by
Ghastly McNasty
Do you like comics? Do you like slasher movies? If so, this may be just what you’ve been waiting for!
Slashermania is an original graphic novel, an epic tribute to the best (and worst) slasher movies of the eighties. Written by Russell Hillman, with art by Ron Joseph, Jake Isenberg and Harry Saxon, and letters by Sergio Calvet.
1983. Troubled teens from New York and Los Angeles are taken to a summer camp facility to be trained as counsellors and mix safely with other people their own age. Little do they know they are being watched by an audience hungry for sex & violence. They are the designated victims for a bizarre contest of murder and mayhem – WELCOME TO SLASHERMANIA!
Masked maniacs from across the USA, Canada, Italy & the UK compete in various categories: Best Male Solo Death! Best Female Solo Death! Coitus Interruptus! Sin Punishment! Most Creative Kill! Biggest Multiple Death! The coveted Slasher of the Year award!
“And the Slashie goes to…”
Get involved! Head to Kickstarter and help this comic become a reality.
Writer, Russell Hillman, also has a story appear in this year’s Hallowscream. Arriving tomorrow, from beyond the grave.
by
M.I.K.
Britain’s long running comic, 2000 AD, will be celebrating Hallowe’en in style this year with a brand new winter special, which goes on sale on the 29th of October. Here’s the promotional blurb…
With an exclusive new cover by critically-acclaimed horror artist Ben Templesmith, the 2000AD 2014 Winter Special delves into the darkest recesses of its creators’ imaginations for a horror-themed 48-page issue containing complete stories featuring Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper, Psi-Judge Anderson, Defoe and the debut of new character The Alienist!
From 17th Century zombie hunters to nightmare horrors on alien worlds, some of the top creators in comics – plus new talent – serve their Thrill-power chilled with a zarjaz line-up, including:
JUDGE DREDD: SOREBONE by T.C. Eglington & Riccardo Burchielli
When members of a juve gang are picked off one by one, has one of its members being possessed by an ancient evil?
DEFOE: FRANKENSTEINER by Pat Mills & Leigh Gallagher
We flashback to 1666 and the start of the zombie epidemic, when Titus Defoe first agreed to take the position of Zombie Hunter General.
ROGUE TROOPER: THE FEAST by Guy Adams & Lee Carter
Genetic Infantryman Rogue Trooper battles through a nightmarish hallucination brought on by exposure to a nerve gas.
ANDERSON, PSI-DIVISION: HORROR COMES TO VELMA DINKLEY by Alan Grant & Darren Douglas
A rash of murders at Velma Dinkley block leads Anderson to suspect someone is influencing the killers.
TERROR TALES: PHANTOM PAINS by Eddie Robson & Jeff Anderson
Not even burning your house down can stop a haunting…
THE ALIENIST by Gordon Rennie, Emma Beeby & Eoin Coveney
England, the early 1900s. Sebastian Witherall and Madelyn Vespertine are investigators into the occult, but who holds the real power…?
The 2000 AD 2014 Winter Special can be pre-ordered now from 2000adonline.com or is available from all good stockists on October 29th!
++ END OF PROMOTIONAL BLURB! ++
Rumour has it that’s not the only bit of scary 2000 AD related stuff heading our way this month. Something strangely animated this way comes. Watch this sssspace…
by
Ghastly McNasty
Feast your eyes on this teaser soon to be launched by Freaktown Comics. Writer and Freaktown impresario Russell Hillman is no stranger to weird fiction. Russell has an disturbed fondness for slasher movies and has studied the genre, fine-tuning and perfecting it, in comic book format. This one-shot comic looks to fit just the bill.
The Bowery, Lower Manhattan, 1980. The New York burlesque scene has faded away, replaced by strip joints, peep shows and porno palaces. One small club of indomitable performers – the Luxury Lounge – still holds out against the tide.
The art of burlesque is dying. For one person, it isn’t dying fast enough. As the bodies pile up, so do the suspects – could the killer be desperate club owner Mr Barnett? Cantankerous juggler The Amazing Ralph? Stale stand-up comic Martin Stevens?
A performer can die onstage a thousand times. Offstage, once is enough.
Deadly Burlesque is a one shot horror story inspired by the earliest of the first wave of eighties slasher movies. Written by Russell Hillman, art by Daniel Bell and letters by Sergio Calvet. 24 pages, full colour, £4.00. Deadly Burlesque will be released in November at the Thought Bubble Comic Convention in Leeds, England, with online release to follow.
You can follow @FreaktownComics on Twitter or find them on Facebook.
