches and pokes at a host of family-friendly favourites from parental favourite Harvey Comics: beloved icons such as Casper, Wendy the Good Little Witch, Stumbo the Giant, Baby Huey and Hot Stuff, the Little Devil…

With most of the material scripted by Wray, this appallingly rude, crude and unmissable compilation bolts all the material together and even springs for an all new feature, but begins with Bill & Mike’s painfully cruel ‘The Creation of Hellboy Jr.: a Short Origin Story’ before tucking into ‘Maggots, Maggots, Everywhere!’, an all-Wray buffet of gastric ghastliness wherein the stone-fisted imp, fed up with his meagre ration of icky bug-babies, goes looking for something better to eat. Perhaps he shouldn’t have taken restaurant advice from that sneaky Adolf Hitler, whose rancid soul Junior should have been tormenting anywayâ€¦

After that epic-monster-infested odyssey, Mignola illustrates a mordant and wry adaptation of a German folk tale in ‘The Devil Don’t Smoke’ before Stephen DeStefano outrageously illustrates the agonisingly hilarious ‘Huge Retarded Duck’ and Hilary Barta lends his stylish faux-Wally Wood pastichery to ‘The Ginger Beef Boy’, wherein a frustrated transvestite creates the son he yearned for from the ingredients of a Chinese mealâ€¦

Following a stunning pin-up by Kevin Nowlan, Dave Cooper draws ‘Hellboy Jr.’s Magical Mushroom Trip’ wherein the ever-hungry imp and his pet ant disastrously attempt to grow their own edible fungus only to end up in deep shiitake when their psychotropic crop brings them into conflict with the big boss. Fans of evil dictators might welcome the guest appearance by Idi Aminâ€¦

Implausibly based on a true story, Wray & Mignolas’s ‘Squid of Man’ details the Grim Reaper’s wager with a mad scientist endeavouring to birth a new Atlantean race from the freshly dead remnants of cephalopods, arthropods, crustaceans, fine twine and lightning, whilst ‘The Wolvertons’ details the life and loves of an Alaskan lumberjack, his multi-tentacular alien wife and their extraordinarily hybrid kids Brad and Tiffany. Wray and Pat McEown spared no effort in their passionate tribute to Basil Wolverton, cartoon king of the Grotesque, so read this story before eatingâ€¦

Back in Hell, Jr. regretfully experienced ‘The House of Candy Pain’ (Wray, Barta, John Costanza & Dave Stewart), when he and fellow imp Donnie fled to Storyland and the Forbidden Forest of Festible Dwellings. They should have stuck with the shack made from steaks or Tofu Terrace, but no, they had to enter the Gingerbread Houseâ€¦

Following a Barta bonus pin-up, Wray does it all for the tragic tale of ‘Sparky Bear’; a cub torn from his natural environment and raised by humans as a fire-prevention spokesperson, whilst the Cooper-limned parable of ‘Somnambo the Sleeping Giant’ proves that even if your village is overrun with demons, sometimes the cure is worse than the affliction, an idea echoed in the tale of ‘Wheezy, the Sick Little Witch’ (art by DeStefano) a poorly tyke whose cute li’l animal friends could neither cure nor survive contact withâ€¦

After surviving a nasty fast-food experience in ‘Hitler’ and a mock ad for your very own Spear of Destiny, the all-new ‘Hellboy Jr. vs Hitler’ (Wray & Stewart) depicts how a the little devil couldn’t even escort the Fallen FÃ¼hrer to the depths of Lower Hell without screwing up and giving the mono-testicular reprobate another chance to resurrect his Reich and, after a painted Wray Halloween scene and saucy Hell’s hot-tub pin-up from Glenn Barr, the mirthful madness concludes with Mignola & Stewart’s ‘Hellboy Jr. Gets a Car’ wherein the Hadean Half-pint takes an illicit test drive in a roadster meant for a Duke of Hell. It does not end wellâ€¦

This Chymeric chronicle also includes a ‘Hellboy Junior Sketchbook’ with working drawings, colour roughs and layouts by Wray, McEown & DeStefano, to top off a wildly exuberant burst of tongue-in-cheek, sardonic and surreal adult fun which is a jovially jocund and gut-bustingly gross gas for every lover of off-the-wall, near-the-knuckle fun.
Hellboy Jr. â„¢ and Â© Mike Mignola. All individual strips, art & stories Â© 1997, 1999, 2003 their individual creator or holder. All rights reserved.

