From Zombos' Closet

Comic Book Review: Ides of Blood Sic Semper Tyrannis 1

Zombos Says: Good

Ancient Romans co-mingle with ancient vampire slaves in this sword, sandal, and fang tragedy from the pen of Stuart C. Paul and the pencil of Christian Duce. The first issue hints at political intrigue and conspiracy as the Ides of March (the 15th of the month) approaches, placing this period drama in 44BC, when Caesar ruled Rome as a dictator with imperium over the Empire, which led to his assassination by Marcus Junius Brutus.

Taking its cue from Shakespeare's classic play Julius Caesar, and perhaps its earthiness from television's classy Rome, Ides of Blood portrays a Roman Empire literally sustained by the blood of its people.  After Caesar conquers the Transylvanian clime of Dacia, vampiric slaves serve the rich, the powerful, and the plebian citizenry. Held captive by silver chains and their own descent into subservience, the vampires provide servility, commodity, and satisfaction for baser needs to those who can afford and desire them.

Valens, vampire and former slave, has ascended to become a Praetorian Guard and a presence in Caesar's eye. He is tasked with finding the killer known as Pluto's Kiss, who is murdering the rich and powerful. Walking both worlds of light and shadow, Valens' ambition is at odds with his past and potential future.

Duce's heavy black lines are suffused with red hightlights (Carlos Badilla is the colorist), making this Rome darker and more sinister in look as well as in spirit. Valens leads us through Fang's Alley Brothels and the dirty streets of the city to find the killer. Tracking down a lead using the senate-enforced branding all vampires must submit to--a unique idea for identifying a vampire from their bite--Valens heads to Danube's Delight to find Ione of the Drodescu, a barbarianess with no patience for his questions, but with ties to a radical group known as the Vrykolaka Res Publica.

Ides of Blood is an intriguing variation on the vampire theme. With a hint of the Machiavellian machinations of Twilight's Volturi, and the positioning of vampires as common slaves ingratiating themselves into the cultural fabric, Paul and Duce appear to have side-stepped the current genre debate over sadistic vampires driven by bloodlust being more proper than coutured vampires driven by romance and familial obligation. Paul's vampires are slaves who yearn for freedom, and Valens' lust is steered more towards growing the modest grapes on his vine and sleeping with Caesar's niece, while his ambition is to rise in power and acceptance.

These three goals--wine, sex, and power-- defined ancient Rome quite well.

Comic Book Review: Blacklist Studio's King! 1

"In less than one hour, a hole will open in the fabric of the universe, unleashing a horde of  Moche zombies, led by their bloodthirsty god."

"And where, exactly, will this hole open up?"

"In the dining area of Blubber Tubber's Burgers about a mile away."

In King! Issue 1,  Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford begin the adventures "of a former professional wrestler who not only is a monster killer for hire, but who also closely resembles a certain "King" of Rock n Roll."

As they did with Robot 13's storyline, the King! rocks through Bradford's breezy, taking care of business panels, while Hall lets his  hunka hunka burnin'  impersonator's soul roll with the mayhem as Blubber Tubber's fast food joint becomes the center of the apocalypse. Hold the fries because there's no time to waste with lengthy exposition, copious explanations, or deep conversations. Hall and Bradford prefer action to words, as does the King, and this first issue has it as much as Elvis' hips could swivel.

The question is, will the King get to eat his Peanut Butter Banana Burrito before it gets cold?

An advance copy of King! Issue 1 was provided for this review.

Comic Book Review: I, Zombie 3, The Dead of Night

Zombos Says: Good

I don't know, Diogenes. How can you be sure she's a bloodsucker?

Horatio--Do you think she'd be talking to a guy like that if she wasn't?

Okay, I'll admit this is one of my guilty pleasures of comic book reading. Although Roberson and Allred keep Gwen and her odd friends squeaky clean for a brain-munching zombie, a ghost with Barbie's fashion sense, and a moonlight-afflicted hairsute friend that looks like Zombos' miniature schnauzer in a hooded sweat top, this horror-lite series is fresh and lively with color and character.

