Category: Horror Stories

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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 nation…

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 read…

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 monsters…

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 historians…

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 lawlessness…

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 …

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 expiring…

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 witnessed…

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 life…

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 feet…

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

‘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 lake…

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 “friends” he owed a debt to…

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 support…

Just then the phone rang and Bloch demanded that she surrender herself or Hattie would die horribly…

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 Book…

‘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 showdown…

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 “Euro-Vamps” 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 blood…

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 Thee…‘ 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 him…

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

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 “unrequited love sucks”.

American Vampire offers solid screams and enchantingly fresh ideas that all fear-fiends will find irresistible making this book an absolute “must-have” and a certain reminder that there are such things as monsters and some beasts just should not be tamed…
© 2010, Scott Snyder and Stephen King.  All Rights Reserved.

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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 “Tanino” 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’Écho 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, Métal Hurlant, À 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 Rêve 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 “suicide by television” 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-bodies…

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 tale…

‘Bololy Folly’ is another Tamburini psycho-thriller as the latest technology to tame “wild chromosomes” 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 logic…

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 eye…

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 forever…
Art © 1985 Gaetano Liberatore. All stories © 1985 their respective authors. English language edition © 1985 Catalan Communications, All rights reserved.

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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 humour…

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 Darkness…

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 anyway…

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 meal…

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 Amin…

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 eating…

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 House…

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 with…

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 Führer 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 well…

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. ™ and © Mike Mignola. All individual strips, art & stories © 1997, 1999, 2003 their individual creator or holder. All rights reserved.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula


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

Multi-disciplinary Spanish artist Fernando Fernández 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 Gorrión, Tótem and Puño 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, Fernández produced ‘Cuba, 1898’ and ‘Círculos’ 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 ‘Argón, el Salvaje’ and a number of adaptations of Isaac Asimov tales in ‘Firmado por: Isaac Asimov’ and ‘Lucky Starr – Los Océanos de Venus’.

His last comics work was ‘Zodíaco’ 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, Fernández 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 countryside…

Meanwhile, in the seat of Empire, Harker’s fiancée 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 dispelling…

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 agitated…

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 wits….

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 Count…

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 influence…

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 sweat…

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.
© 1984, 2005 Fernando Fernández. All rights reserved.

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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 “Carpathian” novels deal with a savage but noble subspecies of vampire who eschew killing their human “blood donors” 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 sunlight…

Carpathians are an endangered species with few females, and if a male cannot find a “lifemate” 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 “greeting the dawn”…

This intriguing manga-style tome from 2007 adapts the 14th 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 jungle…

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 cell…

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 lifemate…

In a fit of passion, he bites her and, refuelled by her blood, destroys the facility…

With Jasmine apparently still inside…

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 ever…

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 held…

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 too…

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 showdown…

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 whip…

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 Vampire…

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 go…
© 2004 Christine Feehan. All rights reserved.

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Shade the Changing Man: the American Scream


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

Even before DC hived off its “Mature Readers” 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. 

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 “the Area of Madness” 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 Generation…

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 assailant…

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 “too poor to be crazy” 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 Louisiana…

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 vanished…

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 life…

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 Reality…

Slowly acclimatising, Shade explains that his original body is clad in experimental technology and this “M-Vest” 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 ours…

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

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 “the American Scream” 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 investigate…

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 answers…

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 Texas…

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 car…

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 die…

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 face…

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 “Hollywood 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 game…

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.
© 2003, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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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 too…

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 “no-brainer.”

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 “There’s No Escape From… The House of Secrets”, 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  ramshackle, sentient old pile temporarily located somewhere in the Dark Heart of the USA…

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 playmate…

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 Aragonés, 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’…

Clever science fiction courtesy of Sheldon Mayer & Alex Niño 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 time… Aragonés’ ‘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 Aragonés’ ‘Abel’s Fables’ Albano & Nestor Redondo shone with the salutary romantic chiller starring ‘A Lonely Monstrosity’…

House of Secrets #103 began with a tale on con men and time travel in ‘Waiting… Waiting… 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 & Niño, before Aragonés wrapped another issue with one of his ‘Cain & Abel’ pages.