July 9, 2012July 8, 2012

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

By Bram Stoker & Fernando FernÃ¡ndez (Catalan Communications/Del Rey Books)
DLB: 18118-1984 (Catalan) Â Â ISBN: 978-0-34548-312-6 (Del Rey)

Multi-disciplinary Spanish artist Fernando FernÃ¡ndez began working to help support his family at age 13 whilst still at High School. He graduated in 1956 and immediately began working for British and French comics publishers. In 1958 his family relocated to Argentina and whilst there he added strips for El GorriÃ³n, TÃ³tem and PuÃ±o Fuerte to his ongoing European and British assignments for Valentina, Roxy and Marilyn.

In 1959 he returned to Spain and began a long association with Fleetway Publications in London, producing mostly war and girls’ romance stories.

During the mid-1960’s he began to experiment with painting and began selling book covers and illustrations to a number of clients, before again taking up comics work in 1970, creating a variety of strips (many of which found their way into US horror magazine Vampirella), the successful comedy feature ‘Mosca’ for Diario de Barcelona and educational strips for the publishing house Afha.

Becoming increasingly experimental as the decade passed, FernÃ¡ndez produced ‘Cuba, 1898’ and ‘CÃrculos’ before in 1980 beginning his science fiction spectacular ‘Zora y los Hibernautas’ for the Spanish iteration of fantasy magazine 1984 which was eventually seen in English in Heavy Metal magazine as ‘Zora and the Hibernauts’.

He then adapted this moody, Hammer Films-influenced version of Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the Spanish iteration of Creepy, before (working with Carlos Trillo) moving on to mediaeval fantasy thriller ‘La Leyenda de las Cuatro Sombras’, after which he created ‘ArgÃ³n, el Salvaje’ and a number of adaptations of Isaac Asimov tales in ‘Firmado por: Isaac Asimov’ and ‘Lucky Starr – Los OcÃ©anos de Venus’.

His last comics work was ‘ZodÃaco’ begun in 1989, but his increasing heart problems soon curtailed the series and he returned to painting and illustration. He passed away in August 2010, aged 70.

For his interpretation of the gothic masterpiece under review here, FernÃ¡ndez sidelined the expansive, experimental layouts and lavish page design that worked so effectively in Zora and the Hibernauts for a moodily classical and oppressively claustrophobic, traditional page construction, trusting to his staggering mastery of colour and form to carry his luxuriously mesmeric message of mystery, seduction and terror.

The story is undoubtedly a familiar one and the set pieces are all executed with astounding skill and confident aplomb as in May 1897 English lawyer Jonathan Harker was lured to the wilds of Transylvania and horror beyond imagining as an ancient bloodsucking horror prepared to move to the pulsing heart of the modern world.

Leaving Harker to the tender mercies of his vampiric harem, Dracula travelled by schooner to England, slaughtering every seaman aboard the S.S. Demeter and unleashing a reign of terror on the sedate and complacent British countrysideâ€¦

Meanwhile, in the seat of Empire, Harker’s fiancÃ©e Mina Murray found her flighty friend Lucy Westenra fading from troublesome dreams and an uncanny lethargy which none of her determined suitors, Dr. Jack Seward, Texan Quincy P. Morris and Arthur Holmwood, the future Lord Godalming, seemed capable of dispellingâ€¦

As Harker strove to survive lost in the Carpathians, in Britain, Seward’s deranged but impotent patient Renfield began to claim horrifying visions and became greatly agitatedâ€¦

Dracula, although only freshly arrived in England, was already causing chaos and disaster, as well as constantly returning to the rapidly declining Lucy. His bestial bloodletting prompted her three beaux to summon famed Dutch physician Abraham Van Helsing to save her life and cure her increasing mania.

Harker survived his Transylvanian ordeal, and when nuns summoned Mina she rushed to Romania where she married him in a hasty ceremony to save his health and witsâ€¦.

In London, Dracula renewed his assaults and Lucy died, only to be reborn as a predatory child-killing monster. After dispatching her to eternal rest, Van Helsing, Holmwood, Seward and Morris, joined by the recently returned and much altered Harker and his new bride, determined to hunt down and destroy the ancient evil in their midst after a chance encounter in a London street between the newlyweds and the astoundingly rejuvenated Countâ€¦

Dracula however, had incredible forces and centuries of experience on his side and tainted Mina with his blood-drinking curse, before fleeing back to his ancestral lands. Frantically the mortal champions gave chase, battling the elements, Dracula’s enslaved gypsy army and the monster’s horrific eldritch power in a race against time lest Mina finally succumb forever to his unholy influenceâ€¦

Although the translation to English in the Catalan version is a little slapdash in places – a fact happily addressed in the 2005 re-release from Del Rey – the original does have the subtly enhanced benefit of richer colours, sturdier paper stock and a slightly larger page size (285 x 219mm as opposed to 274 x 211mm) which somehow makes the 1984 edition feel more substantial.

