Archive for the ‘Comics Review’ Category

Howdy folks. Welcome to day three of the let’s-beat-Creepy-to-death marathon. Those of you with exceptional observational skills Might have noticed that this is actually day 5. It’s supposed to be 3 but sometimes things interfere with my ability to write. (Like not really wanting to.)

It’s kind of amazing how many ideas seem to be good at the time we have them, but once we have to keep doing them for a while they loose there initial charm.

Well let’s get to it. Today I shall ream Hell Hound Blues.

Just kidding! This story was wonderful. It was written by Dan Braun and illustrated by Angelo Torres. I was not able to find out much about Dan. He seems to have done some editing on other Dark Horse stuff, but I was unable to find other writing credits. Judging from how well this story was written, I have to believe that he has done some writing before.

As for Angelo, it’s a weird story. When I first got Creepy issue #1 and started reading it, I was frankly appalled by the piece-of-shit opening story. When I got to the second story in the mag, Hell Hound Blues, I was expecting the worst. But I instantly liked the artwork. It looked very professional. Definitely done by someone who wasn’t just doing comics in their spare time. It also reminded me of the kind of art I had seen in MAD magazine, many years ago when it was still good.  Just take a look a the accompanying images and you will see what I mean. These are all from this story.

I know some of you are way ahead of me here, but I need to write it anyway. After much researching and checking and such, (I had originally looked through old Creepy magazines to find him) I could not. I remembered him, but the copies I had on hand just didn’t happen to have his stuff in them. I have many others but didn’t want to dig through all of them.

To the point, I found out that he started out at (I swore I would never mention them, but…) E.C.! He worked on the horror comics that are generally credited with starting them all. (they didn’t really, but that is a different post. Yes, kiddies, he worked on Tales From The Crypt and Vault Of Horror and such. Additionally and the reason for why it reminded me of MAD, he worked on…MAD.

I will not say that this was the best horror story ever, but it was certainly the best in this book. And it was completely fun and entertaining. I hope to see more stuff from the two of these guys, they compliment each other well. Dan seems to be writing with tongue firmly in cheek and Angelo draws comics that look like comics. It’s a great fit.

If everything else in this issue had sucked, this one story would have made the magazine worth buying.

Fortunately there was other good stuff, and to find out what it was, you need to come on back and read the rest of this series of posts. I will be hitting every story in the book.

Tomorrow’s post is going to be about Chemical 13. It is the story of Nazi hijinks involving poison gas and a room full of naked test subjects. (just keep telling yourself—it’s only a comic book)

See the way I did that? Casting The Curse under a new light? Get It? I am so funny it makes me want to hurl.(baby bunnies into a ceiling fan)

Now let’s get right to it, shall we. The first story in Dark Horse’s Creepy #1 is called The Curse and was written by Joe Harris and imaged by Jason Shawn Alexander. It is the spooky tale of a young man’s discovery of a special creepy power and the shocking family secret that his mother has been hiding. That’s what it is supposed to be. I feel a need to warn you that if you keep reading I will spill the beans, regardless of how few beans I have available for spilling.

Before I gnaw into this particular bone I want to tell you something of the people involved in making it. Joe Harris has a website at JoeHarris.net. Click that if you want to see it.

He has written for a while and has done some very cool shit. He wrote the screenplay for Darkness Falls! One of the coolest strange-type movies ever. So if you want my opinion of Joe’s abilities, I think he’s a talented guy, very creative.

The other part of the equation is Jason Shawn Alexander. Normally I get really annoyed by folks who use more than two names.  But in this case it’s cool because without the Shawn he would be that guy from Seinfeld. So it’s ok that he use the big long name because he needs it, plus the fact that he is actually brilliant.

He has a site at www.JasonShawnAlexander.com and the other is his blog at BloodAndWhisky.blogspot.com. (which is great name) Again you can get to either by clicking on them. If you do, you will see that he experiments with different styles. He uses varied subjects and much of his stuff is good.

It’s depressing, but that isn’t a bad thing. He even has an artist statement that rambles on about goofy things involving “meaning” and “depth” and that sort of crap. Standard stuff for fine artists. Again I am not saying any of this is bad. On the contrary it shows that he has trained for real at some point and is trying to be as complete and professional an artist as possible. I know that I tend to be sardonic at times, and I want it understood that I like this guys stuff.

