Category: Horror Stories

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Richard Corben Complete Works volume 1: Underground


By Richard Corben and various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-018-5

Although he has only infrequently strayed into the comicbook mainstream, animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest living proponents of sequential narrative: a stunningly accomplished artist and unique, uncompromising stylist who grew out of the independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a globally revered, multi-award winning creator.

He is best known for his mastery of the airbrush and delight in sardonic, darkly comedic horror and science fiction tales.

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the Underground Commix revolution was just beginning 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 were hugely influenced either by 1950s tales from EC Comics or Carl Barks’ Duck tales – and occasionally both.

Corben started the same way, producing the kind of stories that he would like to read, in as variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor often signed with his affectionate pseudonym “Gore”. As his style matured and his skills developed Corben’s work increasingly 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 laterally, 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 phenomenon Métal Hurlant and subsequently became a fixture in the magazine’s American iteration Heavy Metal where his career really took off. Soon he was producing stunning adult fantasy tales 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 producing comics but always stuck to his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This regrettably out-of-print collection of those early strip efforts, translated from a European edition by Jim Lisle, features a rather inaccurate introduction by Luis Vigil but boasts a dynamic collection of raw, powerful and wickedly sardonic and whimsical suspense tales in the EC vein that graphically display the artist’s rapid, radical creative development beginning with ‘Heirs of Earth’ (1971), a post-apocalyptic tale of love and cannibalism.

Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation includes lots of nudity, graphic violence and near grotesquely proportioned male and female physiques, none of which are apparent in the tantalisingly low-key spoof ‘Alice in Wanderlust’; an early skit by long-term co-creator Jan Strnad, after which ‘Horrible Harveys House’ (1971) tells an intriguing tale of young lust when film student Jarvis talks his stacked and rather easy girlfriend Zara into visiting an abandoned house to make an “art-movie”. Turns out the place isn’t completely empty after all…

From 1970, ‘Twilight of the Dogs’ is a classic sting-in-the-tale saga as Earth’s last surviving free men uncover some rather unfortunate facts about the aliens who conquered them whilst ‘Gastric Fortitude’ displays another side of love. ‘The Dweller in the Dark’ (from a story by Herb Arnold) is an early exploration of Corben’s fascination with and facility for depicting lost civilisations, wherein rain-forest dwellers Bo Glan and Nipta break taboo to explore a dead city only to fall foul of rapacious, invading white men and ancient things far worse…

All the previous yarns were reproduced in black and white: ranging from pen-line to airbrushed monochrome tones but worlds-within-worlds alien romance ‘Cidopey’ reveals its tragic twist in full colour, as does ‘For the Love of a Daemon’ which shows inklings of the artist’s later airbrush expertise in a boisterous black comedy of Barbarians and hot naked babes in distress.

Jan Strnad also wrote the dark dystopian ‘Kittens for Christian’, a moody post-cataclysm thriller with chilling echoes of Corben’s later graphic novel Vic and Blood (an adaptation and extension of Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and his Dog”) before this volume concludes on a light and colourful note in the artist’s 1973 collaboration with Doug Moench: ‘Damsel in Dragon Dress’: a gleeful witches brew of fantasy, fairytale foible – a saucy cautionary tale on the unexpected dangers of drug abuse…

Richard Corben is a groundbreaking and rightfully renowned figure in our art-form and the fact that so much of his work is currently unavailable in English is a disgrace. Not only are his early works long overdue for a definitive re-issue but all his rude, riotous, raucously ribald revels need to be re-released now. Until that time stay tuned…
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1985 Richard Corben. © 1985 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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John Constantine, Hellblazer: Tainted Love


By Garth Ennis & Steve Dillon (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-85286-994-6

John Constantine is probably the greatest anti-hero in comics: a cynical, wide-boy magician and seedy, troubled soul who danced on the edge of damnation every minute of his life, ever unsure of his own motives, shrewdly manipulating events and standing back just to see what happens.

Collecting issues #68-71 of the monthly comicbook, the Heartland one-shot, Hellblazer Special #1 and the Constantine tale from Vertigo Jam #1 this volume describes with astonishing effect the absolute nadir in the Scouse sorcerer’s chequered career and also reveals some hidden secrets from his sordid past… Also included herein is an impressive ‘Hellblazer Gallery’ with stunning contributions from Glenn Fabry, Gary Erskine, Richard Case and Phil Winslade as well as the beautiful Fabry covers which accompanied the original tales.

After years of saving the world without even knowing why – although he feared it was just to spite beings who thought themselves better than him – Constantine fell in love with Irish ex-pat Kit Ryan and seemed on the verge of turning his hell-bent life around, before as usual, his magical heritage and nasty nature messed it all up.

Kit returned to Ireland and Constantine fell apart, hitting the bottle harder than ever and ending up a booze-soaked derelict on London’s cold, hard streets. However, as low as he’s fallen, the entities he’s mocked, manipulated and made mischief with are unforgiving and ready to make things as bad as they can ever get…

This eclectic collection of most-modern horror-thrillers opens with the two-part ‘Last Night of the King of the Vampires’, the final encounter between Constantine and the supernal monster who had fed on humanity since we came down out the trees. Immortal, worldly-wise and blasé as he was the undying lych had never been so grossly insulted as when he first met and propositioned the arrogant magus in Hellblazer: Bloodlines.

Now in ‘Down All the Days’ the decadent bloodsucker executes his revenge on the debased, addled, gin-soaked street trash, determined to wring the last vestige of humiliation, pain and terror out of his fallen foe, commencing by killing the only person still talking to the Hellblazer in ‘Rough Trade’.