This breathtaking oft-retold yarn delivers fast paced, action-packed, staggeringly beautiful and astoundingly exciting thrills and chills in a most beguiling manner. Being Spanish, however, there’s perhaps the slightest hint of brooding machismo, if not subverted sexism, on display and – of course – there’s plenty of heaving, gauze-filtered female nudity which might challenge modern sensibilities, but what predominates in this Dracula is an overwhelming impression of unstoppable evil and impending doom.

There’s no sympathy for the devil here – this is a monster from Hell that all good men must oppose to their last breath and final drop of blood and sweatâ€¦

With an emphatic introduction (‘Dracula Lives!’) from noted comics historian Maurice Horn, this is a sublime treatment by a master craftsman that all dark-fearing, red- blooded fans will want to track down and savour.
Â© 1984, 2005 Fernando FernÃ¡ndez. All rights reserved.

July 5, 2012July 4, 2012

Dark Hunger

By Christine Feehan, adapted by Dana Kurtin, illustrated by Zid & Imaginary Friends Studios (Berkley)
ISBN: 978-0-42521-783-2

Hard though it might be for us to imagine, there are people who go months at a time – even longer in rare cases – without reading a comicbook or graphic novel. Unbelievably these sad unfortunates derive their regular fun-fixes from other forms of entertainment such as TV, movies or even prose stories, so it’s just as well that every so often a brave creator from that side of the tracks makes moves to cross-pollinate by turning their favoured medium of creative expression into something we panel-pushers are more at home with.

Christine Feehan is an extraordinarily prolific and successful author of romantic fantasies and paranormal thrillers. Since 1999 she has produced a wealth of novels, novellas and short-stories, many of them for five distinct series which – like the book under review here – often interact with each other.

Her â€œCarpathianâ€ novels deal with a savage but noble subspecies of vampire who eschew killing their human â€œblood donorsâ€ and hunt their murderously traditional cousins, determined to eradicate the monstrous horrors to extinction.

Amongst their many gifts are virtual immortality, shape-shifting, telepathy, flight, fantastic strength and speed and the power to manipulate lightning, but like all their kind they cannot abide sunlightâ€¦

Carpathians are an endangered species with few females, and if a male cannot find a â€œlifemateâ€ he gradually withers; first losing the ability to see colour and experience emotion. Eventually all he can feel is the thrill of killing and he turns into a full, ravening undead vampire or commits suicide by â€œgreeting the dawnâ€â€¦

This intriguing manga-style tome from 2007 adapts the 14^th Carpathian yarn and originally appeared as a text tale in the anthology Hot Blooded in 2004, describing how dedicated animal rights activist Juliette Sangria meets her ideal man whilst raiding a hidden testing facility deep in the heart of the jungleâ€¦

With her younger sister Jasmine, Juliette raids the high-security Morrison Laboratory intent on releasing the many endangered big cats held there, but the pair have no idea what other horrors the lab perpetrates until Juliette discovers a beautiful, exotic man chained in a cellâ€¦

Riordan De La Cruz has been a long-suffering prisoner of vampire and human scientists who run the lab, poisoned, tortured and humiliated until he considered ending his own immortal life. However, when the woman touches him he feels a burst of power and emotion. Viewing colours for the first time in ages, the Carpathian realises that somehow he has found his one and only: his lifemateâ€¦

In a fit of passion, he bites her and, refuelled by her blood, destroys the facilityâ€¦

With Jasmine apparently still insideâ€¦

Flown to safety in his arms, Juliette’s heart and mind are reeling with the intensity of the inexplicable passion she feels for this sublime stranger, but as the night passes and Riordan explains his history, nature and powers she realises his absurd assessment is true; they are bonded for everâ€¦

With the vampires in hot pursuit the couple flee and, of necessity, Riordan feeds on her again, before, to restore his beloved, sharing his own invigorating blood with her. However Juliette has a fantastic secret of her own and when Riordan burrows into the Earth at dawn she reverts to her animal form to search for her lost sister.