Neither Joe nor Jason can be considered hacks, or amateurs. Dark Horse is also not a lightweight. They rank highest in sales over every other comic company outside Marvel and DC. The reason for that, is they know what they are doing. All these people know what they are doing. Which leaves no excuse for them to have done what they did, which is create and publish The Curse.

The Curse, flat out, stinks on ice.

Jason can do brilliant art. The art in this piece is at the bottom end of his stuff to begin with. Then it commits the unforgivable sin of detracting from the story. At least it would have, if there had been a story from which to detract. Which brings me to the next point.

It all started in English class…

Recall the basic structure of a plot—A person wants something, faces an obstacle and takes action to overcome it. That’s it. It’s not that damn tough. The Curse seems to get off on the right foot.  A young man working in a printing shop wants to get off work on time. His nasty big fat ugly boss woman, hates him and won’t let him have off. Like I said, lame plot, but it is a plot, until the second page where she is eaten by a press.

That was the end of his obstacle. That was the end of his struggle. And that was the end of the plot. In order for there to be more story there has to be more standing in his way. There isn’t.

Then he realizes that he has this power that can make what he thinks, happen. And he proceeds to use it all over town, causing great harm to others and with no opposition at all. Also greatly absent are any feelings about it on his part. He is not even remotely horrified by the fact that he mutilated a woman, and maimed an innocent hot dog vendor. He just thinks it’s cool that he can get off work on time and save $2 on the hot dog.

This main character is about as deep as a rattle snake. No one is gunning for him. He has no foes, or resistance. And apparently no morals either. So when he finally wanders  home after a long day of effortlessly torturing people and not even enjoying it, we don’t really care what he says to his headless mother. (She has a head, but they go to great pains to make sure that it is not in any of the frames. It is done so awkwardly that it is blatant. If it was intended to mask an oncoming surprise, it didn’t.)

Nor are her evasive answers in any way intriguing or suspenseful. The only emotion I felt at this point was—obviously they had to get the page count higher. What a freakin’ waste. It’s sad really.

When they have wasted enough space and get around to showing the “shock” image, (his mother’s ugly face) it sucked on so many levels I can’t list them all, but I will mention the big ones.

I had a spoiler alert earlier in this article. I apologize for that. I can’t actually tell you the ending because I don’t know what the hell it even was. After much kvetching they cut to his momma’s ugly puss and through a combination of poor writing, bad or no story-boarding, or a poor choice of rendering styles I honestly had no idea what it was showing. I could see it was a shrivelled puss, but beyond that I was sincerely clueless. Was she dead? Was she rotted? Was she really old? Was she from the end of the movie Psycho?

If any of these is what it was supposed to be, then… Did she die at that moment because he wished it? Or had he been keeping his dead mother’s body alive with his “power”. (That would be cool) Or did she just rot because he told her to stop using the power? Because of the head-out-of-frame trick, you have no way of knowing what she looked like before.

The first part of a series should raise more questions than it answers. And this piece certainly did that. Unfortunately I don’t think it raised the ones that the creators intended, like what happens next? Or, what will he do? But instead it raised questions like…

What where they thinking?

And, Why would two guys who have done so many cool things do something this shitty? And why do all these other reviewers praise this turd?

Well kiddies, I have some multiple choice answers for you. Take what you want and leave the rest:

Q-What were they thinking?

A-They were thinking it was good. No one deliberately sets out to do shitty work, and fewer people release it if they have. The episodic nature of this piece increases the risk of putting out shit. Because they know what’s coming in the entire series, and they know how cool it will get, it becomes easy to miss the lameness of the opening.

Q-Why would they do something this lame?

A-For the money. Most of the audience for this comic may not even know the difference between good stories and bad ones. They may have read comics in English class instead of paying attention. ( I know I did, but I made up for it later) So if the intended audience will lay their money down for shit and come back for more, Fuck ‘Em. Why should we put out something good, when we can make money with crap? Sad, but the way many entertainment companies think. ( I am not saying this about Dark Horse. It is merely an observation about entertainment business companies.)

Q-Why do all these other reviews praise this piece of shit, as though it is a glittering gem amongst scum-covered stones?