However, even in the very pit of despair Constantine had a surprise up his tattered sleeve. It’s not even that he particularly wanted to live; it’s simply his accursed pride wouldn’t let an overbearing, smug, supernatural tosser have the last word…

The second story-arc ‘Fall and Rise’ opens with the eponymous ‘Tainted Love’ (from Vertigo Jam #1) as the old souse relates a salutary tale to a fellow drunk. Once upon a time Constantine had a mate who was a bit of a player. And when Seth cheated on his girlfriend the wizard was there to profit from the revenge sex with Annette. Trouble was the wronged girl had more in mind than tit-for-tat and sneaked a peak at Constantine’s spell-books. Before the blood and dust settled Seth and Annette had both learned not to meddle with the dark arts and that in the end love hurts… and hurts and hurts and hurts…

Whilst the mage was pickling his brains and liver, Kit Ryan had returned to her home and broken family in Belfast. ‘Heartland’ – a superbly poignant shaggy dog tale – saw Kit revisit her formative years and able demonstrated that not all horror stems from devils and demons. Too often the monsters are us…

Constantine’s return to grace and glory finally began with ‘Finest Hour’ as the burned out wreck lay down to die by the river and was sucked into the life and final moments of a Spitfire pilot who had been shot down in flames during the Battle of Britain. Revitalised by his death-or-life experience the wizard took hold of himself and sobered up; ready to face the world once more, beginning with giving his ghostly saviour a decent and long-deserved send-off…

This episodic and eerily eccentric compendium closes with ‘Confessional’ (from Hellblazer Special #1) as the cleaned up conjuror has a chance second encounter with a defrocked priest who nearly succeeded where uncounted eldritch horrors had failed. Long ago a runaway teen named John Constantine hitched a lift with the wrong man, and now decades later there’s a piper to be paid…

I’m once again avoiding specific details since these masterful examples of bravura storytelling from Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon should be enjoyed without any dilution – but for the greatest impact you should also have handy their other collaborations. So track down >Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits, the aforementioned Bloodlines, Fear and Loathing and Damnation’s Flame to embark on a truly moving, terrifying and incredible experience.

Hellblazer is a superb series about flawed heroism and desperate necessity, with a tragic everyman anti-hero compelled to do the right thing no matter what the cost, arrayed against the worst that the world can offer. It’s also the best horror drama in comics and worthy of your devoted attention. Adult comics just don’t come any better than this

© 1993, 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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King of the Flies Volume 2: The Origin of the World


By Mezzo & Pirrus, translated by Helge Dascher with Dag Dascher & Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-390-3

Scary stories are everywhere, even in the most ordinary of suburban paradises: when DC Comics started calling Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing stories “Sophisticated Suspense” in the 1980s, to differentiate them from the formulaic “Set ’em up and then go Boo!” traditions of the horror comics medium, this kind of subtle, disorienting, creeping disturbia is exactly what they were aspiring to. Cleverly constructed, laconically laid out in the classic nine-panel-grid picture structure and rendered in comfortingly mundane style a la Charles Burns, King of the Flies is a landmark in metafictional mystery tales.

In volume 1, noted crime comics creators Pascal (Mezzo) Mesenburg and Michel Pirus introduced readers to the community of Hallorave and the eponymous Eric, a very troubled young man with a predilection for donning a gigantic Fly mask. A budding sociopath, the lad is into drugs, sex (consenting and otherwise), booze, introspection and instant gratification… but in that he’s not much different from the other residents of this little slice of Heaven. He also sees dead people occasionally – and again, he’s not the only one.

The book unfolded in seemingly unconnected vignettes narrated in the first person by a broad cast of unhappy campers and this second volume of three continues the tradition, but with the disparate threads increasingly overlapping and interlocking: the inevitable denouement seemingly inescapable and darkly bloody…

‘The Origin of the Species’ opens with Eric idly daydreaming of killing his mom’s new man Francis before heading out for Marie’s place. She isn’t Eric’s girlfriend really but she is sweet and easy and despises her parents too. Things kick off when gangster reprobate Ringo shows up and tells them to look after a bag he’s carrying.

Eric is cool but Marie takes a peek, finding bundles of cash and a bowling pin inside. Later that day Eric saves an old guy from drowning because he fancied the geezers young girlfriend Karine: once again his uncontrolled desires are screwing up his life…

‘Departures/Arrivals’ follows Karine, showing her dysfunctional relationship with her bitch of a mother and how her aged lover Becker dies of a heart attack in an airport. Karine is pregnant and Eric sees opportunity…

In ‘Come Back’ we see that Damien has no luck. Not only is he killed by a genuinely remorseful drunk driver, but his last mortal sight is the three thugs who chased him to his demise and his girl screwing his best friend Eric. He’s far more mellow as a ghost though, pitying his killer and hanging out with Becker, just as dead but far less sanguine about Eric, who’s now moved on to Karine… Damien’s ex-girl Sal was always wild and she too is making use of Eric’s hound-dog ways…

‘Flesh Safari’ returns the spotlight to Eric. His stepdad is wise to him but Marie’s father still trusts him to look after his little girl. When the youngsters go to a rich kid’s party at Coralie’s place, Fly boy is set up and humiliated, but does meet a new friend in the outcast intellectual David, before spitefully punishing Marie by sleeping with his host’s mother…

‘Maternal Damage’ shows the turmoil afflicting Marie’s mother and just how close to the breaking point she is, whilst ‘Superhero’ follows Eric as Sal leads him into trouble and somebody administers a particularly efficient punishment beating. Moreover, even though Eric has done with Marie he can’t bear her seeing a new guy and inflicts some rough injustice of his own.