Russell also has a story appearing in this year’s Hallowscream due to materialize from the gates of Hell on October 31st 2014.
by
Ghastly McNasty
Is the single issue comic book format dead? (This isn’t necessarily a rhetorical question; feel free to fill the comments section) Arguably not, the Big Two seem to do well every month, particularly when it comes to the variant covers, and Vaughn and Staples’ SAGA (one of the only books I buy monthly) had multiple sell-out print runs of the first issue. But is it an outdated format? Eric Stephenson, Image founder and publisher, suggested it *was* in a recent interview here).
The monthly book VS the trade-waiters. The weekly episode VS the box set. Clearly these come down to personal choice and circumstances (if you don’t have Sky or live somewhere with a comic shop in the immediate vicinity), but arguably the latter of both formats is becoming the popular draw – you can sit and binge on what you want to read/watch, while still retaining that sense of geek-like glee at the relevant episodic cliff-hanger. The pitfalls you face, though, are attempting to avoid people/the internet, who are determined to tell you how Bryan Cranston dies at the end, even though you haven’t even started yet. Fuckers.
The recent Walking Dead trade got me thinking about the above. Kirkman and co seem to have cracked the format. While still releasing a monthly book that’s still pulling in the numbers via print and digital sales, they release the no-frills trades. These collect the story in sizeable chunks, appealing not only to the die-hard comics fans, but also the mainstream ‘seen the show, reading the book’ fans, who can buy the latest trades in Waterstones. Add the warts-and-all oversized compendiums…man, if Kirkman and Adlard aren’t doing a Scrooge McDuck and diving into piles of money at the end of each day, I’ll be disappointed.
Anyway, point is, it works. But interestingly, is Kirkman structuring the story based on the trade format? The reason I ask, is that in the first issue of volume 19, nothing really happens. I think if I was reading the single issue format, I’d be a little, only a little, bit disappointed. But as a whole, the volume works; it’s slow to start and crescendos to a huge finale that is clearly setting up something massive.
The story plods along – Rick takes Michonne to see Ezekiel, Michonne doesn’t trust Ezekiel, Jesus gets into a spot of bother. And then Negan shows up. And things get really interesting, really quickly. I don’t know what it is about this character, but I just love to hate him. I know I’ve said this before, but Kirkman and Adlard have created such a perfect embodiment of pure, unadulterated evil, that you can’t help but want something horrendous to happen to him after every page turn. Needless to say, it doesn’t (it’s *March* to War, the clue’s in the title) and yet again, he gets away with taking the group’s stuff and eviscerating one of their number. (I’d be really interested to ask Kirkman how much he enjoys writing Negan as a character; I can’t imagine it’s anything less than sheer glee every time he starts typing).The ending, as mentioned, allows for some partial revenge on behalf of Rick’s pals, but this is building up for a major change – those that read the single issues will probably already be there.
Kirkman, again, crafts the perfect soap opera – great characters, emotional responses and a story that continues to grip, all represented perfectly by Adlard’s always excellent artwork. It’s always difficult to expand on this when reviewing these books, because they are just so consistently good.
I’m very interested to see where Kirkman and co take the story after this volume. Something needs to and is quite clearly going to happen – Kirkman has always had the stones to push the envelope as far as who survives and who doesn’t, but I’d almost love to see a situation where, like he’s doing with his other long running series Invincible, he takes things off into a completely new direction and does something nobody was expecting. Whatever he does in this war he’s planning, somebody’s going to croak and I kind of hope it’s not Negan. Otherwise I’ll have to go back to hating on Carl…
You can purchase The Walking Dead Volume 19 TP: March to War via Amazon
by
Ghastly McNasty
Something slightly different here at Terror HQ – acclaimed creative force Colin Lorimer, artist on Harvest and creator of UXB, kindly took time out of his busy schedule to talk to Sidesy about UXB, his process and the benefits of working in the comics medium.
Sidesy: UXB is a beautiful looking book with an interesting take on post-apocalyptic fiction. Where did the idea come from and how did it evolve? How long did it take from conception to release?
Colin Lorimer: I started developing UXB quite some time ago in my spare time, after the day job working in animation. I self-published a one-off comic simply for my own enjoyment and then took it online as a web-comic for a short time. Once Dark Horse picked it up, I reworked most of the earlier pages and started into the GN in earnest!
