As the last shipment before Halloween, this week naturally brought a ton of horror books. Let’s look:
FVZA: Federal Vampire and Zombie Agency #1 (of 3) — Writer: David Hine; Art: Roy Allan Martinez
This is the most expensive, at $4.99, but it’s squarebound, with nice production values and something like 56 pages of story. The 44-page lead involves an alternate-history US that always had vampires and zombies around, eradicated them in the ’60s with vaccines, but now has them coming back. Moody, effective art, showcased on decent paper stock, helps quite a bit; so does a real sense of background and world-building. Unfortunately, most of it comes in the form of an extended narrative info-dump, which slows the story down considerably. Still, if you want to while away a Halloween evening reading about blood-suckers and rotting animated corpses, this isn’t a bad way to do it.
Abe Sapien: The Haunted Boy #1 (of 1) — Writers: Mike Mignola and John Arcudi; Art: Patric Reynolds
A one-off ghost story, involving a spectral drowned boy, with the kind of twist into extended supernatural mythology that we’ve come to expect from the Mignola books. Ol’ Fish-face is probably the least interesting of the B.P.R.D. cast, but he’s effective at the kind of solo supernatural investigation required here, and while there’s nothing extraordinary about either the story or the art, this is a smooth tale of supernatural possession that doesn’t waste the readers’ time.
Necrosha #1 (of 1) — Writers: Craig Kyle and Christopher Yost, Zeb Wellas, Mike Carey; Art: Clayton Crain, Ibraim Robertson and Laurence Campbell
New Mutants #6 — Writer: Zeb Wells; Pencils: Diogenes Neves; Inks: Ed Tadeo
Give Marvel partial credit for bravery here: Necrosha, which involves Bad Girl Selene raising an army of dead Marvel heroes and villains, is going to be seen as a total ripoff of Blackest Night. That wouldn’t have to be a problem — DC has no premium on zombies, after all (and it was Marvel Zombies that everyone was talking about first) — except that this is a ripoff of BN, only stupider; it’s by the regular X-Force team, which means murky art, a nonsensical plot, and lots of gratuitous-but-PG-rated violence. Wheee. There are also stories leading into tie-ins of the regular issues of X-Men: Legacy and New Mutants; the New Mutants one leads into issue #6 of that title, and involves the return of both Doug Ramsey and Warlock. Listen carefully: about 1000 miles west of Hawaii, partway to Australia, there’s a small coral atoll, a postage-stamp-sized break in the endless sea. That’s where the people who care about Doug Ramsey live.
Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box #1 — Writer: Scott Lobdell; Art: Michael Gaydos
This is a generic horror idea, the kind of “Monkey’s Paw” take-off that everyone tries to write this time of year, and of course Hewitt seems to have had nothing to do with it other than mumble the concept to the IDW staff. Lobdell and Gaydos are pros enough that it’s not embarrassing, but it’s forgettable; the only reason I’m mentioning it is because Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Music Box is the most wrongheadedly suggestive title for a comic since Giant-Size Man-Thing.
Dark Reign: The List: Punisher #1 (of 1) — Writer: Rick Remender; Pencils: John Romita Jr.; Inks: Klaus Janson
The art team makes this worth a look — the Romita Jr./Janson team gets to out-Kick-Ass themselves — and props to Remender, too: the creative team’s rendition of this Castle/Dark Wolverine face-off is so over-the-top, so splashily violent and game-changing in its treatment of the main character, that it’s going to be very hard to resist reading the next regular issue of his title. Considering how many of the other Dark Reign specials have ended with their characters’ status still relentlessly quo, you have to admire the willingness here to shake things up. Yes, this is a character that they once turned into an African American (no, not by getting an African-American character to take over the role; they turned the Italian Frank Castle into an actual African-American. Please don’t ask…), and his current… um, condition isn’t likely to last any longer than that one did, but at least it’s not generic or boring.
Anita Blake #11 — Writer: Laurell K. Hamilton; Adaptation: Jess Ruffner; Art: Ron Lim
Grimm Fairy Tales: Halloween Special #1 (of 1) — Writer: Raven Gregory; Art: Anthony Spay, Jean-Paul Deshong, Claudio Sepulveda and Rick Ross
Hack/Slash #27 — Writer: Tim Seeley; Art: Bryan Baugh
These are the dregs of the lot, comics where the horror occurs when the reader realizes the money that has been wasted on them. Anita Blake is just boring (famously so; the online reviewer Chris Sims takes great delight in ripping apart every issue, in articles that are much more entertaining than the comic itself), with pages and pages of generic art of people sitting around talking and grimacing. Grimm Fairy Tales is, simply, awful: badly-drawn, sanitized T&A for 14-year-olds, with predictable plots that take classic stories and “update” them so that they become stupid and pointless. Hack/Slash, a series chronicling the adventures of a Goth girl and her hulking-but-good-hearted companion, who travel around the country dispatching serial killers, has lasted for 27 issues on the strength of T&A too, but at least its stories are sometimes clever. It lives and dies by its art, though, and the last few issues have been spectacularly offbase, with cartoony, sexless visuals that render any suspense or horror laughable.
Phil Mateer