We learn some intriguing and unsavoury insights about David in ‘Robin Redux’ before the focus switches to Ringo: a full-throttle psychopath who isn’t happy at all when he asks for his bag back and Eric discovers somebody’s taken it…

Ringo sees ghosts too, but they are no help when his Boss Ramos gets heavy. Eric and Marie are in deep trouble until somebody intercedes from ambush and there’s one more phantom in the cast…

‘Crazy Horse’ finds Eric still haunting Karine until he has a strange and disturbing encounter with Marie’s dad and this intermediate book ends on a foreboding spiritual high note with ‘2,969 Light Years From Earth’ as Damien takes steps to protect his loved ones from an angry spirit and each other. Meanwhile, the bag thief is revealed and the repercussions of all the messed up crap the residents have been inflicting on each other is coming to a head. The doorbell rings…

…And readers will have to wait for the concluding book to discover how this stunning, mesmerising amalgam of Twin Peaks, Desert Palms, Peyton Place, The Omen and Blue Velvet plays out. A stylish and magical portmanteau saga of a community cursed with an excess of human frailty – lust, rage, greed, despair and especially shallow selfishness – this is a story that will surprise, compel, distress and haunt anybody with even half an imagination.

Darkly addictive, casually violent and graphically sexual, King of the Flies is “adults only” and well worth waiting until you’re 18 for…
© 2005 Glenat Editions/Drugstore. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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John Constantine, Hellblazer: Reasons to be Cheerful


By Mike Carey, Leonardo Manco, Giuseppe Camuncoli & Lorenzo Ruggiero (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-450-0

You’ve either heard of John Constantine by now or you haven’t, so I’ll be as brief as I can. Originally created by Alan Moore during his groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing, he is a mercurial modern wizard, a hell-addicted chancer who plays with magic on his own terms for his own ends. He is not a hero. He is not a nice person. He is nothing like Keanu Reeves. Sometimes though, he’s all there is between us and the void… the magician that is, not the actor…

That’s the only slice of levity you’ll get here, as with Reasons to be Cheerful writer Mike Carey took the world-weary warlock through some of the most infernal horrors he’s ever encountered as another of the Trickster’s infernal and impromptu devil’s bargains came roaring back to bite him on the arse…

Following on and expanding the traumas seen in Hellblazer: Stations of the Cross this volume collects issues #201-206 of the magnificent Vertigo comicbook, but before the main course ensues, opens with a terrifying palate-clearing one-off thriller.

In ‘Event Horizon’ (illustrated with dark passion by Leonardo Manco) the now-retired urban mage is dragged back into the mire of supernatural horror when a greedy low-life gangster-wannabe hires some street thugs to burgle Constantine’s lock-up and steal all those “valuable antiques” he has squirreled away. Of course the assorted ne’er-do-wells soon realise to their everlasting regret that some things just aren’t up for grabs…

Throughout this creepy morality play on “don’t take what isn’t yours” the aging mage is one step behind the action and clearly off his game, so when the four-part ‘Reasons to be Cheerful’ begins he is utterly unable to even comprehend the danger he’s stepped into…

At the climax of the previous graphic novel the magician “married” a she-demon, and trapped in a nightmarish suburban family hallucination fathered three devil-babies. Now those Hell-brats have come to visit and, full of childish glee, have begun torturing and murdering his every surviving friend and associate – a very small club indeed…

Constantine only becomes aware when his oldest enemy comes to his aid, just in time for some last-minute heroics to save life-long pal Chas Chandler and one of his two remaining blood-kin…

Dragged back into the life he’d thought and prayed he had finally escaped, Constantine prepares to return to Hell and save that last, lost soul… but that’s the meat of the next collection as the final tale in this book digresses to follow the freshly exorcised Chas.

In ‘Cross Purpose’ (illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli & Lorenzo Ruggiero), still twisted, tainted and shell-shocked by the demon who recently rode his soul, Chas goes on a rampage of uncharacteristically bad behaviour before trying to pick up the pieces of a life seemingly shattered forever.

But some things just can’t be forgiven…

This relentlessly dark British series is always drenched with savage tensions, bloody confrontations and the perfect blend of supernal terror and contemporary angst. Hellblazer is the perfect horror-comic and one no mature modern fan can afford to miss.

© 2004, 2005, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

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Mermaid Forest


By Rumiko Takahashi, translated by Matt Thorn (Viz)
ISBN: 978-1-56931-047-5

Rumiko Takahashi is one of the most successful comics creators of all time and indisputably the best selling woman in the field (170 million volumes – and rising – of her assorted inventions sold to date) with many awards to her name.

Born in 1957, she enrolled in a manga school whilst at university and began producing Dōjinshi (self-published stories) in 1975, under the tutelage of Manga genius Kazuo Koike. Three years later she sold her first professional story; the award-winning science fiction comedy Urusei Yatsura (34 volumes). Her next big series was rom-com Maison Ikkoku (15 volumes) and she continued both series simultaneously until 1987, whilst also producing a vast array of extremely popular short stories and mini-series.

In 1984 she tried something new: an occasional sequence of interlinked gothic-love horror short-stories that would become known as the Mermaid Saga which appeared at uneven intervals over the next decade.

In 1994 Viz Communications began collecting and translating the nine graphic novelettes for the English speaking world, and this first volume presents the first three in a stunning display of visual virtuosity and macabre menace.

‘A Mermaid Never Smiles’ begins in a remote rural village in modern Japan as beautiful maiden Mana calls out petulantly to her servants. Meanwhile miles away a derelict young man wanders aimlessly, searching for something. His name is Yuta and there’s something rather odd about him…

Mana’s attendants are all women and they are waiting for something. When one performs a unique sacrifice the assembled harridans decree that Mana is ready at last for her great purpose…

When Yuta stumbles into the village he is swiftly killed by the old ladies but doesn’t stay dead for long. Escaping from his grave Yuta confronts the women and rescues the far from grateful Mana, who has no idea that she has been farmed like a veal calf by her sevants, with but one purpose…

On the run Yuta explains the legend of Mermaids: eating their flesh can, if one is fortunate, impart immortality and invulnerability. More common is the slow transformation into ghastly monsters, called “Lost Souls”. Most likely though, is a swift and very painful death from the malignant meat…

Years ago Yuta unwittingly consumed mermaid flesh and has spent half a lonely millennium seeking a cure to his lonely un-aging existence. An old wise-woman told him the only solution was to find a live mermaid and ask her for a method to end his interminable life.

