Graphic Book Review: 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
Zombos Says: 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.
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