It’s Friday the 13th, and that seems like a great time to review some horror comics.

Morella and The Murders in the Rue Morgue

Another of superstar horror illustrator Richard Corben’s adaptations of the works of Edgar Allan Poe — this time, we get the mystical reincarnation shocker “Morella” and the groundbreaking mystery “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

Verdict: Thumbs up. Y’all know I love Corben, right? It’s always a good thing to read the work of a true master of horror art.

Coffin Hill #8

The bulk of this issue is a flashback to Eve Coffin’s career as a cop — as a rookie, she was assigned to a police task force to track down the notorious Ice Fisher serial killer. She deduces fairly quickly that the killer is a secret witch who is murdering women as sacrifices. The two detectives on the task force aren’t entirely sure what to think of her — the one doesn’t believe in the supernatural; the other thinks her help could get him into the FBI. And Internal Affairs suspects something about her from the very start.

Verdict: Ehh, I dunno. It’s a very nice police procedural — in fact, it’s so good, there’s just no reason to go shoehorning a bunch of supernatural stuff into the story.

Manifest Destiny #7

The Lewis and Clark expedition seems to be going well. The crew are getting adjusted well to their mission, the townspeople rescued from the fort are getting acquainted with the crew, and Sacagawea is capturing giant beetles for dissection. But rough times are just below the surface — one of the new recruits from the fort has figured out the expedition has a secret agenda, and Clark would prefer to respond to her discovery by having her murdered. And when the ship runs aground on a gigantic underwater arch, just like the one near the fort, it means much worse troubles are coming soon.

Verdict: Thumbs up. More exploration, more bizarre discoveries, more of the worst of human nature, all wrapped up in the cockeyed optimism of long-past history.

The Returning #4

Hordes of changers are after Beth Turner. They go after her rescuer, they go after her last friend and his family, and they plan to kill her and turn the whole world over to the demons inhabiting their bodies. Can Beth survive?

Verdict: Thumbs down. It just never turned out to be particularly interesting — and definitely not very scary. Too bad.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Books are awesome. And book snobs suck.
• The Terror of Paddington Bear.
• This is probably the best way to talk to the ammosexuals.
• It occurs to me that George Will would benefit greatly from a crowbar upside the head.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #3

Teen Loki doesn’t really appear in this issue — what we’re treated to is a tale of the ancient past of Old Supervillain Loki. After Old Supervillain Loki walks out of his secret Asgardian prison, he travels in time to meet a young Odin. After befriending him, Loki kills a giant otter — and Odin only learns later that the otter was actually an innkeeper’s son who was able to change his shape. Loki agrees to get the innkeeper and his other sons a vast amount of gold to pay them back — and he gets that by finding a giant gar guarding a hoard of gold and blowing it up with a bazooka. But one of the innkeeper’s sons steals the gold and becomes Fafnir the dragon — and then is slain by Sigurd. What does this all have to do with Loki’s byzantine plans?

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a fun story of Loki’s treachery — and it’s got the mad, anarchic, drawn-out lunacy you expect to see in old Norse legends. Nevertheless, I do wish we could focus on Teen Loki, instead of taking a detour to a villain spotlight only three issues in…

The Premature Burial

Oh, hey, you got a new comic by horror illustrator genius Richard Corben? Working on more Edgar Allan Poe adaptations? Well, do we know anyone around here who’d be interested in that?

What’ve we got here? Basically adaptations of Poe’s “The Premature Burial” and “A Cask of Amontillado.” Fairly straightforward, I think.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m a sucker for Corben — I love almost everything he does. I did have a bit of a stutter at “Amontillado,” which is, far and away, my favorite of Poe’s stories — and therefore, it didn’t quite live up to my mental image of EAP’s tale of cruel, cold-blooded revenge. Still, it’s hard to hold that against Corben — both stories are very, very good, and I reckon I shouldn’t blame him for not being able to read my mind.

Revival #19

Lots of little things going on — Lester Majak’s beloved dog has died and been possessed by a ghost, which then tries to possess Lester. The local rotten wingnut terrorist wannabe is antagonizing the sheriff while his minions get up to something shady undercover. Officer Dana Cypress tries to convince Ibrahaim to help her investigate Em’s murder. The mayor is up to something — he’s got his wife tied up in the bathtub, and he’s hiding something more serious from the Cypresses. And Em meets up with Skateboarding Jesus and the Easter Bunny — and at least one of them is a Reviver.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Some really weird stuff going on, some really ominous stuff, and some really creepy stuff, too — probably ain’t nothin’ creepier than Lester’s dog and his glowing eyes.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Here’s a really interesting long read about how one arrogant media schmuck single-handedly wrecked what was going to be a big-name independent video game jam.
• None of the big movie critics understood the Black Widow in Marvel’s movies — in fact, they never even tried to understand her.
• Marine Todd is really lame when the wingnuts do it, but really awesome when everyone else does it.

The Sandman: Overture #1

Neil Gaiman writing Sandman again? With J.H. Williams III on art? Is it any wonder this was something many comics readers were very interested in?

Basically, this is a Sandman prequel — the adventure that Dream was engaged in immediately before the first issue of Sandman in 1989. We get reacquainted with a few of the Sandman supporting cast as they would’ve appeared around 1913 — the Corinthian is looking for victims, Destiny and Death perceive dire omens for Morpheus’ future, Merv Pumpkinhead has had a fateful encounter with Sigmund Freud, and something strange is happening to Dream — something so strange it surprises even him.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, I’m keeping the description deliberately vague. Half the fun of this is enjoying the surprises. But the story catches your interest from the beginning — a dreaming flower? Yes, please, more. — and the characters are true to how we remember them. Even the briefly-met new characters are cool in all the ways that Sandman characters should be.

Williams’ art is, as always, stunningly gorgeous, and his layouts are just so much fun. Quorian’s tale is told through branches, the Corinthian’s through teeth, Destiny’s through pages of his book, George Portcullis’ through a portcullis. And the stunning beauty of the gatefold plot twist — man, it’s something else. If you love the Sandman — and if you love comics, you really are required to love the Sandman — you definitely need to go read this book.

The Raven and the Red Death

Very simply, retellings of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” through Richard Corben’s unique and beautiful visual and storytelling style.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I got excited about this as soon as I heard it was coming out, and I was not disappointed. I love Corben’s work, and it’s fantastic that we’re still able to see comics from him on a fairly regular basis.

Itty Bitty Hellboy #3

The gang makes banana walnut pamcakes and then annoys Baba Yaga (who lives in a bucket). They want her to use her magic powers to make everything big. Banana walnut pamcakes, cupcakes, potato chips, shoes, lobsters, you name it. Baba gets sick of it all and sends them all… TO HELL. Everyone really seems to enjoy it, and all the demons are convinced that Hellboy is going to use his big stone hand to destroy the world. Can banana walnut pamcakes save the world from fiery destruction? Meanwhile, Baba and Hecate both fall in love with Roger, so Baba clones him, so both of the girls can get some sweet, sweet homunculus lovin’.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Seriously, I think by now y’all should know how much I love this stuff, right? Baba and her bucket are hilarious, as are Liz and her love of hellfire, the giant pancakes, and the never-unfunny running gag about Roger’s underwear.