However he has cause to regret his wish when he discovers that all the old women are aged mermaids and Mana has been bred for years as a means by which they can regain the lost youth. Horrified and reluctantly heroic Yuta knows he must foil the plan at all costs – but it won’t be easy or pretty…

‘The Village of the Fighting Fish’ takes us back centuries to Feudal Japan and two island communities at war. Eking out their harsh existence with occasional piracy, the fisher-folk of Toba are being slowly squeezed by their ruthless rivals on Sakagami Island. Moreover, the Tobans leader is dying and his valiant daughter O-Rin is having trouble filling his sandals…

She thinks nothing of it when a dead body washes up; that’s just a sign of the times, but when the corpse comes back to life the sinister, manipulative wife of the Sakagami chieftain seeks him out. It appears she too is hunting for a mermaid, just like the un-killable stranger Yuta…

With a ruthless agenda of her own Isago stirs the bubbling pot of tension until war is inevitable, just as the restless wander Yuta dares to dream that he might risk loving again, but once more the terrible lure of mermaid flesh and supernatural longevity prove to be more curse than blessing and horrifying bloodshed is the inevitable result…

We return to contemporary Japan for the concluding tale as Mana and Yuta find an isolated village near deep woods and stop their wandering for the night. However the naive girl is utterly unaware of the modern world and walks into a near fatal accident.

Taken to the local cottage hospital the severely injured girl mysteriously goes missing, and when Yuta discovers the woodland called the ‘Mermaid Forest’ he fears the worst. His investigations uncover yet another tragic family destroyed by the mermaid curse that has tainted so many lives…

Kindly old Dr. Shiina has kept a dark secret for decades and now, with the girl Mana, he hopes to correct an ancient wrong, but no-one who has tasted mermaid flesh has ever ended happily and as Yuta hopelessly battles yet more Lost Soul horrors, the undying hero knows that this time will be no different…

This bleak supernatural tale of jealousy, twisted love and dark devotion is a spectacular and oppressive epic of understated horror, beautifully realised and movingly effective. One of the best mature manga tales ever produced, it can – and should – be read by older kids too, but please be aware that Japanese social conventions regarding casual nudity are not the same as ours and if you don’t want to see naked bodies you should read something else.
© 1994 Rumiko Takahashi/Shogakukan, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Arena – A Marvel Graphic Novel


By Bruce Jones (Marvel)
ISBN: 0- 87135-557-6

In  the early 1980s Marvel led the publishing pack in the development of high quality original graphic novels: mixing out-of-the-ordinary Marvel Universe tales, new in-continuity series launches, creator-owned properties, licensed assets, movie adaptations and even the occasional creator-owned property in extravagantly expansive packages (a square-ish standard page of 285 x 220mm rather than the now customary elongated 258 x 168mm) that felt and looked instantly superior to the average comicbook no matter how good, bad or incomprehensible (my way of saying outside your average Marvel Zombie’s comfort zone) the contents might be.

By 1990 Marvel’s ambitious line of outré all-area epics had begun to stall and some less-than-stellar tales were squeaking into the line-up. Moreover, the company was increasingly relying on hastily turned out cinema adaptations with built-in fan appeal and safe in-continuity stories offering established and company copyrighted characters rather than creator-owned properties and original concepts. The once-unmissable line began to have the appearance of an over-sized, over-priced clearing house for leftover stories.

So this stunning suspense saga counts as one of the last – and very best – indie/mainstream fiction experiments from before the rot set in; a creepy, clever, sexy thriller from EC fan and artistic everyman Bruce Jones which sets up shop in Stephen King and Ray Bradbury territory to deliver an overwhelmingly impressive rollercoaster of shocks and twists.

Sharon and her 12 year old daughter Lisa are driving through the majestic rural backwoods of America. It’s a pretty acrimonious journey and when the opportunity presents itself Mom takes a break and goes for a refreshing dip in a mountain pool whilst daughter stays in the car sulkily playing with her toy planes.

Sharon’s idyllic moment is shattered when she sees a jet crash scant yards away. However she can’t find any wreckage or even the slightest sign of it. Lisa saw and heard nothing and neither did the sinister voyeur who had been spying on them…

Rushing back to his shack simpleminded Lem tells his demented Granny about the strange woman. The old crone smells opportunity: if they can capture her and if she’s fertile they can sell her babies in the Big City… and even if she’s not big brother Rut will have a new plaything for awhile…

Lost in the deep woods Lt. Roberts, USAF crawls out of her crashed plane and hears voices. Sharon and the downed pilot start talking and realise that although they can’t see each other they are standing side by side. They’re invisible because they’re separated by two decades…

Somehow the mountain and forest are one huge time-warp… and increasingly, various eras are overlapping. Even though Sharon can only talk to Roberts, dinosaurs and cavemen are chaotically roaming over the hills, endangering both women in their own time-zones…

At that moment Lem and Rut strike, snatching Sharon. locking her up ready to make some money-spinning young ‘uns. From the car little Lisa sees her mother taken and twenty years in the future pilot Lisa Roberts suddenly remembers the horrifying moment her mother was killed by Hillbilly rapist psychopaths…

The time-shifts briefly stabilise and the two Lisas meet…

With beasts and worse roaming the woods the elder girl realises she has a chance to unmake the worst day of her life, but there are complications she could never have imagined in store for her and the girl she used to be…

Sultry, sinister and devilishly cunning this chronal conundrum is beautifully illustrated by Jones and his corkscrew plot is packed full of genuine surprises. Don’t think you’ve guessed the ending because you most likely haven’t…

A perfect sci fi movie-in-waiting, this terse and evocative yarn follows all the rules for a great screen shocker without ever having to “dumb-down” the temporal mechanics in deference to the Great Un-read in the popcorn seats.

Smart, seductive storytelling for sharp-witted punters, this is a time-lost gem you should track down however long it takes…
© 1989 Bruce Jones. All Rights Reserved.