A-It could be because they like it. It’s possible. It could be that it is they who did not pay attention in class. They could be idiots. They could be writing reviews for their own agendas. Like maybe they are just filling up their blogs and aren’t really trying to help. Or they don’t really care about horror comics. There are many reasons. Perhaps they didn’t really read the thing. Or maybe they just like these two guys and are therefore giving them a pass. Any of these things is possible. I have no great insight about any of this. Which brings me to the best reason of all…

I may be wrong.

Join us again tomorrow folks as I delve deep into the depths of Hell Hound Blues.

Hello kiddies. Today I have an announcement to make. Remember when I said I didn’t really want to talk about Creepy anymore, because I felt it was like beating a dead horse? Well it turns out, this is a horse that needs a beating.

Let me explain. Not surprisingly I keep an eye out for news and weather in the horror comics field. I found quite a few reviews about Dark Horse’s Creepy issue #1. Some of them (like Zombo’s) were fairly neutral. They tend to ramble on about the history of comics or the genre as a whole. Very few of them really analyze the single work at hand. But the one that I found that did, almost completely opposed my direct experience with this magazine.

My first thought was–Is this guy nuts? Then I changed that to–Is this guy 12 (years old)? And then finally thought (as I should have from the beginning) –Did I miss something?

So, I went back and looked at my review again. I still don’t really like it, but I narrowed down why. It’s because I don’t say anything beyond–Hey I liked this, and Hey I didn’t like that.

Not a lot of meat there, you must agree. (I agree) So the time has come to put my money where my fingers are. I will now write the real review of Creepy #1. I take this very seriously (I don’t know why). I am actually doing research (OMG!) and thinking (Holy crap!) to create a self contained article that I will never need to further comment on or explain why I said the things that I said in it. Let’s begin.

Down the rabbit hole…

The current Creepy issue is 48 pages of entirely B&W printing on coated paper. I keep coming back to this topic because it seems so strange to me. The graphics in the mag in no way warrant the use of coated stock and the glossiness of the pages actually detracts from whatever mood the art night be able to create, assuming the art was any good at all. The only hypothesis I’ve got about the paper choice is that it must be standard for their printers to use it and it would either cost more or be a special order for them to use the optical white plain paper that they should be using. (like the pages of the new Lenore)

This article will be in at least six parts, of which, this one is merely the introduction. The magazine has six stories in it and I intend to analyze each one. As well as talk about the people involved in their creation. If a story or the art for one, or both, are good or bad I will not only say so, but I will say why, exactly.

The stories are:

The Curse, Hell Hound Blues, Chemical 13, All The Help You Need, Loathsome Lore: Faustian Deals and finally Daddy And The Pie. (Not to be confused with Daddy and My Mom, which could be called the same thing)(Cheap? Yes, but if I hadn’t said it I would regret it. Maybe not now, but soon and for the rest of my life.).

So join me next time kiddies, for part ONE of Creepy Or Crappy. Where I will cast The Curse under a new light.

Welcome back, kiddies. Today as promised we’re going to be talking about Lenore.

Some of you may be saying "Hey! Why is he talking about Lenore? Lenore is not a horror comic!” To which I reply, "Hey! Why not calm the hell down? First of all the horror comic genre is too restrictive. And second of all, dark humor fits. And third of all, I like it and it’s my blog. So stop hollering at me!"

So for those of you who have been living in a cave or at the very least not going anywhere near a comic book store for about a hundred years, you may not know what Lenore is. It’s a comic book made by Roman Dirge. It’s about a little dead girl and her strange and varied friends and acquaintances. To really give you a handle on what this comic is like, imagine that Tim Burton did comics instead of movies. And that everything he did was actually good.

Although that seemed like a stretch when I wrote it, I have since recalled the drawings and such that Burton used to do, and they are really good. And very similar to Dirge’s stuff. Not in a copying way, but in a, these-guys-are-like-each-other way. And his early films where he did whatever he wanted were awesome. I personally like "Vincent" If you haven’t seen it, seek it out. So anyway…

I first came to Lenore, somewhere around 10 years ago, those of you who have been reading my blog for quite some time, should be aware that I don’t consider exact facts to be very important. So around 10 years ago is good enough, it could be five years. It could be 20 years, what difference does it make in the fullness of time?