In this issue Gwen finally meets Mr. Amon, the mysterious guy in the big, spooky house, and Spot's body-hairdo gets mussed when he's outed by his nerdy friend. His other nerdy friend is in neck-deep trouble with a paintball vamp hookup, but Horatio and Diogenes, the white coat dressed pair of investigators, are close at hand to stop her blood-pecking.

Or were close at hand until Gwen falls head over heels for Horatio. Actually, Gwen was practically tossed his way by the vamp when she collided into Gwen in front of Dixie's Diner. But it looks like Gwen and Horatio's chance meeting may blossom into something more.

The vamp, by the way, is the one on the right of the cover. Vamps always dress sassy, like vamps, so they're easy to spot. I'm not sure why Gwen insists on wearing green, though; it doesn't go well with her purple skin pallor at all. Browns and earth tones are more apropos for a cute zombie like her.

Comic Book Review: X-Files/30 Days of Night 1

Zombos Says: Very Good

We've been on a lot of murders, Scully, and for the life of me, I can't recall one involving a 25-foot human popsickle. (Fox Mulder)

Wainright, Alaska.

It's going to be a very long night for Scully and Mulder: a human popsickle of headless truck drivers is sticking high out of the ground; Mulder didn't read the memo about wearing a coat; and fanged-fiends with a taste for blood and guilty pleasure for mangling their prey are afoot in the snowstorm.

Steve Niles, along with Adam Jones, serves up 30 Days of Nights' sexless, violently madcap vampires with the sexy Dana Scully and devil-may-care, madcap as a Fox Mulder in this smart crossover, six-issue series from IDW and Wildstorm.

The art by Tom Mandrake serves up the snowy drifts with the fearful nocturnals to chilling effect, making this twenty-two page issue a pleasing mouthful of setup for what promises to be a gripping story even Chris Carter can sink his teeth into for the big screen. (Chris, you owe us one, big time.) The ending splash page is one of the best hooks I've seen for picking up the next issue.

The usual old--"just stay out of our way"-- rivalries abound. Fox goes head to head with "Frenchy" and the local--way out of their depth--FBI contingent as evidence is bagged and tagged. Scully warns Mulder not to jump to the scent, but he's already hot on the trail after he learns blood's the one thing in short supply.

Between Frenchy and Mulder, want to bet who wins before the night is over?

This issue provided by DC Comics for review.

Graphic Book Review: The Strange Adventures of H. P. Lovecraft

But now, a third alternative reveals itself. A harrowing possibility that I, more than anyone, should have considered! My night's wicked reveries conjure monsters. And if I sleep--Providence dies.

Zombos Says: Very Good

Madness wags the tail of Lovecraft's fiction. No reason it shouldn't since it dogged him every day of his life. But there are many forms of madness, though each one eventually distills into one consummate abyss surrounded only by the boundaries of chaos. Not benign, nor reticent, nor remorseful is the journey to this abyss, and shadows of malevolence dot its rim, poking furtively into consciousness, just enough to chill the bone and heat the blood.

Such is Lovecraft's legacy to fantastic literature: he gives us the briefest of glimpses into that awful abyss, which leaves a taste like salt sucked after  the bitterest glassful of Tequila spirit is downed with a chewy biteful of the thickest worm. But the worm is only in your imagination, of course. Con gusano is a myth perpetuated for the gringos who don't know the difference between Tequila and Mezcal. But myth can be powerful, nonetheless, especially when cosmic in scale, yet kept personal in the telling.

The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft issues 1 through 4 are collected in Image Comics trade paperback. Written by Mac Carter and drawn by Tony Salmons, Howard Philips Lovecraft becomes his own haunter of the darkness, shaded over by his spiritual dissolution, doted over by his two perpetually tipsy aunts, weakened by his mentally-deranged parents, and nearing a void in his life ready to trip him into that abyss. Of course this is the imagined Howard Philips Lovecraft, the fictional one who unwittingly becomes the Gate, the reluctant welcoming committee and tour guide par excellence for those Others, the Ones patiently waiting at the rim of the abyss to return insanity and chaos to its proper place in the cosmos. Their cosmos.

