From Zombos' Closet

Graphic Book Review: The Thief of Always

Zombos Says: Excellent

Holiday House, a magical place where four seasons roll by in a single day, where children are free to spend their time doing exactly what they wish..

Ten-year old Harvey Swick is stuck in February like a fly on that gooey, sticky paper strip. He's bored, mired in routine, all tuckered out from not having a real life, the one he wants to live. Lord knows February can be brutal: there's not one real holiday in jumping distance. Only sparse days devoted to heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and Fat Tuesday bead necklaces, but those don't count much: not a boo, gobble gobble, or ho-ho-ho to be found. Tell me you don't have a little Harvey Swick stuckness in you, old or young, whatever your case may be, and I'll tell you no lies.

And lies are where it all begins. Young Harvey's done to a turn when Mr. Rictus flies through the bedroom window and points Harvey to Holiday House, a wonderful place where the seasons happen all in one day, every day, over and over. A long walk across town and a short one through the misty brick wall brings him there. Greeted by Mrs. Griffin, he's lavished with food, settled into his room, and introduced to the other children, Lulu and Wendell. Wendell is the fat kid. There always seems to be a fat kid named Wendell, or some such suitable name for fat kids. Wendell's been at the Holiday House for a long time, but not longer than Lulu. And she's been there too long already.

Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, they come and go, every day, in this illustrated edition of Clive Barker's The Thief of Always, adapted by Kris Oprisko and Gabriel Hernandez. Holiday House contains all those adventurous and mysterious things you'd expect a magical house should.  Mr. Rictus acts cumulonimbusly-dark in motive and moves like a chilling wind, hunched over with his unwholesome goals in tow. And the Thief of Always, Mr. Hood, stays out of sight until Harvey Swick sees him for who and what and how he really is. Oprisko and Hernandez capture the dark and the light in Barker's novel, making us worry and wonder along with Wendell, Lulu, and Harvey Swick as they learn why too much of a good thing can lead to very bad things. Though, like them,  we never really believe that until it happens.

Like the lake with those very large fish swimming around in it: not a good thing at all; or like Carna, whose wings are almost as large as his bite: not good either; and how about the other Holiday House family members like Jive, Rictus' brother, who is even paler than Rictus, and Marr, who is fatter than Wendell; they're not the kind of friendly people you ought to be friendly with.

Made of dreams and ancient dust and wishful things, Holiday House is very inviting, especially with Oprisko and Hernandez greeting you at the door. Just don't wake up Mr. Hood--even if he was the one who invited you--and you can always stay. Always.

Graphic Book Review: Sweet Tooth, Out of the Deep Woods

Zombos Says: Very Good

Desolation. Uncivilized behavior. Freaky mutations. Must be the post-apocalypse in Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth comic series, with the first five issues, Out of the Deep Woods, collected into Vertigo's trade paperback. 

There's more: Gus, who sticks out like a sore thumb with his deer-like antlers and ears; a mysterious stranger, called Jepperd, who rescues Gus from hunters looking for reverse-anthropomorphic mutated kids like Gus; and the "affliction," or plague, or major nasty event that's reduced the human population to a few nasty adult survivors with basic ulterior motives like staying alive at all costs and against all odds.

Raised by his Bible-reading father, Gus must leave the safety found in the woods he's known all his life. As he travels to a sanctuary with Jepperd, a two-fisted, tough as oak and emotionally as thick-skinned man with a bagful of candy and a secret, Gus learns more about the world outside and eventually meets other mutated kids showing different animal characteristics.

There's still more: Gus is nine years old. The affliction started seven years ago. So how can he be affected by mutation before the world was sent to places deep south by the contagion? It's a puzzle that Lemire assembles his minimalist but expressive panels around, showing closeups of Gus and the desperate people he meets reacting to each other and the near overwhelming loss surrounding them--and within them. Gus' innocence and naivete, the adults' complicity and duplicity, and the inevitable conflict between the two are dramatically visualized by Lemire with carefully paced and sequenced scenes and sparse narrative and dialog.

I almost passed this one up. I thought the antler-kid story too cute and indie-artsy based on the first issue's cover. I was wrong. It's about self-discovery, overcoming one's fear, and struggling through desperation. It will keep you reading to discover, along with Gus, what the Hell happened, why, and where more candy bars might be found.

Graphic Book Review: Criminal Macabre Cell Block 666

Zombos Says: 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.

 

Graphic Book Review: The Chill

Zombos Says: Very Good

I worry a lot when reviewing a graphic novel. So many things to consider; you've got the artwork, you've got the writing, you've got everything between the art and the writing--and it all works up to either a good or a bad story. It's an encompassing beam bar balancing act and one little slip can send everything screwy. Then there's the personal bias; every critic has one, whether we admit it or not. Usually we leave it up to the reader to pick it out, like a fly in a bowl of chowder; it's there, but the devil to find it.