The point is, a while back Roman made a series of comic books, called Lenore, and they were very thin and done in black and white. When I say black and white, I mean grayscale. The art was simplistic. Now I have, in the past, complained about bad art and much of the bad art that I complain about is simplistic. This may lead some of you believe that I think all simplistic art is crap. That’s not true at all.

Crappy art is crap. There is an infinite range of styles. They range from sparse design-like elements to fully rendered lush realism. And any of them can be good and any of them can be crap. It’s actually a very complex interplay of the emotions being conveyed and the artist’s skill-set in implementing it. You must also account for the intended audience and the context of when the piece was created. The first story in Dark Horse’s new Creepy issue #1 for example was crap. Not because it was simple, but because it didn’t work with the story. I realize this is not a review of Creepy. It was just so bad, I had to say it again.

The point is, Roman Dirge’s art is perfect for the story and the style and the mood of the comic. After a few years of there being no Lenore’s, a new comics company has picked it up. And they are now printing brand-new issues of Lenore, starting a new series. And this time it’s in color.

Now since I just got done saying that Roman’s art on the original was perfect for what it was doing, and it was black-and-white, you should understand why this kind of made me a little nervous. I heard that the new one would be color. I was afraid that the color would blow. And by blow, I mean, suck. Or even by some miracle do both simultaneously. Turns out I had nothing to fear.

Apparently Roman himself does, the coloring. I was afraid they would have handed it off to some coloring house in India or some such, and the colors would look as shitty as that Richard Corbin color insert stuff they used to do in the Warren Eerie magazines, back in the 70s. Now don’t get me wrong I love Richard Corbin, but the "color" parts of Eerie, blew.

No real reflection on Richard, a lot of the color printing done in that period of the 70s was pretty bad. (Interesting side note — Richard Corbin actually went on to do some of the most honored color work in comics. The stuff in which he actually used color as part of the art is some of his most beautiful stuff. And I will be talking about this in the future when I get around to doing a big piece on Richard Corbin. He, like Bernie Wrightson, is among my favorite artists ever. And I will be talking about all of these people at great length. In many posts.)

I’ve rambled on long enough. The whole point of this post is to announce the rebirth of Lenore in color and in a thicker magazine. The magazine has changed publishers, and is now being published by Titan books, a division of Titan publishing group Ltd., the cover price is $3.99. It also has, I can tell more pages than the older ones. It’s significantly thicker, but it has no page numbers. So I don’t know how many it has… All right… if you’re going to make a big thing out of it, hold on while I physically count them… 32, plus the cover sheet. (Happy now?)

Additionally it is printed on the most beautiful optically white uncoated paper. It looks amazing. Dark Horse could take a lesson from this. I don’t understand why they (Dark Horse) chose to use a coated stock for a one color print job that was a recreation of a magazine that was originally on uncoated paper. (bitching about Creepy again, sorry)

A big (and for me, welcome) change is the inclusion of advertising. Some would think that that’s a bad idea, but not me. In this case the advertising is for other publications along these lines. And it’s difficult to find this sort of thing. So I really view the ads as the publisher doing me a great favor. The ads are for things like the collected Lenore books. And these are some thick hardcovers, which just from the ads I can’t tell if they are collected comics or written for the books. Point is, it doesn’t matter. Its nice to know that they’re out there and will be on sale February 2010.

Now that I’m actually reading the ad, the books are reprints of the original comic series, and they have been colored. So you can bet that when February 2010 rolls around, I will buy both of them and review them. This, even though I own all the issues that are going to be reprinted in them. (What do you want to bet that they get a good review?)

This issue also has a preview of a new Roman Dirge Comic creation called Samurai Sloth. I will have to get that too. Although the magazine doesn’t say anything more than “Coming soon”.

I guess at this point, saying that I like Lenore and that I think Roman Dirge may be one of the funniest comic book writers I’ve ever read, might be kind of redundant. Go out and buy the new Lenore. If anything it may actually be better than the original series. The art is perfect. The writing is hysterical. If I could change anything about them. I would like them to be longer, or come out more often.(or in 3D. Everything’s better in 3D)

Oh before I go, Roman has a website where you can find all things Dirge-ish or Lenore-ish. It’s called spookyland.com. You can obviously get to it by clicking the previous sentence where it said spookyland.com or here where it says spookyland.com. See you next time.

…and remember to save those chicken livers!