Carter keeps it all very personal for Lovecraft. Howard has writer's block big time, but his volatile dreams betray his inmost desires, the ones he can't seem to man up to during his waking hours. This bottling up becomes his uncorked genii at night, speeding off on more than ethereal wings, and soon the people of Providence--the ones he can't seem to get along with all that well--are madly stroked into Picasso paintings colored in chaos.

Being an underground artist, Salmons doesn't quite capture the flux of unreality, the melting of sanity, or the horrors-beyond-time as morphologically lucid as I'd like, but between Carter's narrative for Howard's plight and the repercussions of his cosmic gate-keeping, there is a symbiosis of intent between Carter and Salmons that realizes the action more than adequately. The frantic elucidation of the Necronomicon's influence on Howard's fragile mind, the subtle murmurings from its long dead compiler goading him on (the opening pages in issue 1 are some of the best in the series), and his psychological instability converge into a fast-paced tale of terror that makes it all very personal for Lovecraft and us.

Comic Book Review: The Littlest Zombie 1

This is part of what makes it hard to get food now. All of the slow, unarmed survivors have already been eaten.

Zombos Says: Good

Fred Perry's plucky undead kid in The Littlest Zombie (from Antarctic Press) is beset by life's--rather, I should say--undead's challenges of finding food in a world with no Stop and Shops but lots of bigger-sized, and often unsatisfied, consumers competing for scraps of fresh brains and sinewy limbs still flailing.

Issue 1 brings frantically struggling paramilitary survivors and patiently struggling zombies together, and the little fellow smack dab in the middle looking for a leg up, or just about any other body part he can sink his rotting teeth in to. His main challenge this time around is one very large zombie that illustrates the when-he-sits-around-the-house joke quite well. The squabbling living folk use him for a door stopper to keep the horde of onlookers away while they fight among themselves. The living's social disorder is hinted at when mention is made of slavers and marauders, and the final decision to sell out others in order to stay off the menu.  Perry only gives us hints of how the living are making do with scant resources, but this may indicate he has a grander scheme in mind for future stories. Perry's art is light-hearted but detailed enough to play off the usual tropes of zombiedom's nastier habits. It's a shame he only has black and white to work with, although he makes more than adequate use of it. Color and zombies make a better match graphically. Nothing says putrescence like green and ochre.

Perry's morality play approach makes his little fellow appealing, and deceptively less threatening then his adult brethren, but also keeps him feisty and hungry enough to stay  zombie cute enough for a plush toy.

Comic Book Review: Turf 1, The Fangs of New York

Zombos Says: Good (in spite of poor page layout)

If you've ever read a Classics Illustrated comic you're familiar with how the artwork is accompanied by large blocks of narrative and copious balloons of dialog in each panel. By today's standards those comics appear too wordy, but these are literary classics that were transferred to a medium their authors didn't normally worry about. To compensate, the panel layouts were carefully designed to accommodate art and text so neither overpowered the other.

Image Comics' Turf issue 1 is like reading a Classics Illustrated story, but without that careful planning of art and text layout. This gives the impression the artwork was done first, then narrative and dialog text were slapped on top, creating an awkward, crowded, and often contentious marriage of both within panels too small to cleanly hold them. Some pages stretch to ten panels, which are then crammed with text, some of which is either unnecessary or could have been better accommodated by choosing a different page layout or approach. How Alan Moore's penchant for verbosity is craftily handled in comics comes to mind. So my question is why didn't Ross and Edwards do a better job of planning their graphic story layout? Jonathan Ross' story is ambitious and well written--for a novel--and Tommy Lee Edwards artwork captures the grit and flap of the roaring 1929 social scene with detailed precision--when you can see it.

