This week, I’m reviewing five recent horror comics. Unlike barbarian comics, which I discussed back in January, horror comics are not scarce. It seems every publisher has at least a couple horror titles, and in the case of some of the smaller publishers (IDW, Devil’s Due), the majority of their comics are horror. However, as many as a third of these titles are licensed properties (that is, they’re based on movies or video games). I chose to review only original creations, not because they’re inherently good, but because I’m more interested in stories that are specific to comics. These five titles aren’t necessarily the best or the worst, but they are indicative of what American publishers are releasing in 2010.
Reviews:
Hellblazer #264
Publisher: Vertigo
Writer: Peter Milligan
Layouts: Giuseppe Camuncoli
Finishes: Stefano Landini
Colors: Trish Mulvihill
What’s the division of labor between the artist who does layouts and the artist who “finishes?” I assume the layout artist determines the shape and number of panels on each page, and perhaps also the contents of each panel. The finishing artist then adds the necessary details (or is my assumption completely wrong?). This could lead to some awkward, ugly comics if the two artists have different styles. But this is a Vertigo comic, and most of the artists who work for Vertigo tend to use the same semi-realistic, functional style that effectively conveys the story without drawing attention to itself. Camuncoli and Landini work well together, and they produce a comic that’s clear, consistent, and bland.
As for the story, this issue is the final chapter in a storyline within a book that’s been published continuously for two decades, so it isn’t exactly a great jumping-on point (and no recap page, because DC/Vertigo thinks recap pages are for wimps). Still, Peter Milligan is an experienced mainstream comics writer, and he knows that every issue is someone’s first, so he provides narration at the front of the book that helps new readers catch up. The plot, in a nutshell, is about John Constantine fighting a Victorian-era demon in Mumbai. Like the art, the writing is polished and professional, though not particularly memorable.
While it’s also tempting to complain that the story is predictable, predictability is really the whole point. Hellblazer, like most long-running titles, is comfort food for fans, and Milligan knows where and when to deliver the expected beats of a John Constantine story. There are demons, spells, smoking, and British profanity. But the old, reliable formula that makes it good comfort food also makes it terrible horror. Horror works best when it exploits the fear of the unknown and the unexpected. This is why horror film franchises quickly descend into self-parody – once the monster is revealed in the first film, the audience no longer fears it, so the sequels are just the repetition of events that are humorous and comforting precisely because they’ve lost the ability to scare. Milligan’s take on Hellblazer avoids becoming a self-parody by simply abandoning any pretense at being scary. It’s a magic-themed action/adventure that’s indistinguishable from the superhero titles published by DC, except that the characters get to say “fuck” instead of “#&$%.”
The Walking Dead #70
Publisher: Image
Writer: Robert Kirkman
Artist: Charlie Adlard
Gray Tones: Cliff Rathburn
According to the Direct Market sales charts posted at The Beat, The Walking Dead is one of Image’s best-selling monthly comics. Which is bizarre, because if there was ever a comic that should only be read in collected volumes rather than monthly issues, it’s The Walking Dead. Kirkman’s pacing ranges from leisurely to glacial, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in a longer book. The horror of The Walking Dead has less to do with the zombies than with how their ever-present threat transforms the survivors. Over the course of a trade, readers can appreciate how all the characters (or at least the ones that don’t get offed) slowly change, usually for the worst, in response to the collapse of civilization. But it’s hard to get any sense of that in a typical monthly issue, which has only a small portion of the plot and character development. Issue #70 is a perfect example: the survivors are welcomed into a walled, zombie-free community and meet the community leaders (who will probably turn out to be evil). That’s it. In another six to twelve months this might become an interesting story, but I can’t imagine paying $3 a month for snippets of content.
The art in the issue is easier to discuss. Adlard’s style is thoroughly mainstream, meaning a realistic aesthetic and a simple panel layout that moves the narrative forward. The one unusual aspect of the art (by the standards of mainstream American comics) is that it’s in black-and-white.
This was a clever creative decision, as the black-and-white gives The Walking Dead an earthy, retro vibe reminiscent of the classic zombie film, Night of the Living Dead. But setting aside the pop culture homage, Adlard rarely does anything interesting with the black-and-white format. On occasion, he’ll use dark inks and sharp contrast to evoke a film noir tone, but most of the panels wouldn’t be harmed by the addition of color. In other words, the art does what the story requires of it, nothing more and nothing less.