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Essential Werewolf By Night volume 1


By Gerry Conway, Mike Ploog, Doug Moench & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-1839-8

Inspiration isn’t everything. In fact as Marvel slowly grew to a position of market dominance in the wake of the losing their two most innovative and inspirational creators, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby, they did so less by experimentation and more by expanding proven concepts and properties.

The only real exception to this was the en mass creation of horror titles in response to the industry down-turn in superhero sales – a move expedited by a rapid revision in the wordings of the increasingly ineffectual Comics Code Authority rules. Almost overnight nasty monsters (and narcotics – but that’s another story) became acceptable fare within four-colour pages and whilst a parade of 1950s pre-code reprints made sound business sense (so they repackaged a bunch of those too) the creative aspect of the contemporary fascination in supernatural themes was catered to by adapting popular cultural icons before risking whole new concepts on an untested public.

As always the watch-world was fashion: what was hitting big outside comics was to be incorporated into the mix as soon as possible. When proto-monster Morbius, the Living Vampire debuted in Amazing Spider-Man #101 (October 1971) and the sky failed to fall in Marvel moved ahead with a line of scary superstars – beginning with a werewolf and a vampire – before chancing something new in a haunted biker who could tap into both Easy Rider’s freewheeling motorcycling chic and the supernatural zeitgeist.

Werewolf By Night debuted in Marvel Spotlight #2 (preceded by western masked hero Red Wolf in #1, and followed by the afore-hinted Ghost Rider) although the title, if not the character, was cribbed from a classic monster-short thriller from Marvel Tales #116, July 1953.

Marvel had a long-time tradition of using old (presumably already copyrighted) names and titles when creating new series and characters. Hulk, Thor, Magneto, Doctor Strange and many others all got nominal starts as throwaways in an anthology…

This copious compendium collects in moody monochrome the early adventures of a young West Coast werewolf and includes Marvel Spotlight #2-4, Werewolf By Night Volume 1 #1-21, Giant-Size Creatures #1, a guest appearance in Marvel Team-Up #12 and the appropriate half of a horror crossover with Tomb of Dracula #18 and begins with the landmark first appearance which introduced young Jack Russell, a teenager with some very disturbing dreams…

‘Werewolf by Night!’ (Marvel Spotlight #2, February 1972, written by Gerry Conway and illustrated by Mike Ploog from an outline by Roy & Jeanie Thomas) described the worst day of Jack’s life – his 18th birthday, which began with nightmares and ended in something far worse.

Jack’s mom and little sister Lissa were wonderful but his new stepfather Philip and the creepy chauffeur Grant were another matter… That night at his party Jack had a painful seizure and fled into the Malibu night transforming into a ravening vulpine man-beast. The next morning he awoke wasted on the beach to discover that his mother had been gravely injured in a car-crash. Something had happened to her brakes…

He crept into her hospital room and she told him the story of his blood-father; an Eastern European noble who loved her deeply but locked himself away three nights every month… The Russoff line was cursed by the taint of Lycanthopy: every child doomed to become a wolf-thing under the full-moon from the moment they reached eighteen. Jack was horrified and then realised how soon his sister would reach her own majority…

With her dying breath Laura Russell made her son promise never to harm his stepfather, no matter what…

Scenario set with the wolf-boy transforming for three nights every month, the weird, wild wonderment began in earnest with the beast attacking Grant the chauffeur – who had fixed those brakes – but the beast-boy refrained, even in vulpine form, from attacking Philip Russell…

The untitled second instalment saw the monster rescue Lissa from a skeevy biker gang (they were everywhere back then) and narrowly escape the police only to be abducted by a sinister dowager seeking knowledge of a magical tome called the Darkhold – an eldritch spellbook that was the basis of the Russoff curse, whilst the third tryout issue ‘Island of the Damned!’ introduced Buck Cowan, an aging writer who became Jack’s best friend as the pair began to jointly investigate the wolf-boy’s stepfather.

The elder Russell had apparently sold off Jack’s inheritance leaving the boy nothing but an old book. Following a paper trail to find proof Philip had had Laura Russell killed led the pair to an offshore fortress, a dungeon full of horrors and a ruthless mutant seductress…

That episode ended on a cliffhanger, presumably as added incentive to buy Werewolf By Night #1(September 1972) wherein Frank Chiaramonte took over inking with ‘Eye of the Beholder!’ as deadly freak Marlene Blackgar and her monstrous posse captured the entire Russell family looking for the Book of Sins. Once more, as night fell a fearsome force of supernature awoke to accidentally save the day…

With ‘The Hunter… and the Hunted!’ Jack and Buck left the grimoire that had caused so much trouble with Father Joquez, a Christian monk and scholar of ancient texts, but even so they were still hunted because of it. Jack left the rural wastes of Malibu for a new home in Los Angeles, trading concrete for forests but life was no easier.

Dying scientist Cephalos wanted to harness Jack’s feral life-force to extend his own and lived but briefly to regret. Meanwhile Joquez succeeded in translating the Darkhold, but his accomplishment allowed an ancient horror to possess him in ‘The Mystery of the Mad Monk!’ and whilst the werewolf was saddened to end such a noble life it felt far happier dealing with millionaire sportsman Joshua Kane, who wanted a truly unique head mounted on the wall of his den in ‘The Danger Game’ (inked by Franke Bolle).

Half-naked, exhausted and soaked to his now hairless skin Jack next had to deal with Kane’s psychotic brother who wanted the werewolf for his pet assassin in ‘A Life for a Death!’ by Len Wein and Ploog, before ‘Carnival of Fear!’ (Wein, Ploog & Bolle) found the beast a captive of the mystic Swami Calliope and his deadly circus of freaks. The wolf was now the subject of an obsessive police detective too. Lou Hackett was an “old-school cop” – an old buddy of trophy-hunter Joshua Kane and every bit as charming: but his off-the-books investigation had hardly begun when the Swami’s plans fell apart in the concluding ‘Ritual of Blood!’ (inked by Jim Mooney).