The idea was quite a simple one. I thought, ‘wouldn’t it be cool if I could create something that allowed me to ramble on about my love of film and somehow pay homage to a lot of my favourite flicks?’ Of course, as the story began to take on a life of its own, this fell more into the background. What if there is some sort of global disaster and our technology fails us and we enter a new dark age? Perhaps three spoilt rich kid brothers have the only functioning power source in the entire world, allowing them to continue to access their beloved media. Maybe give them suits that make them, in effect, walking PlayStations; take it a step further and make them experimental protective life-suits, with military style capabilities, that also gives them additional powers, making them almost superhuman. It’s the end of days, the world has turned upside down, a post-apocalyptic nightmare, where these three brothers could be helping to rebuild the world around them, but prefer instead to fall back on their old distractions… looking for their next fix of a movie or video game. It continued to grow and develop from that…
I also knew from the early on, that I did not want the atypical superhero cyber-suit. That’s been done to death. I wanted something that was purposely, aesthetically unpleasing to the eye, something clunky and ridiculous. More ‘Black Adder 2’ than ‘Halo’. The massive codpiece seemed like the obvious choice and just helped to visually sell the obvious sardonic, black humour of the piece.
S: The three brothers of the story are our Nano-technologically advanced guides through this post-apocalyptic vision you have. What’s the background to their creation?
CL: Originally, it was simply called ‘Das Bombast’, after the main narrator of the piece. I think I was listening to ‘Bombast’ from The Fall’s ‘This Nation’s Saving Grace’, and I just thought it would make a great name for a main character. That is usually where it all begins with me; a name and then I build on that. I knew I wanted him to be the central character to some extent. The smart, level-headed one. Muc Olla was a name from another strip I had written; originally the name was Muck Olla, the name of a Celtic sun God in Druid times. I won’t elaborate too much on that…but maybe that’s a nice little titbit for the readers. Muc was the typically sensitive, shy and awkward brother (also adopted) and the one that I felt the readers would most relate to. Rifter, of course, is the volatile, unstable brother, the bully who always needs to be restrained by the other two. Although, he’s not really a bad kid…just a little lost.
S: What made you choose London as the location for the story?
CL: UXB, if anything, is my love letter to all the authors, directors and visionaries that have turned me on over the years and it just so happens that most of those influences are predominately British. So there was nowhere else that it could have been set.
S: What would you say differentiates UXB from other tales about the end of the world?
CL: You certainly have all the usual post-apocalyptic tropes surrounding the boys and their story, but the approach is different. To the boys, the end of the world is nothing more than a backdrop; it’s all still a playground to them. Most apocalyptic tales are about survival…these guys are living it large and indulging in the same habits as before. To them, nothing has changed, bar the fact that finding uncorrupted media to play on their suits has become a little more difficult. Also the pre-apocalyptic build-up of the boy’s life in the bunker makes it a little different to the usual fare.
S: UXB has a very cinematic theme to it, not just in the references you make in the story, but in the book’s tone and presentation. What films were your biggest influences for the story?
CL: If you’ve a good eye, you’ll spot a lot of homages to many movies throughout the book, some being quite obvious while others are not. The movie ‘Village of the Damned’ played a role, as did ‘A Clockwork Orange’. But that was just a jumping off point, as it’s probably closer in tone to the work of Mike Leigh i.e. the kitchen sink drama, or Lindsay Anderson’s ‘O Lucky Man’. I mean, it was never meant to be a superhero book, it was more of a character piece and I guess, if anything, a commentary of how transfixed we are with our tech toys and the banality of popular culture. Though, in saying that, the boys have pretty good taste in movies.
S: I’m always interested in those lucky buggers who are able to write and draw their own books. What’s your development process going into something like UXB? For example, do you work from a full script, if you already have an idea for what the book is going to look like?
CL: I do, for the most part, write full scripts, but because of my background in storyboarding, once I take it to visuals, the direction can sometimes take a different path. It’s quite an organic process. In TV, it is very rarely that I follow the script, as in more times than not, the written word just doesn’t translate and I’ll have to find a different way of staging it, especially when it comes to action scenes. The same applies to my own work…I’ll take my own script page and try alternate versions to find the best way of getting that information across. The same with the dialogue …I’ll play around with that until it’s ready to go to print. But, yes…it was a great experience and Chris Warner, my editor, gave me complete free rein on it. Working with other writers is interesting because I don’t think they are used to that approach…so I have to tread softly and find a healthy balance.
S: UXB seems like a real labour of love and the ending is, arguably and without giving too much away, left very open to more. Do you have any plans to revisit this universe at some point?
CL: I’d certainly like to. I have another two books worth of material…
S: You said in the extras of Harvest that you always pictured Ryan Gosling as the Benjamin Danes character. Who would you pick to play the three brothers in a UXB movie?
