Zombos' Closet of Horror

Criminal Macabre: Cell Block 666

ZC Rating 3 of 7: Good (but art needs to lighten up)

I wonder if Steve Niles is as sweet and sour as his supernatural detective Cal McDonald. Probably not, but he writes the feisty McDonald with layers of world-weary spunk so easily it is hard for me to imagine there isn't just a little bit of Niles shining through all that cigarette-smoking, pill-popping, bruised and bandaged, punch-drunk attitude McDonald pushes into his antagonists' faces every chance he gets. Almost like another supernatural detective (so many of them these days, aren't there?), John Constantine, what sets McDonald apart from his brethren--and usually off--is the constant kick to his spiritual and physical groin, even when he's looking.

In Cell Block 666, McDonald is up against a traitorous ghoul, corrupt cops, and Nick Stakal's dire pencil scratches that leave much of the scenery in the dark and everyone looking like they've been carved out of clay with a sharp razor. Stakal's stylistic overuse of shadow and heavy lines renders very creepy ghouls, but it obliterates the more subtle features of mere mortals including McDonald, giving characters gruff, acerbic faces more sour than sweet. With all this darkness, the colorist doesn't stand a chance, either; so much of McDonald's prison time and trying-to-stay-out-of-prison time is muted in an overly noir world. Stakal's two-page spread showing the prison building is lacklustre because there's just not enough to see. When it comes to zombies, however, I'll keep mum. Stakal's murk and gloom and paper-cut edges, muted in color, fit them to a tee.  

Tired of laying low because the cops have been hot on his ass for a crime he didn't do (at least this one, anyway), McDonald hits the bar to hoist a few. Ghoul-help or not, he winds up being seen, captured, then taken for a long ride to a short cell. Moloch pops in and out, lending a cold helping hand where he can, but McDonald is forced to conjure up a reprieve or wind up deader than his ghoulish friend. Niles is best when relationships matter, and his odd camaraderie between McDonald and Moloch gives this adventure its more pleasing moments. Moloch has his own hands full when a traitor reveals a power struggle within the ghoul's rank and file.

Come on Stakal, give McDonald a break: go heavier on the detail and lighten up the murk. The poor bastard's got it tough enough. He must spend a fortune in bandages and aspirin as it is.

Dark Horse's Creepy 1

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Heh-heh, Welcome--Welcome to the comic world's newest, most exciting and most imaginative magazine in 10 years. I'm Creepy, your nauseating host! I've scrounged around the lowest places imaginable to dig up the comic industry's greatest and most fiendish artists! -- Uncle Creepy (Creepy Magazine No. 1, 1964)

Uncle Creepy is back! And this time around he brings his bad-blooded relations, along with Sister Creepy, to punk out the night with four new stories oozing black and white terror, one loathsome lore, and one reprinted story. And let's not forget the Dear Uncle Creepy letters section, too.

The artwork is all very good, with Angelo Torres pencils visualizing Dan Braun's Hell Hound Blues, and Alex Toth's reprinted Daddy and the Pie lending some classy support; but from the lighter lines of Hillary Barta's Loathsome Lore on Faustian Deals and Brian Churilla's All the Help You Need, to Shawn Alexander's The Curse Part One and Saskia Gutekunst's Chemical 13! darker, starker characters, the stories capture the old Creepy mystique fairly well, especially with Uncle Creepy providing the introductions and appropriately quippy last words.

In The Curse Part One, Jude discovers he has a certain knack for making his wishes come true. Unfortunately, his mom has been doing some wishing, too, and Jude is in for a shocking  surprise. Hell Hound Blues plays off the Robert Johnson legend, wherein the Devil provides the soulful chords for a price. Or was it really Tommy Johnson who met up with the Devil at the crossroads one lonely midnight? Who the devil knows? The story could have used a few more pages to flesh it out, but the ending is classic Creepy. In Chemical 13!, the Nazis get exactly what they bargained for, and Delia Gold gets the fat farm treatment--to the max--in All the Help You Need. The only problem is the farm next store prefers to chew the fat more than lose it.

