H.P. Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror #1

Wait, wait. Richard Corben, one of the most legendary and outright coolest illustrators in decades, adapting the stories and poems of horror super-legend H.P. Lovecraft? Sign me up.

We get three adaptations in this issue — Lovecraft’s story “Dagon,” which is a pretty straight adaptation, and two poems, “Recognition” and “A Memory,” both taken from “Fungi from Yuggoth.” The poems are both interpreted a great deal more broadly to give them an actual plot. And on top of that, you also get the original text versions as written by Lovecraft.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Great illustrations, the stories rock, and you get the full text of the adapted works? That’s a complete shoggoth-load of awesomeness, all for just four bucks. If you love horror comics, go pick this one up now.

 

The Evil Dead #4

The final issue of this adaptation of Sam Raimi’s modern classic horror flick sees Ash making his final stand against the demonic forces possessing his dead friends and the cabin itself. We get a little violence, a little gore (okay, okay, a LOT of gore), a little bravado from Ash, and a very nice re-creation of the film’s mood while the house tries to drive Ash crazy. But is the horror over, or is it just beginning…?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The entire story was a pretty straightforward, no-nonsense copy of the original movie, sure, but John Bolton’s painting in this series has been completely phenomenal. Lush, perfect, gruesome, you name it — all by itself, it’s been entirely worth the price of the comics.

Let’s go ahead and hit the past few weeks’ worth of horror comics, with some stories about haunted mansions, haunted asylums, and haunted cabins…

 

Locke and Key #1

The guy who wrote this is named Joe Hill — not familiar? It’s Stephen King’s son. So I guess this is pedigreed horror.

The plot here spotlights Tyler Locke, eldest son of the Locke family. After a couple of unbalanced teens make a deranged attack on the family, Tyler and the other surviving Lockes move to Lovecraft, Massachusetts, to live in the family’s ancestral mansion, known for unspecified reasons as Keyhouse. There, Tyler tries to deal with the family trauma, piled on top of his own teen angst, while the lunatic killer makes deals with unsavory powers to escape the madhouse, and Tyler’s little brother Bode finds a key that unlocks a very dangerous door.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Definitely a good introduction. Good characters, good dialogue, lots of tension. The story is definitely rated M for Mature — this ain’t exactly the Groovie Ghoolies for pre-teens, ya know? Keyhouse is very interesting — I’ve got some suspicions about where the plot is about to go, but we’ll see, won’t we? I’m certainly looking forward to the rest of this comic — the first issue sold out awfully fast, and I hope I don’t miss any of the rest of the series.

 

B.P.R.D.: 1946 #3

It’s still 1946, and we’re still focused on the first major adventure of Professor Bruttenholm and the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Last issue, we discovered a vampire in a barn and learned that Varvara, the adorable little girl who heads up the USSR’s occult research division, is actually a powerful demon. In this issue, the Americans and Russians visit an abandoned insane asylum, where over a hundred maniacs were injected with vampire blood to turn them into monsters. Of course, the half-vampires attack under cover of darkness, several people lose their lives, and Bruttenholm and Varvara meet up with a full-blood vampire who has his own dire plans.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nicely spooky, especially those scenes in the dark with half-vampires creeping up behind unsuspecting soldiers. Lone criticism: Things are a bit too chaotic, and it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on sometimes. Still, Varvara is such a horrible, horrible little girl, and Baron Konig is nicely creepy, too.

 

Evil Dead #3

This series continues its re-creation of Sam Raimi’s horror classic, as Ash and his friends are slowly whittled away by the demonic forces inhabiting the cabin. Ash tries to hold on to his own humanity as everyone else gets possessed and turned into Deadites, but it’s becoming more and more clear that his friends are beyond hope, and the only way for him to get out alive is to give in and start killing everyone…

Verdict: Thumbs up. I started out irritated that the series is so perfectly re-creating the movie, but I kept getting so into the groovy horror — it’s been years since I saw the movie, and it really does feel good to get re-acquainted with the story and the characters. And John Bolton’s paintings in this are fantastic. Can paintings of gory, horrific demon-possessed zombies be described as beautiful? I’m gonna go out on a (severed) limb here and say that they can, and they are.

I spent yesterday reading some old horror stories. Old stuff — M.R. James, Robert W. Chambers, turn-of-the-century ghost story stuff, plus I watched some old trailers for horror flicks, too. So I’m in the mood to review a couple new horror comics. Let’s get to it, kiddies.

 

B.P.R.D.: 1946 #2

The adventures of Hellboy’s father, Trevor Bruttenholm, continue in post-war Berlin during the first years of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense. Bruttenholm and his associate, Trevor, narrowly avoid being attacked in the abandoned asylum when their soldier assistants show up to bring them home. Later, they meet up with an old woman who keeps her son, a former inmate at that asylum, locked away in a barn. The reason: The poor kid’s been turned into a vampire! The kid drags one of the soldiers up to the rafters when the Soviets show up — Varvara, the creepy little blonde girl who runs the USSR’s occult research division, had Bruttenholm followed. We learn a bit more about her after she goes into the barn to talk to the vamp, and later when she tells Bruttenholm an old legend about Peter the Great.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Varvara is a very, very scary little girl.

 

The Evil Dead #2

Ash and his friends are spending the weekend in a deserted cabin in the woods. One of them has already gone on a hover-in-the-air, eyes-gone-dead-white, speaking-in-freaky-voices, and trying-to-kill-everyone binge, but they’ve managed to lock her in the basement. Too bad that doesn’t solve the problem, as one other goes missing while another turns deadite on them — and not even hacking her up with an axe looks like it’ll keep her down.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yeah, it’s still largely a re-telling of the original “Evil Dead” film, but there ain’t nothing in the world wrong with a little early ’80s gore. John Bolton’s paintings are also awfully nice to look at.

The Evil Dead #1

You’re not reading that wrong — Dark Horse Comics went and made a comic book of the greatest low-budget horrorfest ever filmed in Morristown, Tennessee.

The plot? If you’ve ever seen “The Evil Dead,” you know it already. Ash and some of his friends go to a cabin in the woods, play a tape recording of a transcription from the Necronomicon, and bad things happen.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, it’s a fairly direct re-creation of the 1981 movie. But it’s an excellent re-creation. The artwork is really interesting, and perfect for a horror comic. I don’t know how many issues are planned for this series, or if they plan on deviating much from the movie plotline — but I don’t really care. I plan on picking up every one of these.

(And for the horror obsessives out there — I think this is definitely an adaptation of the original movie, not “Dead by Dawn” or “Army of Darkness.” So far, there’s none of the slapstick that dominated the other movies, plus some of the dialogue from the first movie has already been quoted. Of course, it’s always possible that this comic will do a bit of mix-and-match of the three movies. In fact, that would be pretty dad-gummed awesome.)