CL: That’s a tough one. The actor, Craig Roberts, who I first spotted in an episode of the British TV series ‘Being Human’ and later in a brilliant movie called Submarine, would make a perfect Das. Luke Treadaway, who I recently watched in a movie called ‘The Rise’ and also in ‘Attack the Block’, would be a great Muc. He may be a little old for the role, as I believe he’s hitting thirty – but he has a very young look to him.
Jamie Bell, who’s best known for his role of Billy Elliot, or Jack O’Connell (The Liability), would have the right attitude for Rif. There would have to be the younger versions of the boys too, but I just don’t watch enough kids movies to elaborate on that one …
S: You’ve worked in various other mediums of story-telling including animation, gaming and film. What attracts you to telling stories in the comics medium and is it your preferred medium to work in?
CL: All those mediums you mentioned are all equally great ways to tell a story. I guess the biggest plus to comics, and especially with creator-owned comics, is that your vision is less likely to be diluted, as your team are pretty much left to their own devices. Working in smaller groups, or as with UXB, on my own, just gives you a lot more freedom to create. With other mediums, it can be a design by committee type thing, whereby a really cool property can end up being slowly whittled away to a ghost of its former self. I’ve always loved comics and the marriage of words and art has always been a huge draw. It’s a beautiful medium if done right. I’ve still a ways to go…
S: What’s next? ‘Curse’ looks very interesting…
CL: After flying solo on UXB for so long, I decided I wanted to, if at all possible, work on a team project and collaborate, bump heads, so to speak…so when Michael Moreci (Hoax Hunters) approached me about possibly combining our efforts on a creator-owned werewolf book, I just couldn’t say no. We also have Riley Rossmo (Drumhellar) on that one and Tim Daniel (Enormous) – so it’s quite the mix.
I’m also working on another very cool project for the boys at Dark Horse and that should be announced very soon and developing another creator owned series.
S: Finally, in your opinion, is MacReady at the end of ‘The Thing’ still MacReady?
CL: He’s still MacReady. If you look really closely at Childs’ eyes, they blink seven times, which is Morse code for “beware me”. Then, as we pan away from the two survivors, we see a tentacle type shadow that appears to emanate from Childs’ chest and slowly snake towards MacReady…
Actually I just made that up…
S: Thanks for taking the time to talk to The Theatre of Terror!
CL: Anytime. Cheers!
UXB is published by Dark Horse and is available from your local comic shop or Amazon and is also available digitally on the Dark Horse website or via their app.
More of Colin’s work can be found on his blog: http://lubbert-das.blogspot.co.uk.
Click here to see our review of UXB
by
Ghastly McNasty
So far, in my time on this planet, I’ve managed to stay pretty clear of the whole ‘print vs. digital’ thing. I imagine waves of geeks, hurtling across a field, some carrying tablets, others carrying print, each lambasting each other for ‘selling out on the medium’ or ‘not embracing the evolution of’ yadda yadda yadda. I buy both. I read both. I enjoy both and I see merit in both. However, one of the reasons for continuing to buy print is quite simple. It smells so bloody good. Literally, it’s like geek crack. Now, I know I’m not the only one. My friend, Mark, he runs a comics shop, he said the same thing. Vertigo’s books always smell amazing. As does Mark Millar’s books. One of the best things about Kick Ass 2 was the rich waft of the print. Published by Dark Horse, UXB is a surprise entry in the ‘nice smelling books’ list, as my Dark Horse collection consists mainly of their small, hardback crime thrillers that don’t really smell of anything. And yet, here we have…okay, I’m going to shut up now.
UXB, or ‘unexploded device’, is a sci-fi horror from Harvest artist Colin Lorimer, who is also the book’s writer and, as with Harvest, which also smells amazing like a moth to a flame, you can’t help but open the book and be dazzled by the sheer bleak beauty of the artwork inside. More on this shortly.
UXB tells the story of the Atherton brothers – Wilfred (aka Das Bombast), Donnchada (aka Muc Olla) and George (aka Rifter) – who live in a deserted and dilapidated Buckingham Palace (a nice touch) in post-apocalyptic London. Each of the brothers has a mysterious ‘life-suit’ grafted to their bodies, that look like futuristic cod-pieces, granting them power beyond measure. Through a series of flashbacks, we discover the origins of the boys (the pampered off-spring of billionaire industrialist parents) and the suits (the ultimate in child protective measures in the event of a cataclysmic event), all the while marrying the past and the present, until we reach the twist. And then the horror side of this book really kicks into gear, wrapping up the various plotlines and finally serving us with probably the best head explosion committed to paper.