On the Dear Uncle Creepy letters page is a family snapshot promising some interesting happenings with oddball relatives popping up in future issues. For issue one we are introduced to Sister Creepy, a cool, naughty, Goth who dishes up the Loathsome Lore with relish. 

An unexpected oddity for this issue is the reprinted Daddy and the Pie, a story more sci fi than horror. It is a well-executed story but still not horror, so it ends this issue with a whimper instead of a chill. But it is nice to see the classy creepster back in action, and I am sure, based on this first issue, the chill will return soon enough.

Lansdale's Pigeons From Hell

The figure had moved into the bar of moonlight now, and Griswell recognized it. Then he saw Branner's face, and a shriek burst from Griswell's lips. Branner's face was bloodless, corpse-like; gouts of blood dripped darkly down it; his eyes were glassy and set, and blood oozed from the great gash which cleft the crown of his head! -- Robert E. Howard, Pigeons From Hell

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Robert E. Howard's 1938 southern gothic short story, Pigeons From Hell, has seen television and comic book adaptations. For television, Boris Karloff's Thriller delivered a straightforward and chilling episode, minus most of the racial underpinning and family curse-inducing miscegenation, written by John Kneubuhl and directed by John Newland (who directed Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond). In the graphic novel format, Scott Hampton illustrated Howard's classic horror story in 1988 for Eclipse Comics, creating an atmospheric narrative of the evil stalking the Blassenvilles in conservatively painted imagery.

Author Joe R. Lansdale adds his touch to the original story in a four-issue series from Dark Horse Comics, now released in trade paperback. Keeping the core elements of voodoo and spellcraft surrounding the decaying antebellum mansion while updating the characters for a younger audience, and dropping Howard's zuvembie hoodoo in favor of the more nebulous shadow in the corn, Lansdale adapts the storyline without losing too much of the lingering dread, inherent injustice, and fearful moral decay permeating Howard's tale; but in moving the story from its overtly prejudicial time period and place, then switching the cultural and racial orientation of important characters--particularly the sheriff--and dropping zuvembie from the story's explanation, Lansdale lessens the effect of Howard's uncanny and evocative horror in favor of plot elements more familiar to today's stalker-with-a-machete-minded audience.

Zombie World: Winter's Dregs

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

Summertime fun getting you down? Can't wait for the colder days, darker days, more depressing sunless days? Want to bury all sand-loving, beach-going, family members and significant others up to their necks close to the water's edge at low tide? Fret no more. Don't get mad, suicidal, or homicidal; instead, pick up Zombie World: Winter's Dregs and Other Stories from Dark Horse, and bring back your sanity with its two-hundred and forty pages packed with apocalyptic carnage.

These four stories, originally appearing in the Zombie World comic book series, bring us closer to those undead we all crave. Think surviving the glump at the gasoline pump is hard, try dealing with ravenous hordes of commuters who want to fill up on you. With writers and artists like Bob Fingerman, Kelley Jones, Tommy Lee Edwards, Pat Mills, J. Deadstock (how apropos), Gordon Rennie and Gary Erskine, you can feel secure in knowing that your hard-earned greenbacks are being well spent.

The title story, Winter's Dregs, kicks off the mayhem in a fast-paced panel by panel exchange between central characters caught up in their daily lives--and deaths. In a city overrun by rats, when people dying in reverse shakes up the routine run to Starbucks, cry havoc and let loose the zombies. Each page is drawn in a heavy, EC horror comics, over-inked style, bleeding black into the surroundings, the characters, and the action. The murky colors create a sense of constant dread which lets up only after you reach the last panel. The story takes time to set up its characters first, then introduces zombies in a subway smackdown after the mayor orders a full-scale assault on brazen rats vexing his administration. Involved dialog and social interactions sustain the buildup to zero hour, fleshing out the people whose mundane paths intertwine with the staggering undead in this day in the life--and death--of a city.