In #104 ‘Ghosts Don’t Bother Me… But…’ 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 Aragonés 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 morgue…

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 & Niño 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 Aragonés ‘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 go…

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 Aragonés,

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 ‘…And in Death there is No Escape!’, (Albano & Niño) 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 witch…

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 Aragonés ‘Abel’s Fables’ Oleck & Nestor Redondo unleashed a truly nasty tale of child vampires in ‘Spawns of Satan’ …

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 & Niño) 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 dead…

‘Like Father, Like Son’ by Oleck & Nestor Redondo in #116 followed the rise and fall of a 18th 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 burial…

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 & Niño provided a phantasmagorical glimpse at the power of modern Voodoo, after which another couple of Aragonés ‘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 ghostly  ‘Turnabout’ (Skeates & Quico Redondo) proves too much for a cunning murderess, and Oleck & Fradon display a different look at leprechauns in ‘Nasty Little Man’…

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 Aragonés, 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 foolishness…

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 can…
© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Vic and Blood – the Chronicles of a Boy and his Dog


By Harlan Ellison & Richard Corben (St. Martin’s Press/NBM/IBooks)
ISBNs: NBM edition 978-0-31203-471-9   IBooks edition: 978-0-74345-903-7

Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest proponents of graphic narrative: a legendary animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist surfing the tumultuous wave of independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a major force in pictorial storytelling with his own unmistakable style and vision. He is renowned for his mastery of airbrush and captivatingly excessive anatomical stylisation and infamous for delightfully wicked, darkly comedic horror and beguiling eroticism in his fantasy and science fiction tales. He is also an acclaimed and dedicated fan of the classics of gothic horror literature…

Always garnering huge support and acclaim in Europe, he was regularly collected in luxurious albums even as he fell out of favour – and print – in his own country.

This album adapts a short story by science fiction iconoclast Harlan Ellison which turned the medium on its head when first published in 1969, spawning an award-winning cult-film and perpetually dangling the promise of a full and expansive prose novel before the eager fans. Much of that intention is discussed in Ellison’s After Vic & Blood: Some Afterthoughts as Afterword which ends the 1989 edition…

I suspect I’ll be long dead by the time the nigh-legendary Blood’s a Rover novel is finally released but at least this stunning graphic novel gilds the apocalyptic lily by also adapting the author’s prequel and sequel novelettes to produce a tale with a beginning, a middle and an ending of sorts…

The post-apocalyptic milieu was one Corben would return to over and over again but it never looked better (if that’s not a grim contradiction in terms) than in the triptych of survivalist terror that begins here with ‘Eggsucker’ as genetically-engineered telepathic war-mutt Blood relates how he and his 14 year old human partner Vic (don’t call him “Albert”) survive on a daily basis amidst the shattered ruins of America after the final war.

Vic is a “solo”, unaffiliated to any of the assorted gangs that have banded together in the radioactive aftermath, scavenging and trading and never staying in one place too long. Blood has looked after him for years: faithful, valiant and protective. The dog has taught the lad everything, even how to speak properly…

After a booze-for-bullets swap goes hideously wrong the partners have a falling-out, but that only lasts until Vic stumbles into trouble again and Blood dashes to his rescue…

Next up is the pivotal tale ‘A Boy and his Dog’ wherein Vic and his canine mentor find a healthy and nubile girl from the sunken puritanical subterranean enclaves known as “Downunders” slumming amongst the ruins of civilisation.

Hungry for something other than rancid rations, Vic follows her and is forced to kill a number of other lustful hunters to possess the tantalising Quilla June Holmes, who bamboozles the horny lad with all her talk of love…

However, it’s all part of an elaborate trap and before long the born survivor is trapped by his own teenaged hormones in the parochial, backward-looking New Topeka underground refuge, destined to be the stud to sire a new generation of humanity for the aging and increasingly sterile Downunder men…

Of course nobody thought to ask the putative mares what they thought of the plan and Quilla June quickly rebels, helping Vic to kill her father and escape back to the dangerous freedom of the surface.

Up above faithful Blood has not fared well: slowly starving whilst waiting for Vic to sow his wild oats and return. He is near death when the fugitives reappear and only an act of true love can save him…

The saga-so-far concludes with a shocking surprise in ‘Run, Spot, Run’ as the increasingly acrimonious Vic and Blood squabble and fall out, whilst starvation, toxic food and savage ghosts torment them both, resulting in a momentary lapse of concentration which leads the pair into ghastly peril…

Fair Warning: many readers will probably feel short-changed by the cliff-hanging ending but there is a conclusion of sorts and the astounding power of the artwork should offset any potential feeling of unfulfilled drama.

This superb collection was re-released in 2003 by IBooks in a celebratory edition which also contained the original short-stories in prose form as well as added extras such commentaries and The Wit and Wisdom of Blood.