Lorimer’s story is a break from the standard post-apocalyptic fare in that, much like Warren Ellis’ Freakangels, it brings the action down to a small scale and isn’t that concerned with the wider world. You get snippets of humanity’s fate, but you only need to look at the ruined streets of a once great city to see that this is probably the case all over. Where Lorimer also breaks from the norm is the introduction of the ‘life-suits’ and the sci-fi element that dominates the first half of the book; surgically grafted onto the wearer, they use Nano-technology to enhance the boys into ‘meta-humans’, for want of a better phrase – enhancing their strength, giving them a nifty healing factor, allowing them to create weapons of their choosing using their minds and hard-light…they’re even equipped with DVD players. It’s sort of what you might get if you crossed that cool interactive screen from Minority Report and a Green Lantern ring.
Lorimer spins a good end-of-times yarn and fills it with pop culture and film references that dominate a large proportion of the dialogue. While sometimes a little too much, it gives the brothers a good excuse to bicker and banter, thereby developing them as characters, but it’s the subtler references that influence the story itself – look closely and you’ll see smatterings of great horror and sci-fi, all combined to create something original and superbly fantastical. While starting a little slow, Lorimer builds a steady pace and sprinkles enough mystery and intrigue to keep it interesting until the twist. I keep talking about the twist, hence I’ve added little description of what happens – needless to say, it’s really rather good and takes the story in a different direction, ramping the horror and action up, building on the sci-fi he’s delivered at the beginning and producing an ending that leaves you thinking ‘what the hell was that?’, but in that sort of gleeful head-sprouts-eyes-and-legs, ‘you gotta be fucking kidding’ sort of way.
As with Harvest, the artwork is stunning. It’s dark, gritty, cinematic, detailed, beautifully lit and beautifully executed. The sci-fi elements are effectively conceived; crisp lines and brightly lit rooms juxtapose the horror, which is deliberately messy, visceral and bleak. While not a criticism as more of a curiosity, I would love to see Lorimer do ‘epic’ – there’s a nice exchange between one of the brothers and their common enemy, where said enemy drops a double decker bus onto the brother. It looks fantastic, but it leaves you almost gasping for more. His is a style that would suit horror, or any genre, on a grand scale and it would be interesting to see, if he were take this further (and the ending seems open for continuation), what he would do if the playing field was more far reaching.
UXB is fine example of a creator on form. Yes, there are a few nit-picks, like the occasional unnecessary reference and unnecessary sweary bits (not that this is a problem, it just doesn’t feel like it’s a needed dialogue response in the context of particular scenes), but it’s an original book, filled with original ideas and incredible, atmospheric artwork that commands your attention throughout. UXB is available now, digitally or in nice smelling print.
Stay tuned for a special Theatre of Terror interview with Colin Lorimer in the next few weeks.
Buy UXB Hardcover from Amazon
by
M.I.K.
The fifth annual Hallowscream! Hallowe’en Special is here! Available to download as a totally free pdf file, this year’s comic features 96 pages of shocks and scares to chill your blood over the Samhain season! We’ve also uploaded an horrific hi-res version this year, to give the gore and ghosties an extra gloss.
Here Are The Download Links :
Lo-res Version (file size = 46.3mb) : MEDIAFIRE DROPBOX
Hi-res Version (file size = 125mb) : MEDIAFIRE DROPBOX
You can also read the issue online at : ISSUU
Full contents of the terrors lurking behind that gloriously icky cover by “The Gurch” are as follows…
Page 3 : Pumpkin Soup Art & Recipe by Simon Mackie
Page 4 : A Mother’s Devotion Story by Chris Charlton, Art by Rowel Roque, Letters by Brant W. Fowler
Page 9 : Bestiary of Beasties : Lurking Tut Article & Illustration by Malcolm Kirk
Page 10 : 6 Seconds To Die by Gordon Innes
Page 17 : And Now A Few Words From Our Sponsors Story by Stu Perrins, Art by Israel Huertas
Page 19 : Wicked Stepmother Story & Art by Philip Sneyd
Page 23 : The Claws of The Catman Story by Paul Bristow, Art by Andy Lee
Page 29 : A Grim Tale : No Bones About It Story by ‘Clark Holland’, Art by Malcolm Kirk.