The beast was safely(?) loose in the backwoods for #8’s quirky monster-mash when an ancient demon possessed a cute little bunny in ‘The Lurker Behind the Door!‘ (Wein, Werner Roth & Paul Reinman) before returning to LA and ‘Terror Beneath the Earth!’ (Conway, Tom Sutton & George Roussos) and impeding a nefarious scheme by business cartel the Committee. These out-of the-box commercial gurus somehow had a full dossier on Jack Russell’s night-life and a radical plan to use monsters and derelicts to boost sales in a down-turned economy.

However their bold sales scheme to frighten folk into spending more was over before it began as the werewolf proved to be far from a team-player in the wrap up ‘The Sinister Secret of Sarnak!’

Werewolf by Night #11 saw Marv Wolfman sign on as writer for ‘Comes the Hangman’ (illustrated by the incredible Gil Kane and Tom Sutton), in which we learned something interesting about Philip Russell and the Committee, whilst Jack’s attention was distracted by a new apartment, a very odd neighbour and a serial kidnapper abducting young women to keep them safe from “corruption.” When he took Lissa Russell the hooded maniac soon found himself hunted…

The concluding chapter ‘Cry Werewolf!’ introduced the criminally underappreciated Don Perlin as inker, who would in a few short months become the strip’s penciller for the rest of the run, but before that Ploog and Chiaramonte returned for another session, introducing a manic mystic and a new love-interest (not the same person) in ‘His Name is Taboo’. An aged sorcerer wanted the werewolf’s energies for his own arcane purposes but his adopted daughter Topaz found her loyalties divided and her psionic abilities more help than hindrance to the ravening moon-beast.

‘Lo, the Monster Strikes!’ pitted the wolf against Taboo’s undead son and saw revelation and reconciliation between Philip and Jack Russell. As a result the young man and new girlfriend Topaz set off for Transylvania, the ancestral Russoff estate and a crossover confrontation with the Lord of Vampires.

Tomb of Dracula #18 (March 1974) began the clash in ‘Enter: Werewolf by Night’ (by Wolfman, Gene Colan & Tom Palmer) as Jack and Topaz investigated a possible cure for lycanthropy, only to be attacked by Dracula. Driven off by the girl’s psychic powers the Count realised the threat she posed to him and determined to slay her… In Werewolf by Night #15 ‘Death of a Monster!’ (Wolfman, Ploog & Chiaramonte) the battle of the beasts resolved into a draw, but only after Jack learned of his family’s long connection to Dracula…

Sadder, wiser but no less accursed, Jack headed back to America with Topaz but a unplanned stopover in Paris led to an impromptu clash with a modern incarnation of the Hunchback of Notre Dame (he doesn’t sing and he’s not very gentle here) in Ploog’s farewell performance ‘Death in the Cathedral!’

Issue #17 ‘The Behemoth!’ by Mike Friedrich and Don Perlin, saw Jack and Topaz escape Paris only to fall into the Committee’s latest scheme as the blustering Baron Thunder and his favourite monster tried to make the werewolf their plaything again, before the secret of Jack’s mystery neighbour was revealed in ‘Murder by Moonlight!’ as Thunder attacked again aided by witch-queen Ma Mayhem. However that was all a feint for the Committee to kidnap Lissa who would, one day, be a werewolf too…

Whilst searching for his sister Jack fell foul of two undead film-stars haunting the Hollywood backlots in #19’s ‘Vampires on the Moon’ whilst Giant-Size Creatures #1 re-imagined a failed costumed crusader to introduce a new hairy hero in ‘Tigra the Were-Woman!’ (Tony Isabella, Perlin and Vince Colletta) as Greer Nelson, one-time feminist avenger The Cat, was “killed” by Hydra agents, revived by ancient Cat-People and became an unwilling object of temporary affection to the feral and frisky Jack Russell…

Following ‘Waiter, there’s a Werewolf in my Soup!’ a text piece also from Giant-Size Creatures that explained the genesis of Marvel’s horror line, WBN #20 brought aboard Doug Moench to wrap up all the disparate plot threads in ‘Eye of the Wolf!’, a rushed but satisfactory conclusion featuring many werewolves, Thunder, Mayhem and lots and lots of action.

With the decks cleared Moench began to make the series uniquely his own, beginning with #21’s ‘One Wolf’s Cure… Another’s Poison!’ as the writer began playing up the ever encroaching 18th birthday of little Lissa and engineered the final reckoning with off-the-rails cop Lou Hackett, who had been going increasingly crazy in his hunt for the werewolf…

With the stage set for some truly outrageous yarn-spinning (all covered in a second Essential volume) this first compendium ends with a slight but engaging Marvel Team-Up #12 wherein Wein, Conway, Ross Andru and Don Perlin produced ‘Wolf at Bay!’ as the Wall-Crawler met the Werewolf and battled malevolent Mage Moondark in foggy, fearful San Francisco.

Topped off with the werewolf’s text entry from the Marvel Universe Handbook and an unused Ploog cover for Marvel Spotlight #4, this moody masterpiece of macabre menace and all-out animal action covers some of the most under-appreciated magic moments in Marvel history; tense, suspenseful and solidly compelling. If you must have a mixed bag of lycanthropes, bloodsuckers and moody young misses – this is a far more entertaining mix than many modern movies, books or miscellaneous matter…

© 1972, 1973, 1974, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Agent 13: Acolytes of Death – A TSR Graphic Novel


By Flint Dille, Buzz Dixon & Dan Spiegle (TSR)
ISBN: 0-88038-800-5

Tactical Studies Rules was a backroom venture started in 1973 by Gary Gygax and Don Kaye which they grew into the monolithic role-playing and recreational fantasy empire TSR, Inc. revolutionising home entertainment in the days before cheap home computers and on-line video games.