Suzie, the society columnist for the Gotham Herald realizes her dream of becoming a bona fide news reporter when European vampires (their progenitor, shown in one panel, looks like Bela Lugosi's Dracula), led by Stefani Dragonmir, move to eliminate the city's gangs and take control of organized crime. Along with her reluctant photographer Dale (why do sidekicks always seem reluctant?) she's heading knee deep into the belly of the beast. If that's not enough for you, there's also alien cargo runners locked in a space battle above the city, soon to crash the party in issue 2. Vampires, gangsters, and aliens: sounds like a B-movie extravaganza, not to mention a mysterious Old One the vampires are looking to revive to start their war on humanity.

Given panels sized and arranged to fit everything snugly but adequately, issue 1 would be almost exhilarating in its pace and setups. However, as written, the only size to properly make it all harmonize would be a coffee table book format. Without a doubt, for the cover price, this is one issue where you get more than your money's worth.

Comic Book Review: I, Zombie 2, Working Stiffs

Zombos Says: Very Good

You'd be surprised, but sometimes it seems like there's more dead people above the ground than below it in any given cemetery.

For issue 2, iZombie gets a new-look title and picks up momentum with its art and story. Roberson brings us closer to Gwen's ghostly girlfriend Ellie, introduces Scott's pocket-protector inclined IT pals at work, and the vampire girls running the local Blood Sports Paintball attraction have a 'business' meeting. Mister Mummy, Fred's murderer, puts in a brief appearance, although what he's up to or what he might be after is not disclosed. His pet cheetah likes to eat juicy steaks on the couch, though, while watching television.

This issue doesn't add much to Gwen's investigation of Fred's death beyond her meeting his wife and son, awkwardly, in the cemetery, but it embellishes the people we met in the first issue. The two mysterious monster hunters are back, and they're on the trail of a rogue vampire. For a small town it certainly has an unusually high amount of supernatural citizens, much like Buffy's Sunnydale.

The simple, smooth lines of the characters are not effusive or overly energetic, but with a variety of page layouts for them to converse and act in, there's a Dylan Dog-ish quirkiness just itching to scratch through. Eye-candy pastel colors and zip-a-tone keep the story's tone light, but don't overshadow Gwen's moodiness. The difficult balance between art and word is just about perfect, making this series a pleasure to read as much as look at.

This issue was provided by Vertigo for review.

Comic Book Review: Bram Stoker's Death Ship 1

24 July.--There seems some doom over this ship. Already a hand short, and entering the Bay of Biscay with wild weather ahead, and yet last night another man lost, disappeared. Like the first, he came off his watch and was not seen again. Men all in a panic of fear, sent a round robin, asking to have double watch, as they fear to be alone. Mate angry. Fear there will be some trouble, as either he or the men will do some violence. (from the Captain's log, Dracula by Bram Stoker)

ZC Rating 4 of 7: Very Good

The doomed voyage of the Russian schooner Demeter, in Bram Stoker's Dracula, is one of the more horrific passages in the novel. Imagine being trapped aboard a ship with the blood-thirsty devil: there's nowhere to hide that's safe; no one strong enough to save you; no one living to hear you scream. Budgetary necessity forced the removal of this terror by night from Bela Lugosi's Dracula, and there's been no movie to date--although The Last Voyage of the Demeter has been in production limbo for years--that has chronicled the ship's encounter with the undead nobleman. Bram Stoker himself only provides a few tantalizing glimpses into the terrible fate of the crew through the Captain's log entries.

Now writer Gary Gerani and artist Stuart Sayger take over the ship's wheel to navigate those days of dread and death. There's a formidable challenge inherent in describing the Demeter's last days: we know how it ends. It's hard to build suspense when you know nobody survives. Or will they here?

Sayger's artwork takes much of it's power from the non-glossy paper, providing a rough, muted canvas for his water-colored hues that bring life to his inked lines. He has a knack for capturing the salt in the sea air, the splinter's in the mast's wood, and the terror stalking the deck. Gerani's characters are hardened men of the sea, a spirited captain, and one very young sailor still enamored by the wonders of the sky and the water when seen from the crow's nest. Then there's Anatole, a savage brute of a seaman who revels in his manliness. How will he handle the intruder onboard, one savage pitted against another?