The Unknown – The Devil Made Flesh #4
Publisher: Boom! Studios
Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Minck Oosterveer
Colors: Andres Lozano and Javier Suppa
The first thing I noticed about The Unknown is that it has a recap page that efficiently summarized the previous three issues. As a new reader, I liked this feature. I will never understand why DC and a few other publishers refuse to include recap pages. If you insist on publishing monthly issues, then why not throw new readers a bone? Not everyone can jump in on the first issue.
The story centers on Catherine Allingham, a detective who’s slowly dying from a brain tumor. On top of that problem, she’s been dragged into a mystery involving a small town serial killer and a ghost that keeps possessing the townspeople. It ends with a big battle in a cave and some revelations about future storylines, which may involve the Devil (made flesh). Like most contemporary comics, The Unknown has a “decompressed” pace, meaning that the plot and characters are gradually developed over multiple issues. But unlike Robert Kirkman, Waid knows how to squeeze as much content as possible into 22 pages. Reading a single issue of The Unknown feels like reading four issues of The Walking Dead.
But more content doesn’t equal better content. Waid’s writing has always beens mechanical and generic, like he’s working from a genre checklist. Characters do exactly what readers expect of them, and plots resolve themselves in the simplest manner possible. The Unknown is no exception: the central conflict ends with a violent climax, the villains get their appropriate comeuppance, and a sufficient amount of information is revealed to move the larger story forward.
The art doesn’t help matters. Oosterveer attempts a straightforward, mainstream style, but his art comes across as amateurish. Spatial relationships are confusing, backgrounds will be drawn in detail in one panel but disappear in the next, and the characters’ faces frequently go off-model. To put it simply, the entire comic just looks half-assed and rushed.
Devil #1 (of 4)
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer/Artist: Torajiro Kishi and Madhouse Studios
Someone at Dark Horse decided that they needed a new horror comic, something fresh and original. And where are all the fresh and original ideas coming from? Japan! So Dark Horse formed a partnership with manga-ka Torajiro Kishi (best known for the yuri title Maka Maka) and anime producer Madhouse Studios (Ninja Scroll, Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust). The fresh and original idea they came up with was a story about cops who hunt vampires … which admittedly sounds like every third comic published in the 1990s.
But there are two twists. The first is that the vampires are called devils, because in a post-Twilight world, “vampire” is no longer hardcore. The second twist illustrates why Japanese creators are always the smarter choice. I’ll let the main characters explain:
“When a victim is raped by a devil, the victim dies from the poison contained in its sperm.” And by die, they mean burst like a water balloon.
This is why Dark Horse needed Kishi and Madhouse Studios. Any American hack can write a story about cops who hunt vampires. They might even throw in some misogyny. But when it comes to uncensored depravity, American creators are actually quite timid. You need a Japanese creator to get a story about poison sperm that causes women to explode. It’s not any good, of course, but extraordinary sleaziness has a way of concealing every other flaw.
We Will Bury You #1 (of 4)
Publisher: IDW Publishing
Writer: Brea Grant with Zane Grant
Artist: Kyle Strahm
Colors: Zac Atkinson
Brea Grant plays the character Daphne on Heroes. That’s a red flag: when an actor starts slumming in the funny book industry that usually means they’re pitching a movie script disguised as a comic.
Though perhaps I’m being unfair to Grant, because I can’t imagine a major studio ever producing a film adaptation of this comic. The pitch: in 1927, a cross-dressing Ukrainian immigrant and her taxi dancer girlfriend are planning to flee New York after murdering the girlfriend’s husband, but they get caught up in a (Communist-themed) zombie apocalypse. Now that’s what I call high concept.
As this is only the first issue, it’s hard to say whether it will turn out to be a original zombie story. The zombie sub-genre has been thoroughly explored in every medium, and Grant is hardly the first writer to link zombie scares to the Red Scare. On the other hand, there’s never been a zombie story featuring flappers, and who doesn’t like flappers?
Plus, the comic has some engaging artwork.