Corben’s unique vision captures the weary, doom-laden atmosphere, charged hunger and despondent denouement of the original with devastating effect and this seminal, seductive work is undoubtedly a true classic of the Day-After-Doomsday genre. The artist’s sublime acumen in depicting humanity’s primal drives and the grim gallows humour of the situation has never been bettered than with these immortal stories. This is a book no comics or horror fan should be without.
Artwork © 1987 Richard Corben. “Eggsucker” © 1977 Harlan Ellison. “A Boy and his Dog” © 1969 The Kilimanjaro Corp. “Run, Spot, Run” © 1980 The Kilimanjaro Corp. Adapted versions © 1987 The Kilimanjaro Corp. Colour & cover © 1989 NBM.

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NeMo Balkanski’s FIB Chronicles


By Nemanja Moravic Balkanski & various (the Publishing Eye)
ISBN: 978-0-9868440-0-3

Some creators seduce and beguile but others choose to inform and affect with confrontational shock tactics…

The most wonderful thing about the comics medium is the limitless ways stories and art can be combined to educate, elucidate and entertain. For every Hergé there’s a Harvey Pekar, for every Alfred Bestall a Johnny Ryan (and John Ryan too) and so on, and there are comic strips to suit literally every age and temperament.

Some of the most evocative and addictively uncompromising efforts that I’ve seen in quite a while appear in this collection from Belgrade émigré Nemanja Moravic Balkanski, whose stunningly disturbing spoofs and edgy cultural pastiches have been gathered into a magnificent oversized full-colour hardback FIB Chronicles.

Balkanski was born in Belgrade in 1975 and, after mastering a multitude of artistic disciplines from comics to graphic design, theatre arts to film-making, and poetry to performance, emigrated to Vancouver 2007. Much of this vintage material contained here (also available as an app) come from his Balkan days, represented in this disquietingly substantial and blackly comic tome under the guiding conceit that the individual escapades of a nightmarish cast of distressing ne’er-do-wells and uncanny outcasts have been gathered into a damning dossier thanks to the scurrilous non-efforts of the far-from-intrepid clandestine agents of the Fabulous Investigation Bureau.

The result is a selection of their most atypical observations – presumably leaked here as a wake-up call to unwitting and complacent humanity…

The iconoclastic strips gathered here date from 1998-2005 and, supplemented by new bridging material in a staggering variety of artistic styles, describe a dark and disturbing underworld of barely perceived and unwisely ignored peril and surreal threat wrapped up in careful pastiche and savage parody…

US cop dramas come under the cosh when corruptly hip detective Cash Money experiences ‘Hair Fear’ and tackles feminist terror in ‘W.T.N. Griffit’ whilst tragic, plucky waif Boy Lyndo gets his shot at a happy ever after in ‘The Final Episode’ and the bizarre habits of a cult of Mel Gibson impersonators is exposed in ‘Gipsons vs Graduates’ after which gay lovers walk hand-in-hand down the wrong street in the weird war story ‘Jelly & Butter’ – a yarn conceived by Balkanski’s long-time collaborator Vladimir Protic.

A theatrical slasher-killer appears in ‘Space (the Final Frontier)’ and scatological stoner anthropomorph ‘Bud Bunny’ plays not-so-nice games with the other animals before fashion-plate Eau de Cologne falls foul of the harpy-ish harridans known as the BigDos in ‘Trigger’ and we are exposed to ‘Johnny McWire Getting the Beating of his Life’ and ‘Mr. Friday Night’ goes home alone yet again…

Booze and Balkan warriors come under the microscope one more in ‘Galactica, the Space Bottlesip’ (based on Branimir “Johnny” Å tulić‘s poem “Sons of Bitches”) after which the file devotes a lot of crazed and crucial pages to cybernetic dreamer Digital Standstill‘s climactic confrontation with ‘BigDo’s’ before we observe a salutary encounter with the ‘Psycho from 134th Street’ (scripted by Protic).

The battle against creeping communism is examined in the uplifting tale of ‘Little Mexico: El Dentista’, the nature of modern relationships in ‘It is My Friend’ and the value of introspection in ‘Sam Lr. Stag: His Life was a Drag’ before the life of a fascist monster is dissected in ‘Shalken Rösse’ and we are treated, in conclusion, to the meteoric rise and political acumen of the transcendent of ‘Melon Pig’, courtesy of Protic and Balkanski…

With additional articles, ‘Declassification Files’, a glossary of new words and expressions and even a few game-pages for the strong-stomached, this tainted love-affair with life’s moist and fetid underbelly is a dank graphic delight that not even every mature and cosmopolitan reader will enjoy: but for those with just the right blend of world-weary insouciance and malignant, undemanding innocence the words and pictures married together here will strike an unforgettable chord.