This first issue's 22-pages bring the crewmen, the mysterious boxes of earth, and Dracula together for the last voyage of the Demeter in a promisingly dramatic way. Even though we know what should happen, Gerani and Sayger give us flesh and blood people to be concerned over--except, maybe, for Anatole--and Sayger's splash illustration for the vampire during one of his attack's, rendered murkily, as if seen through mist, indicates the white gloves are off. If the momentum begun in this issue continues, the power of Dracula over the living and the elements will provide a vivid and suspenseful confrontation; the one Bram Stoker alludes to in his novel.

Comic Book Review: I, Zombie 1 Dead to the World

Combine the two most horrible tastes you can imagine--like motor oil and someone else's vomit--and you won't even come close to this level of nasty. Yeah, I eat brains. (Gwen in I, Zombie, Issue 1)

Zombos Says: Good

I, Zombie from Vertigo is an urban fantasy set in Eugene, Oregon, a town very much like Archie Comics' Riverdale. Instead of Jughead, Betty, and Veronica, however, the grave-digging Gwendolyn Dylan has friends like  Ellie, a Go-Go Dancer ghost with a beehive hairdo, and Scott, a were-terrier boyfriend with puppy-love eyes. The gang likes to hang out at Dixie's Firehouse, the local malt shop and diner.

When not at Dixie's, Gwen digs graves at the Green Pastures Cemetery, which boasts their naturally wholesome methods of interment. Gwen's dirt-shoveling skills come in handy because she's a 20-something zombie who needs to chow down on a mass of gray cells every month to keep from turning into a less attractive and stinkier one. The catch is that when she eats a recently interred person's brain, she experiences the memories, pleasure, anguish, and desires the person left behind before shuffling off to points unknown. This time around, that shuffling off involves murder.

There's a lot of kitschy-cute weirdness crammed into this first issue: a mysterious corporation concerned about the surge in permanent residents at Green Pastures Cemetery; a former boyfriend Gwen anxiously avoids; the question of who murdered her latest dinner guest and why; and paintball vampires prowling around. Introductions are fast and brief in this ambitious issue, leaving me with anticipation for the next issue and hoping it doesn't fall flat under its own weighty cuteness. Michael Allred's artwork melds with the odd characters and their peculiar talents well enough to keep the tone balanced for the light and dark drama-kitsch writer Chris Roberson is aiming for.

DC Comics sent me a courtesy copy for this review.

Graphic Book Review: The Nightmare Factory Vol. 1, 2

Zombos Says: Very Good

Shhh. Listen. That is a furtive step creaking up the basement stairs. Hold your breath. That is a shadow crouching in the corner of the room, and every other room you enter. Breathe in. That is the briny smell of fish scales and water-logged wood, and freshly turned earth filled with bloated worms, and moldering leather-bound volumes crammed onto drooping shelves. Now look. Those crumbling facades of edifice and sanity, cracking and peeling in the mirror behind you, are yours. And yours alone.

Welcome to the eerie world of Thomas Ligotti, an author who is either highly praised or mostly ignored by readers of the horrific, whose stories are adapted in these two volumes from Fox Atomic Comics. Somewhat Lovecraftian in intent, partially E. F. Bleiler-- with a tincture of Robert Aickman--in portent, Ligotti's stories are incessantly bleak and eldritch and filled with uncanny events confronting his displaced, misplaced, and psychically-debased characters. Images of festively-clothed clowns and harlequins, ancient alien things with grotesque appendages, and arcane horrors waiting patiently at your doorstep occupy his imagination. And now yours.

Reading Ligotti's words, you always enter the story in the middle and work around to the edges of beginning and ending, leaving you very much like the little rat nibbling at a large wheel of cheese: feeling anxious because there is always more just out of reach and desiring it badly. This is neither a bad or good thing. It is simply Thomas Ligotti at work.