Juliette is a Were-Jaguar and her people do not marry. Their males are cruel brutes who beat and force themselves upon were-females they capture. Propagation is usually by rape and with Jasmine and her cousin Solange unaccounted for, Juliette is terribly worried. Whilst the physically comatose Riordan speaks to her telepathically, Juliette searches all day and when he comes to her at night they discover a partially destroyed hut where Were-women were recently heldâ€¦

The trails lead in different directions and male Jaguar tracks are everywhere, but as they ponder how to proceed a Master Vampire attacks and Riordan is severely hurt driving it off. Giving her blood to save him, Juliette is aware that she is changing. Soon she will be unable to walk in daylight tooâ€¦

As Riordan sleeps Solange appears, recounting that the were-males are holding Jasmine in a distant cave. Unable to tolerate the sun in human form, Juliette becomes a cat for the last time and with her ferocious cousin heads for a showdownâ€¦

The frantic Carpathian, psychically bonded to her, desperately urges Juliette to wait for sunset but they cannot and rush the assembled brutes. The alpha male rips Juliette’s throat out, and as she lies dying Riordan appears in a clap of thunder and wielding lightning like a whipâ€¦

To save his lifemate, the enraged hunter converts her fully, forcing the Jaguar-essence from her torn body but giving her the mystic arsenal of a full Carpathian. When they next emerge from the nourishing jungle Earth they will hunt together, determined to destroy forever the unholy alliance of humans, Were-men and the Master Vampireâ€¦

Despite being squarely aimed at the broadly female and teenaged Supernatural bodice-ripper market, this strange romance has strong thread of action and good steady pace underpinning it, so lads too will get a big charge from the book, whilst hopefully traditional prose readers tempted by the adaptation will be impressed enough by the clean, slick black and white visuals to give other graphic novels a goâ€¦
Â© 2004 Christine Feehan. All rights reserved.

June 10, 2012June 8, 2012

Shade the Changing Man: the American Scream

By Peter Milligan, Chris Bachalo, Mark Pennington (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84023-716-0 (1990) Â Â Â Â 978-1401200466 (2009 edition)

Even before DC hived off its â€œMature Readersâ€ sophisticated horror/hero series to become the backbone of the self-sustaining Vertigo line in 1993, the company had begun to differentiate between standard all-ages superhero sagas, new stand-alone concepts like Gilgamesh II, Skreemer, Haywire or World Without End and edgy, off-the-wall, quasi-costumed fantasy and supernatural suspense titles as Doom Patrol, Black Orchid, Animal Man, Sandman, Hellblazer and Swamp Thing. Perhaps the most radical and challenging was a darkly psychedelic reworking of Steve Ditko’s lost masterpiece of modern paranoia Shade the Changing Man.Â

In the original 1977 series Rac Shade was a secret observer from the other-dimensional realm of Meta-Zone, who was framed and went rogue; using stolen technology to combat a wave of insanity that emanated from â€œthe Area of Madnessâ€ within the Zero-Zone which separated his world from ours. The madness threatened both universes and Shade was determined to stop it, despite the best efforts of sinister self-serving forces from Earth and Meta determined to destroy him.

When Peter Milligan, Chris Bachalo & Mark Pennington began to rework the character much of the Ditko concept remained but was brutally tweaked for the far more cynical and worldly readers of the Blank Generationâ€¦

This initial collection re-presents the first six issues of the new Shade from July-December 1980 and introduces deeply disturbed Kathy George, patiently awaiting the final sanction on spree-killer Troy Grenzer. Years ago the unrepentant psychopath butchered her parents and almost her too, and when her black boyfriend tackled the knife-wielding manic the Louisiana police shot her saviour instead of the white assailantâ€¦

Now in the final hours before Grenzer finally sits in the electric chair on ‘Execution Day’ Kathy is experiencing wild hallucinations. That’s nothing new: following the deaths of everyone she’d ever loved, Kathy was committed to an asylum until her inheritance ran out and she was released, apparently â€œtoo poor to be crazyâ€ anymore.

Becoming a thief and a grifter, she wandered America until a radio report informed her that Grenzer was about to be put to death and Kathy inexplicably found herself heading back to Louisianaâ€¦

On Death Row things weren’t going according to plan. Bizarre lights, strange visions and electrical phenomena interrupted the execution and, as a fantastic reality-warping explosion occurred, Grenzer’s body vanishedâ€¦

On a hillside overlooking the prison Kathy was pursued by an animated electric chair and Troy Grenzer materialised in her car – only he claimed not to be the serial killer but Rac Shade, a secret agent from another dimension who had left his own body in an otherworldly Area of Madness and mentally occupied the now-vacant corpse of the serial killer.