Page 31 : Empty Story by Chris Charlton, Art by Gregory Woronchak, Letters by Brant W. Fowler
Page 39 : Curse of The Season Story & Art by Carol Kewley ( Merry Xmas Everybody lyrics © Copyright Slade 1973 )
Page 43 : Terrorvision Guide by Malcolm Kirk
Page 44 : Hellevator Story & Art by Paul Gordon Innes
Page 48 : Apocalypse The Board Game Concept & Colour by Tim West, Illustration by Mike Legan
Page 50 : Home Is Where The Heart Is Story by Tim West, Art by The PXD
Page 55 : Bestiary of Beasties : The Spring-Heeled Jackalope Article & Illustration by Malcolm Kirk
Page 56 : Full Moon Jacket Story & Art by Gordon Innes
Page 59 : All The Fun of The Fair Story by Jamie Lambert, Art by The PXD, Letters by Tim West
Page 63 : Bestiary of Beasties : The Pear Wolf Article & Illustration by Malcolm Kirk
Page 64 : Artificial Unintelligence Story by Chris Charlton, Art & Letters by Joe Badon
Page 72 : Bestiary of Beasties : The Crypt Id Article & Illustration by Malcolm Kirk
Page 73 : Hair Scare! Story & Art by Gordon Innes
Page 77 : Run Story by Chris Sides, Art by Simon Bennett Hayes, Letters by Chris Travell
Page 83 : Dead by Dawn ZX Spectrum Game Advertisement
Page 84 : Many Happy Returns Story & Art by Michael Crouch
Page 89 : The North Wind Doth Blow Story & Art by Russell Hillman
Page 90 : Help! Mummy! Story & Art by Simon Mackie
Page 91 : Bestiary of Beasties : The Glook-Gonk Article & Illustration by Malcolm Kirk
Page 92 : Happy Family Story by David Stoddart, Art by Graham Stoddart
Page 95 : Hierophantom’s Poeticorner : Ghost Train by Paul Bradford, Art by Eric Hurley
…and…
Page 96 : Back Cover Skull by Malcolm Kirk
Previous issues of Hallowscream are available to download from backfromthedepths.co.uk/hallowscream or you can buy real-life monochrome paperback versions from Lulu.com.
HAPPY HALLOWE’EN!
by
Ghastly McNasty
It’s always quite interesting talking to people about what sort of horror scares them the most. It’s such a broad genre, encapsulating pretty much any subject and subverting it into something that is designed specifically to shock. A house, a car, a truck, your body, sheep, the creepy pet cemetery up the road, a rubber tyre (yes, look here, it’s a real film, it’s great). For me, it’s the supernatural/demonic possession. If I want to stay awake at night, for a week, then the recent incarnation of The Woman in Black will do the trick, as will the original Japanese Ju-on. I can’t physically bring myself to watch The Exorcist again. I’m working up to a repeat viewing of Event Horizon after 10 years.
Arguably, horror that subverts what’s closer to our reality has the power to disturb more than anything. Something like Se7en is scary because people like John Doe actually exist in the real world and have committed far worse than what we see in the film. This is the premise behind Harvest, a story that deals with the grim subject matter of illegal organ transplantation; cutting out bits from the poor and needy and giving them to the highest bidder. It’s a multi-million dollar black market industry and it’s happening right now, as I type this. Writer A.J Lieberman knows this, wants you to know this and plays on this fact throughout.
Harvest follows Dr Benjamin Dane, a talented surgeon who happens to be a fully blown alcoholic and working his way towards a habitual drug habit. After having his license revoked after his negligence allows a woman to die on his operating table, Dane loses everything. He is approached by the mysterious Jason Craven, a well organised ‘underground’ businessman, one who has made millions in illegal transplantation transactions. Dane is offered a job; removing organs from ‘willing donors’ and transferring them into the rich and powerful who would pay a fortune to have, say, a healthy liver after lavish lifestyle choices leaves their original in a less than desirable state. However, Dane discovers the dark side to this profitable business after an operation doesn’t go according to plan. Walking away from Craven and his associates, Dane vows to bring them to justice, in the only way he knows how: taking back what he’s already transplanted.