Kyle Strahm’s style, with its distorted physiques and bleak backgrounds, is well-suited to horror. And the use of numerous thick lines gives his art a coarse, disheveled look. It effectively captures the grime and poverty of New York City tenements in the early 20th century. Zac Atkinson uses color to great effect too, as key characters are given more vibrant outfits so that they stand out from the darker backgrounds. More than a few panels, however, are rough around the edges in ways that Strahm probably didn’t intend. There’s a thin line between bleak and boring, and Strahm’s backgrounds occasionally step over it, and the facial features of the heroines seem to change on every other page.
Despite some misgivings, I liked the first issue of Brea Grant’s comic. It’s certainly better than her TV show.
State of the Genre
Overall, the horror genre is doing quite well. It has its share of shitty comics, but there are a few decent titles in the mix. And despite the dominance of superheroes in the Direct Market, horror comics have carved out a stable niche. There’s a broad selection of titles available in a variety of sub-genres (though zombies are far and away the most popular). It’s also worth mentioning that there are several genre hybrids that I passed over for reviewing, including Hellboy (horror/superheroes), Locke and Key (horror/fantasy) and the recently released Choker (horror/crime). On a less positive note, there’s an awful lot of licensed properties, but that’s hardly surprising given that an established brand with a built-in fanbase is always the safer bet. Fortunately, the horror genre hasn’t yet become an endless parade of Freddy v. Jason v. Chucky one-shots.
“Horror works best when it exploits the fear of the unknown and the unexpected. This is why horror film franchises quickly descend into self-parody ”
I actually disagree with this. Slasher films thrive on repetition; it’s about ritual and narrative fulfilment more than it’s about the unknown or unexpected. I think that’s the case for a lot of horror, really — which is why so much of the genre relies on tropes and repetition. You could even argue that building tension and suspense depends on a certain sameness; you can’t know you’re supposed to be scared if you aren’t given the cues. The best of the Jason movies are probably the 4th and 5th, when there was a body of references to cannabalize and tweak — the familiarity actually improved the later films.
None of which is to say that Hellblazer is any good, of course.
We Will Bury You, though, looks intriguing. I really like that panel you posted.
“The best of the Jason movies are probably the 4th and 5th, when there was a body of references to cannabalize and tweak”
Okay, that’s a fair point. But the Jason movies that followed the 5th were weak sauce, even though they stuck to the same formula. I’ll think about this some more and comment again later.
6 was horrible. I actually quite liked 7. And parts of 8 were okay….
“You need a Japanese creator to get a story about poison sperm that causes women to explode”
Or a British one, as fans of The Filth will surely attest.
…I mean, I’m sure Warren Ellis or Garth Ennis must have written some sort of spermatoclysm into at least one of their more…unfettered comics, but Morrison/Weston/Erskine’s The Filth’s the first name that came (AHAHA) to mind.
//\Oo/\\
(“spermatoclysm” © & TM M.P.Craig 2010, although Christ alone knows why)
Spermatoclysm is a great word.
And now that you mention it, it sounds like something Garth Ennis would find amusing … maybe if there’s a second volume of Crossed.
The Filth is the one major Morrison work that I haven’t read, it didn’t sound very good from the reviews.
Noah- I think the difference between the 4th and 5th Jason movies and the 6th has a lot to do with emphasis. The former two rely on all the familiar slasher tropes, but the filmmakers were using these tropes as a framework to create a great horror movie. I watched some of the DVD extras with Joseph Zito (who directed the 4th), and he seemed to have many specific ideas beyond just the tropes about how to make his movie scarier than the predecessors (better camerawork, more focus on making the victims relatable, etc.). In short, the 4th and 5th movies had all the tropes, but they weren’t just about trotting out the tropes.
The 6th movie was all about the tropes; it was basically 2 hours of fan-service. Jason goes around and kills obnoxious people in gruesome ways, and the director throws some knowing winks at the audience. While this may have a certain sadistic appeal, it isn’t remotely scary.
This goes back to my problem with the Hellblazer issue- it just comes across as fan-service, and I’m not enough of a John Constantine fan to care.
Yes, there’s definitely something to that. They got flack for 5 not having the “real” Jason, and so 6 was sort of a capitulation.
