H.P. Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror #2

More of Lovecraft’s stories and poetry re-imagined in comic format by brilliant horror illustrator Richard Corben. We open with “The Music of Erich Zann,” retold in a fairly straightforward fashion. After that, Lovecraft’s poem “The Canal” gets reinterpreted into a nightmarish saga of a horrible flood, and HPL’s poem “The Lamp” becomes a story about explorers in a defiled Egyptian tomb.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I didn’t start out liking this one as much as I liked the previous issue, but on slower re-reading, there’s more stuff I actually enjoy here. There’s the perfect decayed city architecture that Lovecraft preferred, there’s the creepy textual version of Zann’s music, the transcription of the modern nightmare of post-Katrina New Orleans, the invisible menace freed from the crypt. This is beautiful work, simultaneously subtle and gory. If you love horror, especially Lovecraftian cosmic horror, go get this comic.

 

Locke and Key #6

In the finale of this series, psychotic Sam Lesser has the upper hand, with Tyler Locke under the gun, his mother and cousin locked in the wine cellar, and sister Kinsey clubbed into unconsciousness. Sam is after a couple of mystical keys — the same keys the spirit in the well wants Bode Locke to find. Bode goes through the magic door that turns him into a ghost so he can find the keys — once he gives the “Anywhere Key” to the spirit, she takes it, walks out a door, and vanishes. Meanwhile, Tyler tries to get away from Sam, falls against the “ghost door” and, as far as Sam can tell, dies. Is there going to be any way to stop Sam before he kills the rest of the family, too?

Verdict: Thumbs up. A good mix of suspense, mundane chase/action sequences, and extremely creepy weirdness. I wish we’d seen a bit more about the family’s ancestral home, the Keyhouse, as it looked like it’d make for a wonderful haunted house. There’s also word that there’s a new series on the way toward the end of the year.

 

Pigeons from Hell #4

The Blassenville sisters and the sheriff return to the old plantation to do battle against the horror inside. After that, there’s a great deal of chaos.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I’ve been loving this series, but the final chapter just doesn’t measure up. And I gotta put the blame on the artwork. It’s just too dark, too muddy, too confusing. I read the original story, so I should have a pretty good idea about what’s going on here, but I just couldn’t keep track of what was going on.

 

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.

I picked up a couple of horror books that I’ve been thinking of as sure things — that nevertheless just didn’t float my boat this time.

 

The Goon #24

There are two stories in this one — a spirit tells a hermit called the Buzzard how Lonely Street got to be so cursed and awful. Basically, he was a pioneer who was stranded in the woods with his family, his business partner, and a woman he lusted for. She manipulated him into becoming a cannibal and killing his family for her, then she left him alone to die. The second story is a silly little work about a gate to hell opening up, leading the Goon and Frankie on a short quest to shut it down.

Verdict: Thumbs down. I liked the first story, but the second just bored me.

 

Locke and Key #4

First, lemme say that’s a really pretty cover. It’s got nice, shiny gold lettering that, unfortunately, doesn’t scan very well.

The psychotic Sam Lesser has escaped from the insane asylum and is killing his way across the country to get to Tyler Locke and the rest of his family in the Keyhouse mansion in Lovecraft, Massachusetts. The best moment comes in a flashback when Sam watches a figure in a painting send him a message. Nice and creepy there, but the rest just didn’t grab my interest.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Granted, at least part of my problem with this one is that I read the first issue, then missed the next two. Still, I can’t really recommend it. Maybe it’ll be better when they collect the whole thing into a trade paperback.

Sorry, y’all, nothing real goofy-fun this time.

 

Pigeons from Hell #1

Right here, we got a horror comic with a Texas pedigree.

It’s based on a classic and extremely creepy story by Robert E. Howard. He’s best known as the creator of fantasy heroes like Conan the Barbarian, Kull the Conqueror, and Solomon Kane, but Howard wrote a lot of horror, too. He corresponded with horror legend H.P. Lovecraft and wrote quite a few stories in the Cthulhu Mythos. He was a Texan, too — the guy who created Conan the Barbarian lived in a little town called Cross Plains, down in Callahan County.

And this comic is written by another Texan with tons of experience writing horror — Joe R. Lansdale. He lives in Nacogdoches, and he’s written some of the weirdest, creepiest stories I’ve read. He helped create the splatterpunk genre, and he’s penned a bunch of horror/Western combos. He’s already written his fair share of comics, including a Conan miniseries and several series about Jonah Hex. I discovered his stuff back when I first hit the post-Stephen-King period of my horror-readin’, right about the same time as I stumbled across Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” and the classic zombie anthology “The Book of the Dead.” So seeing Howard’s and Lansdale’s names on the cover promises me some classic pulp horror and modern pulp horror all wrapped up into one gory knot.

So aaaaanyway… This comic isn’t a direct adaptation of Howard’s “Pigeons from Hell” — it’s updated to the present day, starring a couple of sisters, Claire and Janet Blassenville, descendants of slaves and new inheritors of an old Louisiana plantation. They’ve brought along three friends to check out their new property, and what they find is a filthy, decaying wreck of a mansion, infested with thousands of pigeons. What were the stories the Blassenville sisters used to hear about pigeons as the souls of the damned escaping Hell? Probably nothing, right?

Well, one of their friends gets injured, and when they try to get him to a hospital, they lose control of the car and drive it into a lake. Nowhere else to turn, so they go back to the mansion. Did they see someone inside the house? Why is it so ice-cold when it’s the middle of summer? What’s stirring out in the local graveyard?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I am loving this one.

