Classic horror fans rejoice! Comic veteran Ernie Colon adapts four stories originally written and performed for 1940s radio show Inner Sanctum Mystery. The tales themselves are standard horror anthology fare, with the standout being
“Alive in the Grave,” the story of a down-on-his-luck petty thief who believes he’s responsible for a man’s premature burial. I have followed Colon’s work for more than 30 years and I can honestly say the man’s art just keeps getting better. His pencils are fantastic, his layout of panels visually exciting and his use of shading and contrast a textbook example of how to draw black and white comics.
2011 will go down in history as the year DC made one huge screw-up after another, including that
awful new logo some shaky reworkings of several ti- tles. Case in point: cancelling the critically acclaimed Xombi after a mere six issues to make way for a ridiculous New 52 re- boot/revamp/rewhat- ever. However, I will give them credit for pulling their heads out of the sand long enough to release this collected edition. David Kim is a nanotechnol- ogy scientist who is vir- tually immortal, thanks to an army of nanoma- chines living inside his
body, constantly rebuilding him. Unfortunately, this has also turned him into some kind of weirdness magnet, attracting bizarre dangers such as lethal snow angels, blood mummies and demon trick-or-treaters. John Rozum is a pro at conjuring such outlandish concepts, but he keeps them grounded enough to remain sus- penseful and horrific, and it’s all ably supported by Frazer Irving’s bravado art. A definite must-buy for horror comics fans.
I have yet to review any of these black and white,
phonebook-sized reprint col- lections, so consider this a write-up not only of this par- ticular volume but also previ- ous books reprinting classic House of Mystery, House of Secrets and others in DC’s horror stable. Reprinting Ghosts #1-8, this hefty (yet very reasonably priced) tome is a great dip into horror sto- ries of yore. Sure, many of
these ’70s-era stories are predictable and some- what cheesy, but they’re also incredibly endearing. I usually avoid the Showcase super- hero books simply because I prefer my men in tights to be in colour, but the black and white newsprint works perfectly for these old terror tales. A fun and cost-effec- tive way to bolster your horror comics library.
Road Rageis a project with a fine pedigree: an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s Duel, by way
of Stephen King and son Joe Hill’s homage, Throt- tle. For those unfamiliar, Duel is the tale of a casual driver terrorized by a mysterious trucker on the open, desert highways. This is a tribute to Duel that pits bikers against the sadistic rig. Two issues will be devoted to each of the stories, kicking off with this introduction to the biker gang, The Tribe, which begins filling in the charac- ters’ questionable pasts before a confrontation with the big black truck. Much of the first half is dull exposition and Nelson Daniel’s art – while dynamic enough for the later action scenes – lacks the de- tail necessary to tell the bikers apart. Once the altercation begins, though, the story picks up consid- erably.
From the outset of this new volume in the popular Army of
Darkness series, it’s obvious that writer Elliott R. Serrano wants to
shake things up by sidelining Bruce Campbell’s popular Ash character in favour of a female Ash, presumably from some alter- nate timeline/dimension. Although events have transpired somewhat differently for female Ash, the results are basically the same: she’s stuck in the past (in this case, Cleopatra’s Egypt) fighting Dea- dites with one hand turned into a makeshift weapon. But female Ash’s transform-into-anything mitt is a bizarre and poor substitute for male Ash’s chainsaw. It’s early days yet, and male Ash is clearly forthcoming, but for the moment this seems like a pale, unnecessary imitation of the story it’s supposed to be building upon.