Welcome kiddies to the next exciting episode of Nasty Horror’s blog. You’re about to wade hip-deep into my opinion.

Saying that horror comics are important to me is like saying that sucking is important to leeches. I love good comic’s. Especially horror. I swear to the living Beaver that when I get cut, I bleed ink. When I speak, balloons float above my head.

So when I whipped open this new rag made by Dark Horse (Creepy issue #1), who had the huge brass-ones to actually put the name Creepy across the top of this thing, I was excited, but concerned.  How close could they have gotten to recapturing the spirit of a rag that has come to be almost worshipped among it’s followers? The short answer is, not very.

Just ripping off the original wouldn’t have been a good continuation. It requires fresh blood, no pun intended. It requires new artists. Preferably ones that have studied and admired the old artists, and it requires new writers. Again, preferably ones that have studied and admired the old writers. Or, at the very least, don’t suck. (That last part may have been hoping for too much.)

The only story in the whole magazine that even came close to seeming like a Creepy story was the one on which the cover-art was based. It was well done, and sadly the only really good one in the mag.

Case in point, let me grab the magazine, tell you about these stories and why they suck.

The first story is badly drawn.  It’s  similar to old twilight zone plots, a young man discovers a power. And of course horrible things happen around him as a result. It’s a very short story almost a vignette, it doesn’t actually end.  That one sucks. (Oh, and it didn’t raise enough interest to make for a compelling serial either.)

The next one is as close to perfect as any story in this magazine gets.

It establishes the main characters quickly, and further establishes that they are ignorant, bigoted assholes.  So as the story progresses to the logical conclusion of them being supernaturally boned, it was quite satisfying.  It’s very classic, I liked it. It was drawn by Angelo Torres. Enough said.

The next story I hate to even talk about. Certain subjects require you really do them intelligently. Such as anything involving concentration camps. This waste of ink is called Chemical 13. There’s so much to complain about with this story that I’m not going to. The magazine would have been better without it.  The idea could have been interesting, but both the writing and the art blew so badly that you have to actually think hard to try and imagine what they even wanted the story to be.  I don’t know what to say about this. If you get the magazine, I’d be interested in knowing if you agree. And what you thought of it especially if you don’t agree with me. Next story…

This one is a good classic horror tale. Very much in the vein of what this magazine is supposed to be.  The whole thing works very well. It has a lot of action scenes throughout, and is paced nicely. I personally wish that the artwork were a little more rendered, but the style used in this piece works. It might qualify as the first ‘new‘ Creepy story. The art in this one was by Brian Churilla. I think this guy’s new, but I like his stuff. The next one isn’t even a story.

It’s a narrated rambling through a bit of horror history. It introduces a nice character, which I believe is the Niece of Creepy or some such. I like it. I like the artwork and like where it goes. It has kind of a MAD magazine feel to it.  It’s a short little piece to go from one story to another. It’s just a couple pages and is a nice transition, the only one in the entire book. I would like to have seen more of them. I think they researched it by reading old Hustler magazines, but the artist is quite good. It’s credited to Hilary Barta. I’ll be looking for her stuff.

The last tale is a very lovely Outer Limits type. it’s a good story.  I’ll have more to say about it in future posts.. The artwork looks good.  The writing is good. This single story could have been twice as long as it was and probably would have been better. But it was not a horror story. Oops!

So that’s the whole magazine kiddies!

Things I would like to see are consistent art quality, varied story length and mood. Full page text fiction would be nice once or twice per issue.  I would also like to see the container characters drawn by the same artist throughout the entire issue. As it stands they where just tacked on the opening and closing panels of each story in that artist’s style and had no visual cohesion. The whole issue felt like a collection of random shit stuck together in one cover. It has no overall feel of place.

They added an ass-load of characters to the “family” of the host, but there is no connection to any of them. I am hoping the next one will be better. They claimed that this issue was a year in the making. If that’s the best they can do in a year, I don’t expect much in three months. I would love to be wrong.

Of all of the horror magazines that I have seen, recently, this is the closest one to good. If you don’t have it, it’s definitely worth the five bucks.

I can’t give you a link to it. So please patronize your local comic book shop. If you have no local comic book shop, look around online for some place to buy it. ( I believe Dark Horse has an order page on their site.) If you have any interest in the genre, get this. Though flawed, it’s still a must have issue.