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.

Ladies and gentlemen, boils and ghouls, welcome to my very favorite day of the year. The best holiday on the calendar. The one day a year when we celebrate our fears and our taboos.

Sure, I know a lot of y’all prefer other holidays, like Christmas or Easter or Arbor Day. I like them just fine. But Halloween is the one day (and night!) I look forward to all year long. On November 1, I start jonesing for Halloween. That’s just the way I roll. Halloween is the most wonderful day of the year, and that’s all there is to it.

And I know some of y’all don’t want your kids celebrating it because you think it’s Satanic. First of all, seriously, I’m rolling my eyes at you. Yeah, it had its origins centuries ago in various pagan traditions, but it was enthusiastically adopted by the church as a way to encourage those same pagans to join up. And yeah, Halloween has long, long ago lost pretty much every connection it had to any church holidays. In other words, at this point, it’s a fully secular holiday. Just like the Fourth of July, Valentine’s Day, April Fool’s Day, or New Year’s Day. If you hate Halloween because it’s secular, then I don’t wanna hear about you shooting off fireworks or taking Labor Day off. If you hate Halloween because it’s got pagan origins, I don’t wanna hear about you setting up a Christmas tree or hiding Easter eggs, which also came from pagan traditions.

But still, even though I’m rolling my eyes at you, go ahead and don’t celebrate it if you don’t want to. It ain’t my job to make anyone celebrate any holidays at all, so whatever gives you joy, go for it. I wish you’d let your kids have their fun, but they ain’t my kids to raise, are they? Although I’d also like to point out that your grandparents and great-grandparents and great-greats celebrated the heck out of Halloween in their day, and I’ll betcha a shiny nickel that they could out-holy you any day of the week. Still, like I said, as it harms none, do what thou wilt, baby. Let the rest of us enjoy Halloween, and we’ll let you observe it any way you want.

In the end, I can’t see anything wrong with one day for trick-or-treating, one day for horror movie marathons on TV, one day for jack o’lanterns and construction-paper bats, one day for mist-shrouded cemeteries, one day for vampires in shadowy crypts, one day for the shambling undead, for howling at the moon, for buzzing chainsaws, for haunted houses, for headless horsemen, for black birds, for cobwebs, creaking doors, tentacled horrors, evil dolls, open graves, lurking figures in the dark, rotting skulls, chuckles from empty attics, and someone calling you from inside your house. I see nothing wrong with one day to celebrate fear, our oldest and most primal emotion.

Have a Happy Halloween. Eat some Halloween candy, watch an old horror movie, read some old ghost stories, celebrate the fun and mystery of the day with your friends and family. But go outside sometime tonight, look up at that night sky, breathe in that night air, and give yourself just a moment to wonder what’s hiding out there, just on the other side of those shadows. Happy Halloween, and pleasant dreams.

 

Oy, I’m in a rotten mood. Yesterday started out just fine. I got a half-day off, ate a stellar lunch, and watched “Shaun of the Dead.” And then I sat down to make Halloween cards for the first time ever, because the Halloween cards in the stores are frickin’ awful. “Oh, look it’s a happy pumpkin, and he wishes you a ‘Boo-tiful Halloween!'” DIE, HORRIBLE SAPPY HALLOWEEN CARDS.

Anyway, I put a pretty good design together, went to start printing them out, and bam, the printer starts fritzing up on me. Can’t afford to get it replaced or (Hah!) fixed before, um, 2014, so Halloween cards will have to wait for some other year.

So anyway, I’m cranky, and the only thing that gives me joy is zombie movies, so let’s look at dead people.

 

Marvel Zombies

This series has been Marvel’s big cash cow for the past couple of years. The series, which made its debut in 2006, was written by Robert Kirkman and illustrated by Sean Phillips, with gory, hilarious covers by Arthur Suydam. The series gets its name from a nickname for die-hard Marvel fans, and it gets its premise from dozens of zombie movies over the years. It’s set in an alternate universe, where every Marvel Comics superhero and villain has been turned into a flesh-eating zombie. Oh, but these aren’t the mindless shamblers from the movies — they’ve got all their powers, all their intelligence, and they’re almost impossible to destroy. But they have so little willpower that they actually manage to completely strip the planet of all meat-based lifeforms in just 24 hours.

After that, the zombies fight non-zombified characters like Magneto, the Silver Surfer, and Galactus hisself. The zombie-heroes are already pretty gloppy at the beginning, and they keep losing more and more chunks of themselves as the series goes on. Spider-Man loses a leg, Wolverine loses an arm, Captain America gets the top of his head lopped off.

Since that first series, there have been three follow-up series, including one that guest-starred Ash from the “Evil Dead” movies. The Marvel Zombies have been made into toys, action figures, games, T-shirts, and probably Christmas ornaments, lingerie, and breakfast cereals at this point. Seriously, Marvel will slap the Marvel Zombies on anything.

In the end, honestly, I give the miniseries a thumbs-down. The plot is shallow and predictable, and the characterization is just bloody awful. Sure, getting zombified is sure to wreck your psyche, but the only character who expresses the slightest regret about eating his friends and family, much less committing global genocide, is Spider-Man. Dialogue is also fairly weak, just because the Hulk is the only character with any sort of unique voice. The rest of the dialogue is pretty interchangeable.

Like I said, the covers are just plain awesome. They’re all zombified parodies of classic Marvel covers. But if you want some good zombie mayhem in your comics this year, shamble past this series and sink your teeth into “The Walking Dead” or “Zombie Tales” instead.