It wasn’t the craziest thing Kathy had ever heard and even if it wasn’t true at least she had a chance to personally kill the man who had destroyed her lifeâ€¦

As the drove away together insane things kept happening and Shade explained that his journey had caused a rupture in the fabric of the universes – a trauma in Realityâ€¦

Slowly acclimatising, Shade explains that his original body is clad in experimental technology and this â€œM-Vestâ€ connects his subconscious to the chaos of the Madness zone. His job was to come here and stop a plague of materialised insanity threatening both worlds, but he’s actually given it easier access to oursâ€¦

After a climactic struggle with her own ghosts and traumas, Kathy reluctantly agreed to help the semi-amnesiac Shade in his missionâ€¦

Meanwhile at the Famhouse Mental Hospital uncanny events were culminating in a ghastly reordering of people and matter itself: a horrific nigh-sentient phenomenon dubbed â€œthe American Screamâ€ had broken through from somewhere else and threatened all life and rationality on Earth.

With casual daydreams, flights of fantasy and vicious whims increasingly given substance and solidity, the government, well aware of the crisis, dispatched Federal Agents Stringer and Conner to investigateâ€¦

The quest proper began as the fugitives from justice trolled through the hinterlands of American Culture and its Collective Unconscious, ending up in Dallas where obsessed author Duane Trilby, determined to discover ‘Who Shot JFK?’, found himself conversing with the tarnished martyr himself as the murdered president returned to the scene of the crime and the city started to literally unravel, with a giant idolatrous bust of the victim bursting through the tarmac of Dealey Plaza, incessantly screaming for answersâ€¦

The chaos affected Shade, and the last vestiges of Grenzer’s personality kept repossessing the body they shared, determined to at last add Kathy to his tally of victims, whilst Agents Stringer and Conner, convinced that she is connected to Grenzer’s abrupt disappearance from his own execution, followed her to Texasâ€¦

With madness rampant, Shade and Kathy were drawn into Trilby’s materialisation of events, becoming JFK and Jackie, inexorably heading toward death in that open-topped carâ€¦

The measured insanity continued in ‘All the President’s Assassins!’ as Trilby saved Shade/JFK and slowly revealed his own personal tragedy: one which drove him to solve an impossible conundrum and avoid an agonising admission.

All the while the Metan’s consciousness was being dragged into a succession of traumatised participants and realised that he must defeat this outbreak of the American Scream quickly or surely fragment and dieâ€¦

Escaping into his own past on Meta in ‘Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know’, Shade physically re-experienced his early life whilst in Dallas Stringer and Conner apprehended Kathy. A lovelorn, impressionable poet, young dropout Rac Shade was tricked into becoming an agent and sent to Earth because it was apparently the source of devastating waves of insanity plaguing Meta, but he was sucked into the Area of Madness and met the American Scream face to faceâ€¦

Falling back to Earth, Rac freed Kathy and they fled, arriving in Los Angeles in time to struggle with the dark underbelly of the film industry as it came to murderous, sadistic life and began stalking the stars and moguls who created the vicious yet glorious land of dreams.

First singled out were the cast and crew of in-production zombie epic â€œHollywood Monsters’, who endured shame and career destruction as impossible film-clips of their deepest secrets and darkest transgression became to appear. Soon after, the mutilations and deaths began, before a psychedelic crescendo was reached in ‘Hollywood Babble On II’ with Shade and Kathy fighting their way through a physically realised and highly biased history of Tinsel Town triumphs and travesties, before seizing control of the noxious narrative and beating the Madness at its own gameâ€¦

Darkly ironic, blackly comedic, gripping and dripping with razor-edged social commentary, Shade the Changing Man adds a sparkling brew of sardonic wit to the horror and action staples of the medium and remains one of the most challenging and intriguing series in comics.
Â© 2003, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

May 29, 2012May 28, 2012

Showcase Presents House of Secrets volume 2

By many and various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-84856-472-5

With superheroes on the decline again in the early 1970s, four of the six surviving newsstand comicbook companies (Archie, Charlton, DC, Gold Key, Harvey and Marvel) relied increasingly on horror and suspense anthologies to bolster their flagging sales. Even wholesome Archie briefly produced Red Circle Sorcery/Chillers comics and their teen-comedy core moved gently into tales of witchcraft, mystery and imagination.