Strident, cruel, sardonically whimsical, overwhelmingly clever and bleakly hilarious in a Kafka meets Steven Wright channelling Bill Hicks kind of way, this absurdist, hauntingly affecting and astonishingly illustrated book is a uniquely entertaining read the brave and bold and reasonably old won’t dare to miss…
All comics © 2011 Nemanja Moravic Balkanski. Everything else All comics © 2011 Nemanja Moravic Balkanski and The Publishing Eye. All rights reserved.

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Tales From the Plague


By Dennis Cunningham & Richard Corben (Bill Leach Collectibles/Eclipse Comics)

No ISBN/ ASIN: B000GXQ8HA

Richard Corben flowered in the independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a globally revered, multi-award winning creator. He is most renowned for his mastery of the airbrush and his delight in sardonic, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Although never a regular contributor to the comicbook mainstream, the animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist is one of America’s greatest proponents of sequential narrative: an astoundingly accomplished artist with an unmistakable style and vision.

Violent, cathartically graphic and often blackly hilarious, his infamous signature-stylisation always includes oodles of nudity, ultra-extreme explicit violence and impossibly proportioned male and female physiques – but there’s almost none of the latter on show in this intriguing re-issue of his very first comics work: a celebratory new edition sporting a stunning wraparound card cover that was released in 1986.

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, Corben graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 from the Kansas City Art Institute and began working as an animator. At that time, the Underground movement was just stating to revolutionise, reinvigorate and liberate the medium of comics as a motley crew of independent-minded creators across the continent began making and publishing stories that appealed to their rebellious, pharmacologically-enhanced sensibilities and unconventional lifestyles.

Most of them had been reared on and hugely influenced by 1950s EC Comics or Carl Barks’ Duck tales – and usually both.

As can be seen in this intriguiging little tale, which first appeared in Weirdom Illustrated #13 (the “Special Plague issue”) in 1969, Corben started the same way, producing the kind of stories that he would like to read, for a variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor, often signed with his affectionate pseudonym “Gore”, and usually introduced by an EC style horror-host or hostess.

As Corben’s style matured and his skills developed, his work began to appear in more professionally produced venues. He began working for Warren Publishing in 1970 with tales in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and latterly, the aggressively audacious adult science fiction anthology 1984. He also famously re-coloured a number of reprinted Spirit strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit magazine.

In 1975 Corben submitted work to the French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and subsequently became a fixture in the magazine’s American iteration Heavy Metal after which his career really took off. Soon he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped making comics but preferred his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This oft-reprinted but now regrettably out-of-print collection perfectly shows the artist’s developing style in an acerbic and customarily wry horror yarn set in the English hamlet of “Chelmesford” during the Year of Our Lord 1664, beginning with the last testament of dying Witch Hunter James Hopkins.

His last legal commission had been the arrest and despatch of widow Ann Ashby, a strange and ugly crone dwelling alone on the edge of town. Following the accusation of a neighbour Hopkins investigates and finds her house filled with strange instruments and small animals…

On arrest she is put to The Test (that’s religious speak for tortured) and an eager and happy procession of townsfolk reveal her suspicious acts and the odd things that occur near her: boys have accidents or fall ill, animals become sick and she talks to chickens…

Once her unholy and depraved acts with animals and blood are disclosed it’s but a short hop to the stake, but even after they have watched her death agonies the still-unsated mob are hungry for more and tear her old shack down.

Soon after, many of the fine citizens of Chelmesford begin to sicken, and the remainder of Hopkins’ account details the grisly and ghastly effects of the plague as it devastates the town…

The concluding chapter is taken from scraps of parchment found hidden in Ann Ashby’s cell and reveal a shocking and ironic twist for modern historians. The supposed witch was in fact a far worse monster than Elizabethan society believed…

The well-travelled foreigner was secretly a brilliant thinker who had formulated theories of biology and natural science centuries ahead of her time. With her home-made ocular devices Ashby was on the trail of a cure for the dreadful pestilence – which she had seen ravage Europe and the East – at least until Hopkins and his self-righteous rabble of superstitious fools and jealous liars seized her…

Remarkably engrossing if a touch wordy, this compelling yarn reveals the core of solid draughtsmanship and pen-and-ink technique which underscores all Corben’s work, in a gritty chiller Hammer Films would be proud of.

Hard to find, but a great read and well worth the effort for all fans of illustrated horror yarns.
© 1986 Dennis Cunningham.