Harvest is a solid horror thriller, taking a macabre idea and building a decent narrative around the subject matter. Lieberman has created an interesting lead in Benjamin Dane, a fuck-up of grand proportions; how Greg House might be if he lost all control and all self-respect. Through him we navigate this dark underbelly of the medical profession and meet the other cast of characters, who, unfortunately, seem to fit into the standard archetypical ‘bad guy’ moulds. Craven is the experienced and intelligent Hans Gruber of illegal transplants, his associate Greer, the tough-yet-sexy femme fatale who has a love-hate relationship with Dane. His eventual sidekick is the hard-as-nails Yakuza girl he helps at the beginning, but it’s the creepy six-year old boy, Noah, who really baffles. Introduced in issue 1, he is the son of the woman Dane let’s die on his operating table while under the influence and he comes to ‘haunt’ Dane at convenient moments in the story. Maybe it’s me being thick (probably), but I can’t work out the kid’s significance in all of this and while Lieberman, in the extras at the back, cites the boy’s importance to the story, he just seems like an unnecessary subplot that isn’t satisfactorily wrapped up at the end of the book. And while we’re at the end, the final issue feels a little forced; Lieberman wraps up a lot of loose ends, but leaves us with too many questions and what feels like a strained and unnecessary twist that doesn’t really add anything to what we’ve just experienced.
Not to say that this isn’t an enjoyable book, it is; there are some great moments, notably Dane’s escape from Craven’s ultra-hi-tech surgery, as well as some genuinely creepy bits that highlight the lack of regard these people have for human life. All of this is brought beautifully to life by Colin Lorimer’s sublime artwork. Lorimer elevates this book with his pencil work and notably, his colours. His eye for realism, along with his dark, rich palette, match the grimy nastiness this book trowels into perfectly. Each panel is a work of art in itself, from the opening splash of a soaking wet Chicago street scene to the rain drenched rooftop stand-off, this book is (wet) stunning. It’s worth noting the clever interlocking covers to the series as well, collected here individually and as a cool flip out poster at the back – a nice idea that adds insight into the overall aesthetic of the story. What is annoying about this book, and this could just be the print run, are the number of spelling and grammatical errors that flood this edition. It doesn’t detract from what you’re reading, and I’m not saying I’m perfect, but for a comic book company like Image, you’d expect it to look at little more professional.
Harvest is a nice idea, not perfectly executed, but executed in an enjoyable fashion that plays on the reality of illegal organ transplantation and uses this to create a dark, well-paced thriller. If you don’t buy this book for any other reason than the artwork, you’ll get your money’s worth in droves.
If Harvest does nothing else, it highlights a very real horror – that we are living in a world where there are more people on the transplant list than there are organs available for transplant, thus making our organs a commodity to be bought and sold like any other commodity. As a result, there are people out there who will do anything, anything, to get their hands on that precious, life-saving body part. If that doesn’t scare the shit out of you, God knows what will.
Harvest HC
by
Ghastly McNasty
The actor, Willem Dafoe, was once asked whether he preferred playing good guys or bad guys. He responded: ‘Good guys, bad guys – it doesn’t matter. Everybody thinks they’re righteous’. Playing Jesus in The Last Temptation of Christ obviously paid off; this sage like advice should be the cornerstone of the story-telling Bible. Robert Kirkman employs this philosophy pretty much as soon as The Walking Dead started and this latest volume is no exception.
Our favourite zombie soap opera continues just as the title suggests, straight after the horrific events of Something To Fear. The camps’ new friend, Jesus – not the water to wine variety – is under secret instructions from Rick to track down and locate the hideout of the prolific Negan, the baseball bat wielding megalomaniac who demands a substantial share of every community’s stockpiles. After a visit from Negan and his band of not-so merry men, it’s not Rick that takes action, but his son, Carl.
Carl takes centre stage for a while in this book, dishing out a brand of justice that would see him make a welcome addition to the cast of the Expendables. Inevitably captured by Negan, Carl is taken on a tour of Negan’s base of operations (which boasts one of the greatest anti-intruder measures ever) and this is where it starts to get scary. Not due to the zombies, or the particularly nasty ‘iron incident’, but because you end up doing something you never thought you’d do – seeing things from Negan’s point of view. In this character, Kirkman has, arguably, produced one his greatest creations. Negan is an UTTER bastard; ruthless, arrogant and lacks any kind of empathy. However, for the most part, he’s reasonable and fair. He keeps the people in his care safe, fed and watered and gives them a oh, who am I kidding, he IS a bastard and he needs to be stopped! It’s towards the end of the book that Rick, the surreptitious little bugger, starts making moves to do just that.
There’s not much more that can be said that hasn’t been said about this series. Kirkman is consistently on form, sending his characters from one bad situation to the next and making you root for them all the way. Adlard’s artwork is also consistently good and, as I mentioned in the last volume’s review, he does character reactions so well. The look Rick gives Negan towards the end of the book; you can see the hate – it’s exceptional.