DC’s first generation of mystery titles had followed the end of the first Heroic Age when most of the publishers of the era began releasing crime, romance and horror genre anthologies to recapture the older readership which was drifting away to other mass-market entertainments like television and the movies.

As National Comics in 1951, the company bowed to the inevitable and launched a comparatively straight-laced anthology – which nevertheless became one of their longest-running and most influential titles – with the December 1951/January 1952 launch of The House of Mystery.

When a hysterical censorship scandal led to witch-hunting hearings attacking comicbooks and newspaper strips (feel free to type Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency, April-June 1954 into your search engine at any time) the industry panicked, adopting a castrating straitjacket of stringent self-regulatory rules and admonitions.

Even though mystery titles produced under the aegis of the Comics Code Authority were sanitised and anodyne affairs in terms of Shock and Gore, the appetite for suspense was still high, and in 1956 National introduced the sister title House of Secrets which debuted with a November-December cover-date.

Supernatural thrillers and monster stories were dialled back into marvellously illustrated genteel, rationalistic, fantasy-adventure vehicles which nonetheless dominated the market until the 1960s when the super-hero (which had begun a renaissance after Julius Schwartz reintroduced the Flash in Showcase #4, 1956) finally overtook them. Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom and a host of other costumed cavorters generated a gaudy global bubble of masked myrmidons which even forced the dedicated anthology suspense titles to transform into super-character split-books with Martian Manhunter and Dial H for Hero in House of Mystery and Mark Merlin – later Prince Ra-Man – sharing space with anti-hero Eclipso in House of Secrets.

When the caped crusader craziness peaked and popped, Secrets was one of the first casualties and the title folded with the September-October 1966 issue.

However nothing combats censorship better than falling profits and at the end of the 1960s the Silver Age superhero boom busted again, with many titles gone and some of the industry’s most prestigious series circling the drain tooâ€¦

This real-world Crisis led to the surviving publishers of the field agreeing to loosen their self-imposed restraints against crime and horror comics. Nobody much cared about gangster titles at the time but as the liberalisation coincided with another bump in public interest in all aspects of the Great Unknown, the resurrection of scary stories was a foregone conclusion and obvious â€œno-brainer.â€

Thus with absolutely no fanfare at all House of Secrets rose again with issue #81, (cover-dated August-September 1969) just as big sister House of Mystery had done a year earlier.

Under a spooky bold banner declaiming â€œThere’s No Escape Fromâ€¦ The House of Secretsâ€, creators veteran and neophyte churned out a massive deluge of spooky, creepy, wryly tongue-in-cheek and scary tales, all introduced by the innocuous and timid Abel; caretaker of a Â ramshackle, sentient old pile temporarily located somewhere in the Dark Heart of the USAâ€¦

This second enthralling and economical monochrome Showcase compendium collects the chilling contents of issues #99-119, spanning August 1972 – September 1973, and also features a stellar selection of covers from artists Michael Kaluta, Bernie Wrightson, Nick Cardy, Jack Sparling and Luis Dominguez.

‘Welcome to the House of Secrets’ by E. Nelson Bridwell & Wrightson began another pensive package of terrors after which ‘Beyond His Imagination’ by Bill Meredith & Nestor Redondo saw a comicbook artist travel to the other side of death in search of inspiration, after which ‘Beat the Devil’ (Jack Oleck, Jack Katz & Tony DeZuniga) dealt with a religious thief who repented too late before ‘Goodbye, Nancy’ by John Albano, Vic Catan, Frank Redondo & Abe Ocampo saw a lonely child go to lethal lengths in her attempts to find a playmateâ€¦

A huge boost to the battered American industry at his time was the mass hiring of a flight of top Filipino artists whose stylish realism, experience in many genres and incredible work ethic made them an invaluable and highly influential factor of the horror boom. This collection especially is positively brimming with their superb illustrative excellence.

