Raven's Haven: Dark Horse

Showing posts with label Dark Horse. Show all posts

Thursday, 12 January 2017

Eerie (2012) # 1-8

(I originally read these comics in mid/late December 2016)

This latter-day revival of Warren's long-running horror anthology is a real disappointment. The decision seems to have been made to make it a sci-fi/horror comic, in keeping with the second half of the original mag's run and to distinguish it from Dark Horse's concurrent 'Creepy' revival, but this isn't consistent.

The first issue is an inauspicious debut, with two reprints. I made the decision to skip the reprints in every issue, so as to not spoil them for when I get around to a proper 'Eerie' read-through. Of the two new strips, the lead one by David Lapham, about a paranoid man coming to believe his family are robots, is gruesome and memorable. You'd be hard-pressed to find many jewels in the rest of the run, though, despite the artistic talents of Mike Allred, Evan Shaner and Mike Royer, amongst others. However, the two strips drawn by Kelley Jones in issues 4 and 6 deserve a mention. The first, written by Al Ewing, has a psychotherapist separate a man from his 'shadow self', in order to ease his guilty conscience. The second, an M. R. James adaptation by Jones himself, tells of a condemned witch exacting vengeance through an ash tree. For much of the rest of it, there's an issue with stories requiring too much investment - even over just eight pages or so - for too little pay-off. Bernie Wrightson provides back cover art.

I bought each issue of this incarnation of Eerie as they were farted out over a period of three and a half years, without reading any. Safe to say, if I'd read them as they came out, I'd have dropped the title from my pull list before it was halfway through. In a time when real life horrors are a staple ingredient of TV news and social media, you have to try much harder than this. I'm afraid 'Eerie' is best left in the past and viewed through the lens of nostalgia where you can at least imagine the world was safer and cosier and that these types of tales still had the power to frighten.

The original stories from Eerie (2012) # 1-8 are collected in:

Softcover:

Eerie Vol. 1: Experiments in Terror (US)

Eerie Vol. 1: Experiments in Terror (UK)

Tuesday, 27 December 2016

The Curse of Dracula (1998) # 1-3, Blade (1998) # 1-3, Journey Into Mystery (1952) # 520/521, Blade (1998), Blade: Sins of the Father (1998), Spider-Man Unlimited (1993) # 20, Marvel Team-Up (1997) # 7, Morbius in Dark Corners (1998) # 1

(I originally read these comics in mid November 2016)

'The Curse of Dracula' doesn't come close to recapturing the magic of Marv Wolfman's and Gene Colan's previous Dracula collaboration (and shame on you if you don't know what that is), but is worth reading. As before, Wolfman assembles a band of disparate individuals, all damaged in their own ways, to pursue the vampire count. This Dracula is younger and sexier than the Marvel incarnation and has his eyes on political power as he exerts violent influence over a senator's campaign for presidential office. The story is gorier, Wolfman is less wordy than he was and Colan is looser (and dare I say, sloppier), his art reproduced directly from his pencils. I'll admit to being less of a fan of 'Gene the Dean' than I used to be; his 'scatter the panels on the page and see how they land' approach to layout isn't always to the benefit of story clarity.

Jim Shooter was right.

ANYWAY.

At approximately the same time over at Marvel, vampires were having something of a renaissance. Besides Morbius returning in the pages of Peter Parker, Spider-Man (see here), Marv Wolfman, Christopher Golden and Don McGregor were creating a temporary nexus for the company's Undead. Gene Colan's back for the 1998 Blade one-shot, subtitled 'Crescent City Blues', which sees the vampire hunter decamp to New Orleans on the trail of Deacon Frost, who is muscling in on that city's organised crime. Writer Golden clearly knows his Marvel horror history and Blade's fellow 'Tomb of Dracula' survivor Hannibal King and Brother Voodoo also appear in a wordy adventure that was nevertheless Colan's last association with all three of his co-creations. This leads straight into Spider-Man Unlimited # 20, also by Golden, which follows vampire PI King as he teams up with the webslinger to track Simon Garth, the Zombie, who's in the thrall of Lilith, Dracula's errant daughter.

Marv Wolfman, meanwhile, contributes Marvel Team-Up # 7 and another excursion into the world of vampires for Spidey as he teams with Blade to foil a plot that allows them to walk in sunlight. Then picking up the reins from Golden, he continues the adventures of Hannibal King in two issues of 'Journey Into Mystery', at this brief time an anthology title. King takes on a case that turns out to be more than it seems as he teams with a glamorous CIA agent to thwart an attempt to swell the Undead's numbers via the triggering of chemical weapons. The story's average and Karl Kerschl's art unattractive, but it does provide character development for King as he's tested beyond his limits.

The second Blade one shot published in '98 is by Marc Andreyko and Bart Sears and is a prequel to that year's movie, though you wouldn't know it till the last page and it's easy enough to imagine it takes place within the main Marvel U. The story's fast-moving and action-packed as Blade is hired by the daughter of a vampire mob boss to take down his operation and neutralise a gang war. Bart Sears' art is stylish and Blade looks cooler than he ever has previously.

Don McGregor's Blade series under Marvel's short-lived 'Strange Tales' banner is a frustrating beast. Preluded in the 'Dark Corners' twelve-page Morbius strip, it sees Blade unwittingly become embroiled in an elaborate plot towards his own destruction that takes in Morbius' wife's family and inevitably brings the two into conflict. Disappointingly, and I'd forgotten this, the series was cancelled with the third issue and the plot never resolved. That's unfortunate, as though Brian Hagan's art is bland, McGregor had something going on. Blade and Morbius next crossed paths in Peter Parker Spider-Man (1999) # 8 and their encounter here was never alluded to.

As an extra, here's Bart Sears' back cover art for the 'Blade: Sins of the Father' one-shot.

The Curse of Dracula (1998) # 1-3 are collected in:

Hardcover:

The Curse of Dracula (US)

The Curse of Dracula (UK)

Softcover:

The Curse of Dracula (US)

The Curse of Dracula (UK)

Blade (1998) # 1 is collected in:

Softcover:

Blade the Vampire Slayer: Black & White (US)

Blade the Vampire Slayer: Black & White (UK)

Monday, 12 September 2016

Batman/Predator I-III (1991-'98), Batman/Aliens I and II (1997-2003), Superman and Batman Versus Aliens and Predator (2007), Superman & Batman vs. Vampires & Werewolves (2008)

(I originally read these comics between late April/early May 2015)

I must confess to being neither a Predator nor Aliens fan. I am however a Batman fan, and he's the common link between these series. The final series here I chose to tack on the end as it seemed thematically similar.

These are a grouping of comics I chose to read before I made a habit of writing reviews, so there isn't one. I've no doubt I'll revisit them at some point, though.