I do think the repetition is in some ways almost the point even in the good Jason movies. But I care about Jason more than about John Constantine, I have to admit….
….and I don’t know that I’d recommend the Filth. There are funny bits, but overall…eh.
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Richard Cook:
if there was ever a comic that should only be read in collected volumes rather than monthly issues, it’s The Walking Dead. Kirkman’s pacing ranges from leisurely to glacial, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in a longer book…But it’s hard to get any sense of that in a typical monthly issue, which has only a small portion of the plot and character development. Issue #70 is a perfect example: the survivors are welcomed into a walled, zombie-free community and meet the community leaders (who will probably turn out to be evil). That’s it. In another six to twelve months this might become an interesting story, but I can’t imagine paying $3 a month for snippets of content.
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I wonder how, not only the writing itself, but readers’ expectations, have been altered by the frequency these days of comics story arcs being gathered into volumes. Are we so spoiled by reading the lengthy stories in these “albums” that a single-issue comic feels too brief?
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You need a Japanese creator to get a story about poison sperm that causes women to explode.
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Hah, excellent!
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On the other hand, there’s never been a zombie story featuring flappers, and who doesn’t like flappers?
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Not me; I must admit, it’s that “zombies in the 20’s” premise that moved me to have the title added to my pull-list…
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Noah Berlatsky:
…Slasher films thrive on repetition; it’s about ritual and narrative fulfilment more than it’s about the unknown or unexpected. I think that’s the case for a lot of horror, really — which is why so much of the genre relies on tropes and repetition…
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Mm. Superhero comics fanboys, meet slasher movie fanboys!
The two volumes of “The Nightmare Factory” might not be original to comics, being based on the brilliant Thomas Ligotti’s short stories, but neither are they licensed from slasher-flick/video-game franchises. Info on these, about the finest, most eerily unsettling horror comics out there, at this old TCJ message board thread: http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=2891 .
Thomas Ligotti comics? Thanks for the tip, Mr. Hunter!
Anyway, I haven’t seen any Friday the 13th movies so I can’t comment, but I’m inclined to think that the distinction between horror that plays on the familiar and horror that hinges on the unfamiliar is a subject worthy of scrutiny, if it hasn’t already gotten such scrutiny. The devil you know vs. the devil you don’t… I’m certainly more interested in horror that suggests that you need to be scared of the as-yet-undiscovered, but I suppose that most folks who deal with real terror receive it from a known source (a threatening political regime or abusive family member, say). So “Terror from a familiar source” horror is about the specific working out of an expected threat vs. Terror from the Unknown, which is as much about the discovery or unveiling of a threat as it is about the working out of the threat.
Well…maybe. But even folks who use terror of the unknown, like Lovecraft, often use a lot of predictability.
The scariest thing I’ve seen in some years is probably Dark Water, the Japanese ghost horror film. Not especially unpredictable, dealt with fairly established ghost tropes. The horror comes from links to actual anxieties (about keeping your children safe) rather than from the unknown per se. I think that’s pretty typical; horror works when it’s tied into familiar worries. Even the fear of the unknown is pretty predictable, in some sense.
To some extent I think horror is like porn ( I don’t mean that as any kind of judgement) in that it is rather personal. Exorcist didn’t scare me because I’m not worried about demons (like some religious folks are) or potty-mouthed girls (the way some parents are). Halloween didn’t scare me because I’m not worried about boogeymen. But Texas Chainsaw thrills me, because deranged hillbillies are a pressing concern in my daily life and always have been.
And even horrors that seem uncanny (like Haunting of Hill House) still tie into familiar worries, just in unpredictable ways. So I guess it’s the way the links to actual anxieties are manifested that makes the difference. Or something.
Mike Hunter- I confess, I’ve been spoiled by trades. On the other hand, an increasing number of books nowadays are written with the trade in mind, so single issues are actually “briefer” in terms of plot.
Noah- I saw the American remake of Dark Waters. It was terrible!
I wasn’t very articulate when I talked about fear of the unknown. I wasn’t referring to Lovecraftian squids so much as the ability of the filmmaker (or comics writer) to surprise the audience. For example, in a slasher movie we all know the teenagers are going to die, but the trick to making it scary is that the audience can never be sure when and how it’s going to happen. So, yes, it’s predictable, but there’s an element of uncertainty too.