First in issue #100 however is ‘Round-Trip Ticket’ by Lore Shoberg & Tom Palmer, wherein a hippy truth-seeker learns a little more about alternate lifestyles than he bargained for. These comics chillers were frequently leavened by the mordant and wordless cartoon gags of the legendary Sergio AragonÃ©s, who here contributes a trio of gems starring ‘Cain & Abel’ before Oleck, Mike Sekowsky & Dezuniga reveal the fate of an escaped convict who briefly became ‘The Man Who Stopped Time!’ After a page of ‘Abel’s Fables’ cartoons by Shoberg, Oleck & Alfredo Alcala brought the issue to a close with the dark period Voodoo yarn ‘Rest in Peace’â€¦

Clever science fiction courtesy of Sheldon Mayer & Alex NiÃ±o opened #101 as ‘Small Invasion’ told a tale of love, double-cross and vengeance when an alien infiltrator discovers true romance whilst preparing to destroy humanity, after which ‘The Sacrifice’ (Oleck & June Lofamia) pitted Witch against Warlock in a game as old as timeâ€¦ AragonÃ©s’ ‘Cain & Abel’ page then precedes ‘Hiding Place’ by Raymond Marais & Ruben Yandoc, with a murderous gangster picking the wrong home to invade after which an ‘Abel’s Fables’ page by Shoberg brings the issue to a close.

‘Make a Wish’ by Oleck & E.R. Cruz, led in #102 as a troubled boy periodically escapes the real world – until well-meaning adults take him in hand, whilst ‘The Loser’ (Oleck, Quico Redondo & Ocampo) details a hen-pecked husband who can’t even get his revenge right, and bracketed between a brace of AragonÃ©s’ ‘Abel’s Fables’ Albano & Nestor Redondo shone with the salutary romantic chiller starring ‘A Lonely Monstrosity’â€¦

House of Secrets #103 began with a tale on con men and time travel in ‘Waitingâ€¦ Waitingâ€¦ Waiting’ by Mayer & Rico Rival, whilst ‘No Bed of Roses’ (Albano & Sparling) told a unique tale of reincarnation and revenge, before a post-apocalyptic revelation proved that man could never change in ‘The Village on the Edge of Forever’ by Steve Skeates & NiÃ±o, before AragonÃ©s wrapped another issue with one of his ‘Cain & Abel’ pages.

In #104 ‘Ghosts Don’t Bother Meâ€¦ Butâ€¦’ by Mayer & Nestor & Virgilio Redondo told the sorry story of a hitman who found that his victims didn’t always rest in peace, whilst ‘The Dead Man’s Doll’, by Bill Riley & Alcala and book-ended by two ‘Abel’s Fables’ by AragonÃ©s and Albano, saw a beloved puppet take vengeance for his owner when the frail fellow was murdered by his uncaring carers, whilst ‘Lend Me an Ear!’ by Oleck & George Tuska, saw merciless college pranksters hoisted on their own petard after playing in a morgueâ€¦

Issue #105 featured ‘Vampire’ an effective game of Ten Little Indians played out in an old Nevada mine by Maxene Fabe & Gerry Taloac, the gloriously dry ‘Coming Together!’ (Skeates & Jim Aparo) which showed that courage wasn’t everything when demons invaded a small town, and a great old-fashioned murdered man’s revenge yarn in ‘An Axe to Grind’ by Skeates & Alcala, whilst #106, after a magical ‘Welcome to the House of Secrets’ by E. Nelson Bridwell & Wrightson, opened with ‘The Curse of Harappa’ (Fabe & Yandoc) as a man dedicated to wiping out superstition found it wasn’t all nonsense, after which ‘The Island of No Return’ by Albano & NiÃ±o displayed the epitome of monstrous abiding terror, and Oleck and Alcala closed the show with a turn-of-the-century joker getting his just desserts in ‘This Will Kill You’.

In #107 Alcala illustrated Oleck’s ‘Skin Deep’ a dark tale of magic masks and ugly people in New Orleans and, after an AragonÃ©s ‘Cain & Abel’, Arnold Drake’s hilarious hen-pecked howler ‘The Night of the Nebish!’ before ‘Winner Take All’ by Skeates & Bernard Baily restores some lethal gravitas to the proceedings when a greedy tramp learns too late the life-lesson of when to let goâ€¦

In #108 ‘Act III Eternity’ by George Kashdan & Jess Jodloman describes how a washed up thespian unsuspectingly took method acting to unfortunate extremes whilst ‘A New Kid on the Block’ (Fabe & Rival) found a new wrinkle in the hoary legend of revivified mummies and ‘The Ghost-Writer’ by Riley & Taloac saw a dissolute author finally pay for taking undeserved credit during his successful career. This issue also featured two more bleak and black ‘Abel’s Fables’ by AragonÃ©s,