Beginning with formally published scenarios and rules for Dungeons and Dragons, Cavaliers and Roundheads and others including gaming versions of Marvel Comics characters, Movies, TV shows and cartoon classics like Rocky and Bullwinkle, they swiftly branched out into figures and miniatures, magazines, models, table-top war games, fantasy fiction, collector card-sets and inevitably comics – firstly licensing their properties to companies like DC (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and many more before inevitably creating their own line of comicbook and graphic novel “Modules” in the 1990s, based on their own game product, licensed properties such as Indiana Jones, Buck Rogers and even their critically acclaimed fantasy novels.

One of my very favourites is an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink period pulp action romp based on their kids novel series Agent 13: the Midnight Avenger (by Flint Dille and David Marconi) which shamelessly blended elements of the Shadow, Indiana Jones and Mandrake the Magician with classic horror and conspiracy thrillers to produce frantic fast-paced adventures of international intrigue and supernatural suspense set in the days before World War II.

Acolytes of Death is actually the second graphic novel volume (its predecessor Agent 13: the Midnight Avenger adapted to comics form the two novels The Invisible Empire and The Serpentine Assassin) but works as stand-alone saga which finds the indomitable super-spy, trained in the mysteries of ancient Lemuria, engaging his world-wide band of undercover operatives in a deadly quest.

It’s 1939 and at stake is humanity itself as immortal villain and would-be global dictator Itsu nears the end of his undying life. Preparing to enact an arcane ritual to renew his sinister eldritch energies, he convenes all the forces of darkness subject to his will: secret societies, witches, zombies and the world’s first vampire, to seek out the ideal venue for his unholy rebirth…

He has to be stopped: after all, just one of his wicked schemes is manipulating the nations of the Earth into another World War. He has other plans he hasn’t even started yet…

Agent 13’s uncanny powers are a result of his having been trained by the Brotherhood; Itsu’s cult of wizards and ninja-like Jinda Warriors, but the heroic tough guy rebelled and has been destroying these instigators of terror and chaos ever since…

Now in a rollercoaster race from Soviet Russia to Spain to New Orleans, 13, his dedicated associates and the sultry, morally ambivalent mercenary China White struggle to prevent the Dark Savant’s ultimate triumph, but can 13 trust his allies and the omens when so much is at stake…?

Fast-paced, far-fetched, joyous and frenetic, this is pure non-stop, action-packed nonsense of the sort beloved by fans of summer blockbuster movies, stirring and silly but utterly engrossing. The script rattles along and the incredible art by unsung genius Dan Spiegle (ably augmented by letterer Carrie Spiegle and colourist Les Dorscheid) is mesmerising in its expansive majesty.

Published in the extravagant, sleekly luxurious over-sized 285mm x 220mm European album format, this tantalising tome, as a graphic “module” also contains a fold-out map, counters, gaming data and background as well as a rule-set, just in case you and some judiciously selected friends feel like having a go at changing the spectacular ending…
© 1990 TSR, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Agent 13 is a trademark owned by Flint Dille and David Marconi.

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Rip M.D.


By Mitch Schauer, Mike Vosburg, Michael Lessa, & Justin Yamaguchi (Lincoln Butterfield/Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-369-9

Here’s a post-Christmas cracker that will delight monster-fans of all ages and signals a welcome return to upbeat and clever kids’ fiction.

Ripley Plimt is a bright lad with a hobby. Ever since he can remember he has adored classic monster movies. He’s an absolute expert on trivia, minutiae and lore. Now he’s eleven and all grown up he’s come to one inescapable conclusion… it’s all true!

When the kind-hearted lad mends a little bat’s broken wing one night it changes his life forever. Bitten by the fixing bug (but not the bat – that would be ungracious) he applies his unsuspected new skills to repairing the mouldering zombie corpse that shows up later – with the understanding and grudging approval of his parents and Uncle Will – and soon needy werewolves, protoplasmic blobs and ghost cats are all turning up to complicate his life.

The only real flies in the ointment are repulsive mortal kids Pretoria and Stanley DeMann, who used to live in Rip’s house and are prepared to go to extraordinary, murderous lengths to force the easy-going Plimpt family out…

Their millionaire dad is even worse and orchestrates a campaign of very human terror to get his way, almost driving Rip to abandon his unconventional dreams. However, the unscrupulous autocrat has some dark secrets of his own and Limbo the dead cat and a pretty little vampire girl know how best to exploit them…

Writer, artist, Producer, designer and Emmy® Award-winning animator Mitch Schauer (creator of Angry Beavers and Freakazoid!) is a founding member of Lincoln Butterfield, an independent animation company also comprising Robert Hughes and painter Michael Lessa. Comics veteran Mike Vosburg, who inked Schauer’s pencilled art here, has a glittering prize or two himself: as well as his funnybook career, he won his own Emmy® for directing Spawn cartoons and is chief storyboard artist for the Narnia movie franchise. Co-producing this snazzy graphic novel with electrically eclectic comics publisher Fantagraphics Books is LB’s first foray into print – but surely not their last.

With painted colour effects from Lessa and Justin Yamaguchi and including a wonderful development art section, this spectacular, spooktacular romp is a fabulously punchy, action-packed, wickedly funny treat for kids of all ages that will leave every reader voraciously hungry for more…

© 2010. All Rights Reserved. A joint production between Fantagraphics Books and Lincoln Butterfield.

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Hellblazer: The Fear Machine


By Jamie Delano and various & (Vertigo)
ISBN: 978-1-84576-880-5

You’ve either heard of John Constantine by now or you haven’t, so I’ll be as brief as I can. Originally created by Alan Moore during his groundbreaking run on Swamp Thing, he is a mercurial modern wizard, a chancer who plays with magic on his own terms for his own ends. He is not a hero. He is not a nice person. Sometimes though, he’s all there is between us and the void.