Jason Starr and Mick Bertilorenzi manage to balance The Chill without going screwy. Starr's got a nasty habit of using too many get-the-bar-of-soap-ready cuss words in his characters' dialog, but I admit I'm peevish with writers using fuck you this and fookin' that--with variations. It gets in the way of writing really good dialog when you're forced to dance around the expletives you'd naturally rope a dope with. But let me make this easy for you: there's my fly in the chowder.

Starr's story is gritty, sexy, and sopping with imaginative Druid magic references. Bertilorenzi's artwork makes it come alive. His panels barely contain it all and spill across the pages, keeping up the momentum of Starr's mystery that begins in County Clare, Ireland a ways back, and continues over the years, getting worse as she goes.

A lover escapes death and the lovee has something awaken inside her. It's called the chill. Not really good for her or her lovers, but her dad benefits most from it. As to why that is, you won't hear it from me; you need to read the story. But I can tell you Bertilorenzi's visual interpretation of Starr's terror--all the bad killings, the cuss-mouthed but obtuse detectives, the gritty city, and the nasty messing the sheets sex is rendered in black and white and shades of gray. He's got a good Mickey Spillane trashiness going with Starr's innocent and blemished people meeting their doom.

The only glamour in this story comes from Irish magic. Most everyone starts off looking good, but Starr must have some flies in his chowder, too, because even professors and priests wind up researching and preying more than they morally or legally should.

Review copy provided by DC Comics/Vertigo.

Graphic Book Review: Trick 'r Treat

Zombos Says: Excellent

"I can't believe you would do such a thing. Are you daft? I ask you to read to our son's fifth-grade class and you pick this?" Zimba held up Wildstorm's Trick 'r Treat graphic novel; actually more like waved it violently, really. She paced back and forth in her frustration.

"None of the students wanted to ride the bus home," added Mrs. Crabtree, Zombos Junior's teacher. "Not after you told them about those unwanted children intentionally sunk into a rock quarry by their bus driver. And after that one about the evil kid-killing school principal--what were you thinking?--they scream every time Mr. Whiffle walks past in the hallway. I don't dare send any of them to his office now." Mrs. Crabtree took a deep breadth. "Thank the lord you didn't read them a story about the cafeteria having monster food or something. They're now so frightened of their own shadows because of that horrid comic book you brought."

"Graphic novel," I corrected her. I always love correcting teachers. I enjoy an occasional I-told-you-so, too.

"And then you had to show them all those unpleasant cartoon pictures of dead kids' heads, and blood, and that horrid little misbehaving beast, Sam, running around causing mayhem." Mrs. Crabtree took another breadth and folded her arms tighter. "I don't know why you couldn't just have read It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown or something enjoyable and not so scary. They love those well-behaved Charlie Brown and Linus, and how Linus sucks his thumb like a baby and waits for the Great Pumpkin to bring treats. You could have brought a blanket like Mrs. Zombos does and mimicked Linus sucking his thumb while waiting for the Great Pumpkin. It always gets a laugh. My students are not laughing now." Mrs. Crabtree took a deeper breadth and, this time, waited for penance, contrition, or somesuch from Zombos.

It did seem like a long wait.

Graphic Book Review: Simon Dark's Gotham City

Lurks in Shadows. Hides in the park.
Simon. Simon. Simon Dark.
If you're good he'll stay away.
If you're bad he'll make you pay.
Lurks in Shadows. Hides in the park.
Simon. Simon. Simon Dark.

Zombos Says: Very Good

Simon Dark's first two graphic novels, What Simon Does (collecting issues 1 through 6) and Ashes (collecting issues 7 through 12), must be read together. The first sets up Simon's bizarre background and the second delivers the main storyline of Lovecraftian-styled witchcraft, which depends on that set up. Mixing fairly equal parts of mystery, occult science, and recognizable horror elements such as the Gothic, a creepy-looking sack-like mask, and conniving robed worshipers of demonic beings, Steve Niles builds an effectively darker Gotham City than even Batman deals with. This atmosphere is further enhanced through Niles' characters, those both good and evil, who either aid or hinder Simon Dark in his continuing battle with the dark side, and in his search to understand his ultimate purpose for being.