In volume one, the nightmares include a small town's festival involving clowns and those that seem like clowns, a sanitarium that was better left standing than taken down, an intermezzo with a mannikin, and an artist's brush with the mysterious Teatro Grotessco. Each tale is drawn by a different artist with relish and Ligotti provides the introductions. The stories are adapted by Joe Harris and Stuart Moore, and capture the anxiety, paranoia, and weirdness of Ligotti's temperament. Dr. Locrian's Asylum is the most unsettling in illustration and tone, and touches at the ghostly with an M. R. James' spookiness. Interestingly, the first two stories are drawn using a black-bordered background, and the last two stories use a white-bordered one.

Gas Station Carnivals, The Clown Puppet, The Chymist, and The Sect of the Idiot are adapted in volume two. The questionable emotional stability of the narrators in the first two stories leaves you with a sense of dread and uncertainty, while the certainty in purpose expressed in the last two stories' narrators leaves you with a sense of fear, of out-of-your-control-evil happening, again and again. The life-sized puppet-clown in The Clown Puppet floats silently in the back of Vizniak's pharmacy, looking for a prescription that may be difficult to fill. Bill Siekiewicz's arresting panels imbue the absurdity and malevolence of this apparition with vivid terror. The impossible remembrance in Gas Station Carnivals hints not only of a troubled memory, but of a troublesome future, especially with it's story within a story framework. Ligotti introduces each story again, but more like he is thinking out loud with his ruminations rather than a fact-laden rundown of the story's provenance. As in volume one, these ruminations, on the theme permeating each story, gives us a peak into Ligotti's fears, and subsequently, those of his characters about to experience the uncanny. It is here in volume two that the sense of being in the middle of something far more sinister and dangerous than imagined, or of having walked in, unwelcome, on a private conversation is strongest.

In all likelihood, Ligotti's writing stems from an inhibition to take his assigned medications in a timely fashion. Reading these tales, you may find a need for medication also, if only to not fear brightly-dressed clowns, and to be able to shake away the unease when all alone in those dark, quiet moments.

Critical analyses of Ligotti's work can be found in S. T. Joshi's book The Modern Weird Tale (2001) as well as in a critical anthology assembled by Darrell Schweitzer, a fan of Ligotti.

LOTT D: Horror Comic Crypt 2

The bells strike the midnight horror. Dare you enter the comic crypt with The League of Tana Tea Drinkers to dig up the dirt on horrifying comics (and those others)? Who knows what you may discover buried deep between the covers. Make sure your flashlight's batteries are strong, pack a good midnight snack, and mind the rats. Now let's go.

Uranium Cafe: The Sleazy World of Eerie Publications

Myron Fass was to magazine publishing what Ron Ormond and Al Adamson were to film making, only consistently lacking their sometimes dubious scruples and ethics. His best remembered for his wild assortment of magazines published from the 60’s to 70’s by the company called Countrywide Publications that he partnered with Stanley R. Harris.

My Monster Memories: Tomb of Dracula Issue 1

This is probably my favorite comic book that I ever bought. I picked it up in late March of 1972, when I was 13 years old, at my regular haunt for comics and books; Chichester's drugstore on Vineville Ave. in Macon GA.

Robot 6: Sinister Six: Alt-Horror Update

Before Halloween I posted a list of "Six Deeply Creepy Alt-Horror Cartoonists" as part of Robot 666's week-long reign of terror. Well, these avatars of alternative comics' dark side have been up to some interesting things lately.

Vault of Horror: House of Mystery Halloween Annual

I recently got my grubby hands on House of Mystery's first-ever Halloween Annual, and can honestly say it made my Halloween just a little more festive. In some ways, the issue does a better job of recapturing the old Creepy Magazine feel than Dark Horse's actual Creepy revival book--albeit in a more mature, Vertigo style.

Moon is a Dead World: Victorian Undead Issue 1

Horror has recently found a fascination in remaking the Victorian age of literature. We've seen novels parodying Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, and now we have a creation from Ian Edginton and Davide Fabbri pitting Sherlock Holmes and Watson against mindless zombies. Do we have a fascination in debauching (in a good way) the classics?

Zombos' Closet: Vincent Price Presents Issues 1, 2, 3

Using the persona of famed horror actor Vincent Price to host a series of illustrated terror tales is a demanding challenge.