Given his own series by popular demand, he premiered in the dying days of Reaganite Atrocity in the US but at the height of Thatcherite Barbarism in England, so as we’re singing the same song now (but with second-rate Britain’s Got Talent cover-artists as leaders) I thought I’d cover a few old gems that might be regaining their relevance in the days ahead…

In 1987 Creative Arts and Liberal attitudes were dirty words in many quarters and the readership of Vertigo was pretty easy to profile. Jamie Delano began the series with relatively safe horror plots, introducing us to Constantine’s unpleasant nature, chequered history and odd acquaintances but even then discriminating fans were aware of a joyously anti-establishment political line and wild metaphorical underpinnings.

Skinheads, racism, Darwinian politics, gruesome supernature and more abound in the dark dystopian present of John Constantine – a world of cutting edge of mysticism, Cyber-shamanism and political soul-stealing. In Delano’s world the edges between science and magic aren’t blurred – they simply don’t exist.

Some terrors are eternal and some seem inextricably tied to a specific time and place: The Fear Machine (collecting issues #14-22 of the mature readers monthly comicbook) is an engrossing extended epic which began when the wizard went on the run after the tabloid press pilloried him as a Satanist serial killer in ‘Touching the Earth’ (by Delano, Richard Piers Rayner & Mark Buckingham).

Forced to flee his inner London comfort-zone he is adopted by a band of neo-pagan Travellers (apparently as responsible for all the ills plaguing society in the 1980s and 1990s as fat people and immigrants are today…) and journeys through the heartland of Britain.

Going native amongst the drop-outs, druggies, bath-dodgers and social misfits Constantine buddies up with an immensely powerful psychic girl named Mercury and her extremely engaging mum, Marj, but even amidst these freewheeling folks he can feel something nasty building. The first inkling occurs in ‘Shepherd’s Warning’ when Mercury discovers an ancient stone circle has been fenced off by a quasi-governmental company named Geotroniks. Someone is trying to shackle Mother Earth’s circulatory system of Ley lines…

Meanwhile elsewhere, people are compelled to kill and mutilate themselves and Geotroniks is watching and taking notes…

When police raid the Travellers campsite in ‘Rough Justice’ Mercury is abducted and imprisoned in a secret complex where the mind’s limits and the Earth’s forces are being radically tested. Cutting edge stuff… if only the subjects and observing scientists can be persuaded to stop committing suicide…

Mike Hoffman illustrated the fourth chapter, ‘Fellow Travellers’ as Constantine headed back to London for help in finding Mercury and uncovering the secrets of Geotroniks. He gains a horrific insight when the train he’s on is devastated by a psychic assault which makes all the passengers destroy themselves…

‘Hate Mail & Love Letters’ (with art by Buckingham & Alfredo Alcala) begins two months later. Marj and the travellers are hiding in the Highlands with a fringe group called the Pagan Nation, led by the mysterious Zed – an old friend of the wily trickster. Constantine keeps digging, but across the country suicide and self harm are increasing. Society itself seems diseased, but at least the Satanist witch hunt has been forgotten as the Press rage on to their next sanctimonious cause celebré…

Touching base with his few police contacts and pet journalists the metropolitan mage soon stumbles into a fresh aspect of the mystery when a Masonic hitman begins removing anyone who could be of use to his enquiries in ‘The Broken Man’. Saving journalist Simon Hughes from assassination in a particularly exotic manner guaranteed to divert attention from his politically damaging investigations, Constantine finds new clues that a the psychic horror and social unrest are all being orchestrated by reactionary aspects of the government and a sinister “Old Boy network”…

And somewhere dark and hidden Mercury’s captors are opening doors to places mortals were never meant to…

As the Pagan Nation’s priestesses work their subtle magics to find the missing girl and save humanity’s soul, a disgusting, conglomerate beast-thing is maturing, made from fear and pain, greed and suffering and deep black despair: provoking a response from and guest-appearance by Morpheus, the Sandman, and prompting Constantine, Hughes and possibly the last decent copper in London to go hunting…

Picking up another recruit in the form of KGB scientist Sergei, events spiral ever faster as the Freemasons – or at least their “Magi Caecus” elite – are revealed to be organising the plot in ‘Betrayal’, combining Cold War paranormal research, economic imperialism, Thatcherite divisive self-gratification and the order’s own quasi-mystical arcana to create a situation in which their guiding principles will control society and the physical world. It nothing more than a greedy power-grab using blood and horror to fuel the engines of change…

All pretence of scientific research at Geotroniks is abandoned in ‘The God of All Gods’ as Masonic hitman Mr. Webster goes off the deep end, ignoring his own Lodge Grandmaster’s orders to abort the project amidst an increasing national atmosphere of mania, determined to free the fearful thing they’ve created and unmake the modern world at all costs. Constantine’s allies are all taken and the wizard is left to fight on alone.

Knee deep in intrigue, conspiracy and spilled guts, humanity seems doomed unless Constantine’s band of unhappy brothers and a bunch of Highland witch women can pull the biggest, bloodiest rabbit out of the mother of all hats in the spectacular conclusion ‘Balance’…

The heady blend of authoritarian intransigence, counterculture optimism, espionage action, murder-mystery conspiracy theories and ancient sex-magic mix perfectly to create an oppressive tract of inexorable terror and smashed hope before the astounding climax forestalls if not saves the day of doom, in this extremely impressive dark chronicle which still resonates with the bleak and cheerless zeitgeist of the time.

This is a superb example of modern horror fiction, inextricably linking politics, religion human nature and sheer bloody-mindedness as the root cause of all ills. That our best chance of survival is a truly reprehensible exploitative monomaniac seems a perfect metaphor for the world we’re locked into…

Clever, subversive and painfully prophetic, even at its most outlandish, this tale jabs at the subconscious with its scratchy edginess and jangles the nerves from beginning to end. An unmissable feast for fear fans, humanists and political mavericks everywhere…

© 1989, 2008 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.