HoS #109 held two longer tales; ‘Museum of Nightmares’ by Michael Pellowsky, Fabe & Alcala, in which animated waxworks haunted the last case of a great detective whilst in ‘â€¦And in Death there is No Escape!’, (Albano & NiÃ±o) a callous bluebeard and actor of towering ego at last regretted the many sins that had led him to physical immortality and infamous renown. Issue #110 opened with an entertaining vampire tale in ‘Domain of the Dead’ by Oleck & Fred Carrillo, continued with supernatural murder-mystery ‘Safes Have Secrets Too’ by Pellowsky, Fabe & Flor Dery and finished on a beguiling high note with Oleck & Taloac’s ‘Possessed’ as a simple farmer searched in all the wrong places for a deadly witchâ€¦

Gerard Conway & Dezuniga provided a haunting tale of lonely lighthouses and other worlds in #111’s ‘A Watchtower in the Dark’, after which ‘Hair-I-Kari’ by Fabe & Romy Gamboa told a sordid tale of a magic baldness cure and Michael Fleisher & Taloac recounted a bold adventurer’s quest to defeat death in ‘The Land Beyond the Styx!’

In #112 ‘The Witch Doctor’s Magic Cloak’ by Fleisher & Rudy Nebres explored the grotesque consequences of alternative medicine and limb regeneration, after which Conway & Luis Dominguez pastiched Sherlock Holmes to great effect in ‘The Case of the Demon Spawn!’ whilst #113 opened with an all-out monster mash in the delightfully dark ‘Not So Loud – I’m Blind!’ by Doug Moench, Nick Cardy & Mike Sekowsky and after another AragonÃ©s ‘Abel’s Fables’ Oleck & Nestor Redondo unleashed a truly nasty tale of child vampires in ‘Spawns of Satan’ â€¦

HoS# 114 led with Fleisher & Frank Bolle’s ‘Night Game’ – a chilling sports-story of corruption in hockey and murder on ice – and close with the same writer’s ‘The Demon and the Rock Star!’, concerning one Hell of a comeback tour and illustrated by Talaoc, whilst #115 featured ‘Nobody Hurts my Brother!’ by Drake & Alcala: a tale of once-conjoined twins who shared each others hurts but not morals, after which ‘Remembered Dead’ (Kashdan & NiÃ±o) dealt with a wax museum guard’s unhealthy attachment to one of the exhibits, and ‘Every Man my Killer!’ by Kashdan and Nardo & E.R. Cruz, followed a tormented soul the entire world wanted deadâ€¦

‘Like Father, Like Son’ by Oleck & Nestor Redondo in #116 followed the rise and fall of a 18^th century peasant who sold more than his soul for wealth, love and power, and ‘Puglyon’s Crypt’ by David Michelinie & Ramona Fradon explored with delicious vivacity the obsession of a man determined never to suffer premature burialâ€¦

House of Secrets #117 opened with a tale of medieval feuds and bloody vendettas that inevitably led to ‘An Eye for an Eye’ (Oleck & Ernie Chan), whilst ‘Don’t Cry for Uncle Malcolm’ Gerry Boudreau & NiÃ±o provided a phantasmagorical glimpse at the power of modern Voodoo, after which another couple of AragonÃ©s ‘Abel’s Fables’ bracket a wickedly ironic vignette entitled ‘Revenge For the Deadly Dummy!’ by Skeates Alcala.

The sinister magic of Hollywood informs the chilling delayed vengeance saga ‘The Very Last Picture Show’ by Fleisher & George Evans which opens #118, after which a ghostlyÂ ‘Turnabout’ (Skeates & Quico Redondo) proves too much for a cunning murderess, and Oleck & Fradon display a different look at leprechauns in ‘Nasty Little Man’â€¦

This compendium concludes with issue #119 and ‘A Carnival of Dwarfs’ by Fleisher & Arthur Suydam, wherein an unscrupulous showbiz impresario comes between a gentle old man and his diminutive friends, and wedged between two last ‘Cain & Abel’ pages by AragonÃ©s, Pellowsky, Kashdan & Alcala proved that primitive people are anything but when a callous anthropologist provided an ‘Imitation Monster!’ for an isolated tribe and lived to regret his foolishnessâ€¦

If you crave witty, beautifully realised, tastefully splatter-free sagas of tension and imagination, not to mention a huge supply of bad-taste, kid-friendly cartoon chills, book your return to the House of Secrets as soon as you possibly canâ€¦
Â© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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