These characters are arrestingly drawn by Scott Hampton, who makes Simon's world properly Gothic, but perhaps a little too dark at times. His carefully stylized, foreground-heavy, panels flow across pages like single frames in a movie, creating images that are  static and posed, and lacking an internal dynamism. He reminds me of Al Williamson, although not as detailed when drawing background imagery. Hampton's unique faces are like portraits and they play an important role in his composition by generating emotional depth with their sober expressions; at first, this near photo-realistic approach is elegantly novel, but it can lead to confusion between the two heroines; a pathologist, Beth Granger, and Simon's soulmate, Rachel Dodds, when their features blur into similarity as dire events involving them unfold . Rereading clears up this confusion (along with clothing cues I missed initially), but more detail and less black in the scenes would have mitigated this.

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.

Graphic Book Review: Zombie World Winter's Dregs

Zombos Says: 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.

Graphic Book Review: Zombie Tales Vol. 1

Zombos Says: Very Good

No other horror subgenre elicits more fodder for cinema than those nihilistic automatons of sheer irrational fright and disgust. Whether born of thumping voodoo drums, cosmic radiation, or the crisp tinkling of test tubes, the walking dead have brought metaphorical life to many cinematic, philosophical, theological, and fictional works. No other unreal monster instills such chills and thrills as a shambling or sprinting—and badly decomposing—undead aunt, uncle, or significant other that has eyes and teeth only for you. From social commentary to gore, zombies are the cat's meow when it comes to biting allusive storytelling and visceral visuals combined.

Boom! Studios' Zombie Tales Volume One takes full advantage of this ironic oasis of socially  relevant dead people by collecting, into a nicely-sized book, stories that run the gamut of zombiedom motifs, including loss of identity, religious dilemma, and gruesome humor. It's a rare treat to find a collection that provides stimulating horror entertainment across every story. The Walking Dead trades come to mind as one of the few that can do that. Zombie Tales Volume One accomplishes the same feat, and while each story is not above average, many are, and all are competently good.

My favorite would have to be Daddy Smells Different. That foreboding title aside, one of the challenges in doing a short graphic story is to provide enough build-up, within the limited span of panels, to enable an effective ending; one that will leave you thinking—and feeling—a little off the well-trodden trail of typicality. Writer and artist, John Rogers and Andy Kuhn, create a 1950's-style tale of terror with their snappy narrative, told in the first person by a little boy who goes through a more challenging change than puberty. It's poignant, a little sad, and provides a kicker ending that leaves you uncomfortable. Both artwork and narrative work horrifyingly well together and capture a bit of that old EC Horror Comics magic.

I, Zombie:Remains of the Day, a three-part story written by Andrew Cosby and illustrated by three capable artists in their different styles, is a sublime dip into the bizarro world of zombie humor. Another tale told in the first person narrative style, it depicts the trials and tribulations of one poor dead-head whose hunger goes deeper than just sweetmeats. Here, loss of identity becomes more replacement by a different one; one you definitely could say is a life-style change, or maybe "dead-style" would be more accurate. With a little tongue in cheek dialog, and decomposing anatomy, the story provides a happy ending only possible in your zombie imagination. One amusing scene has zombie bunnies poised for mayhem. It reminded me of a similar, albeit much more serious scene in Kim Paffenroth's Dying to Live novel.

Another three-part story by writer Keith Giffen, and artist Ron Lim, is a darkly-humorous, more philosophical exploration of a zombie mind slowly becoming dissolute; a once-living personality slowly dissolving into nothingness. Parallels can be drawn to the reality of alzheimer's disease as the real horror of becoming a zombie is explored in Dead Meat: the loss of one's self, one's uniqueness.

Religious dogma is the underpinning for The Miracle of Bethany, written by Michael Alan Nelson and drawn by Lee Moder. I recall one reviewer mentioning this story could be construed as blasphemous in its use of Lazarus as Zombie O, but fiction can never be blasphemous; only reality can. It's a story that looks at how a miracle can become a curse if the spirit—and flesh—is weak. We all stand naked in the Garden of Eden after all.

Religion also plays into Zarah's decision-to-be-made For Pete's Sake. Writer Johanna Stokes and artist JK Woodward explore that decision—how long do you hold out hope for the one you love in the face of despair—before you can move on with your dramatically altered life? Here, the zombie apocalypse has created a new culture of "them and us", with people moving from building to building across foot-bridges built from roof-top to roof-top, while the ravenous, ungodly zombies walk streets below. Life goes on, as best it can. I can think of some ungodly places on earth now that closely parallel the unreal world Zarah finds herself in. What would your decision be?

While there are other rewarding stories in this engrossing anthology, the last one will leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth as another, once happy, little boy fights to find his way back home in A Game Called Zombie. This one hearkens back to The Twilight Zone, but there is no Rod Serling here to neatly tie things up. Instead, little Travis must contend with zombies that no one else can see; worse yet, they can see him. Is he hallucinating from the onset of schizophrenia? Where did his dad go? Whatever you do, don't open your eyes. What was chasing you is now standing in front of you.