Aaron White- personal preference matters in horror, but sometimes a really great horror movie can scare you even when it falls into a sub-genre that you’re normally indifferent to. I don’t believe in ghosts, but I found the Ring to be really creepy.
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Aaron White says:
Thomas Ligotti comics? Thanks for the tip, Mr. Hunter!
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You’re welcome! They’re pretty outstanding, even if gore-lovers might consider them weak tea indeed.
It was fascinating when I first encountered Clive Barker’s “Books of Blood” stories – brilliantly adapted into comics published by Eclipse – how he managed to “have his cake and eat it too.” Feature scenes which were viscerally gruesome, yet by verbal artistry and wit, make them literate. I’ll never forget how he described one victim, impaled in “Mortal Remains” – the comic brilliantly illo’ed by Craig Russell – as “uncharitably transfixed” by a sword…
To take off from Ken Wilber’s “Hierarchy of Consciousness,” seems t’me there ought to be a “hierarchy of horror.”
With obviously gruesome, repellent horrors that threaten with physical mutilation or death – menaces that even our primitive “reptilian brain” can respond to – occupying the lowest rung. Sheesh, even a mutt knows to flee from a masked, blood-covered goon wielding a gore-encrusted blade.
Lovecraftian sanity-shattering revelations are far higher up…
…And eerie, unsettling chills – Blackwood’s “The Willows” a top example – on the uppermost level. Because, like gourmet food, the topmost category employs subtlety; requires refined tastes and senses to best appreciate.
As a corresponding if inexact analogy, check out the gathering of “creepy faces” I scavenged at http://img218.imageshack.us/img218/1616/creepyfaces1.jpg . From a rotted, brain-eating zombie to Val Lewton’s version, we proceed upward from less obviously scary physiognomies to the unsettlingly soulless features of child-killer and cannibal Albert Fish…
The hierarchy already exists, Mike. Everybody sneers at slasher films; Barker has more cred than that; Lovecraft more than that. The world works the way you want it to, at least in this instance.
The world…works the way I want it to??!
(Insert exploding-head shot…)
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Noah Berlatsky:
…Slasher films thrive on repetition; it’s about ritual and narrative fulfilment more than it’s about the unknown or unexpected. I think that’s the case for a lot of horror, really — which is why so much of the genre relies on tropes and repetition…
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I’d razzed Noah’s comment earlier; but just ran across this argument for his viewpoint. In Rick Trembles’ new comic-strip review of the remake of George Romero’s “The Crazies,”* he contrasts it with another film mining the same area:
“…But whereas Pontypool is borderline experimental in comparison, Crazies is formulaic to the point of iconicity, its mercifully untampered-with simplicity an asset rather than detriment in this smart-ass era of pretentious “reimaginings” for a change!”
* http://archives.tcj.com/messboard/viewtopic.php?t=7433
The crazies is pretty good. It doesn’t attain the sublime sameness of the jason movies, though; Romero is a little too clever for his own good in that regard, maybe (there’s an ironic twist end that would have been better left out from my view, for instance.)
This assumes that slasher movies are horror. I would argue that horror movies are supposed be horrible. The viewer is supposed the think, “that’s horrible, he just stabbed the women! Right when they were making love too!” Slasher movies expect the audience to go “Fuck yeah! Take that you slutty bitch!”
I find the slasher genre actively avoids anything that could be ingeniously scary.
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It’s nice to see Constantine return to his leftist roots. I just wish Peter Mulligan was as creative as he usually is.
I think slashers are a good bit more complicated than that. I don’t think they’re primarily sadistic, as you suggest — though there’s certainly an element of that. But there’s also a lot of suspense caused by identifying with the victim.
Carol Clover’s “Men, Women, and Chainsaws” is the thing to read, if you’re interested….
A lot of slashers are nothing more than tedious exercises in violence, but there are plenty of good ones mixed in with the bad. As Noah suggested, there are slasher movies where the filmmakers effectively draw the audience into identifying with the victim/final girl. I’d say the first “Halloween” and the 4th “Friday the 13th” are examples of how slashers can be very effective horror. With some qualifications, I’d probably add the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” onto that list.