If you’ve read this series from the start and made that emotional investment in the characters, you care what happens to them, you can’t help but care. This is what Kirkman is good at; giving us people that we want to survive and to do well. As a result of this, in Negan, he’s given us someone arguably worse than the Governor, someone who believes what he’s doing is right. Someone who’ll bash in someone’s brains with a baseball bat just to make a point.
But he’s created the best post-apocalyptic burglar alarm ever, so he can be forgiven.
You can purchase The Walking Dead vol. 18 via Amazon.
by
Ghastly McNasty
I’d been following the development of this publication on their Facebook Page, having been left goggle-eyed by a selection of preview art that had been slowly and tantalisingly drizzled onto a certain comics forum of which I occasionally haunt the distant corners of. What caused the aforementioned spinning of eyeballs was Alex Ronald’s beautifully painted artwork and his ability to draw smoking hot vampire babes.
Vampire Vixens of the Wehrmacht begins in a pre-war 40’s England, with our hero, Chaplain Morris, receiving a briefing from the ledge that is Winston Churchill. The adventure then takes us to the heart of Germany where the Chaplain has teamed up with Libyenah, the gorgeous Vampire Vixen and star of the show. They must battle evil Nazi occult forces to protect Blighty from the supernatural terrors of the Third Reich.
“The only thing saving us from the unholy hurricane the Germans have unleashed is a man of God and a woman from Hell.”
From the off, it’s an absolute giggle-fest. The script is proudly packed full of sexual innuendo, planting its flag firmly in the ‘Carry on Commando’ camp, rather than D.C. Thompson Commando. I’d already splurted my tea across my desk three times in the first few pages when I came across a (possibly accurate) flashback scene, near the middle of the comic, which will have you howling in delight.
The creators, Alex Ronald and The Emperor, must have had a hoot writing the script. At times I could imagine them sniggering like school boys as they put pen to paper. The silliness of the story, in some places, does feel strange in contrast with the near flawless artwork. Not in a bad way. It’s like they’ve taken a Viz comic strip and given it to a classical painter. Strange but ultimately awesome.
Vampire Vixens of the Wehrmacht is being launched at Glasgow Comic Con on 13 and 14 July 2013 and will also be at Though Bubble in November. You can also purchase this wonderful book via UKOnDisplay and probably a load of other places.
by
Ghastly McNasty
So yeah, bestiality. Hilarious, right? I saw a programme, which only Channel 4 could have produced, a few years back about an American man who married a horse. That was mildly amusing, if not slightly uncomfortable (he touched the horse funny, like). But the actual act of sodomising an animal shouldn’t really be a laughing matter. Unless you’re Simon Spurrier. And, um, now me. And I suspect there may be others. Click here for one of the offending images. Okay, yes, for some it’s deeply offence and disturbing and la la la, but oh my god, there is something just so darkly funny in its grotesqueness, in its utter absurdity that you can’t help but crack a smile. The exploding cow is even better.
This Crossed web-comic, born out of the success of the original series (and Warren Ellis’ incredibly successful and largely experimental web-series ‘FreakAngels’) differs mildly in tone from Garth Ennis’ creation in that Spurrier injects this incredibly dark humour throughout, one that I find has actually enhanced my enjoyment of the Crossed franchise as a whole. Ennis’ dark vision was one of struggling to survive in a world in which a virus has stripped away humanity’s fundamental sense of morality and where you were truly helpless and (as the tagline teased) ‘No-one is coming to save you’; it’s a truly harrowing tour de force that examines the brutal nature of human beings at their worst.
Not that Spurrier’s series doesn’t explore this; it does it with panache and most of the nastiness in Crossed: Wish You Were Here comes not from the ‘plus faces’ but the odorous characters that would use the end of the world to prey on those who are weaker than them. But then Spurrier introduces characters like the brilliantly insane Andrew Frazer Jackson and this is who the 2013 annual concentrates on.
Jackson was one of the most likeable characters in the web-series and here, he’s off the leash. A former lieutenant in the SBS, he’s seen a lot of action; the Falklands, dealing with airline bothering extremists in the 80’s and deployed on special operations in the 90’s when the iron curtain fell. Throughout all of the important military operations, he encounters the beautiful and mysterious Magda, whose work has something to do with bioweapons. When the higher-ups order Jackson to eliminate Magda, she defends herself by spraying something in his face; what he believes is the cause of his madness. The crux of the story is Jackson’s mission to find Magda’s secret hideout in Iceland and find out what it was that she sprayed him with and whether it was actually her and her team that caused the outbreak that has killed millions.
The above is a massive oversimplification of what is a brilliantly realised plot that spans several decades and gives us a possible, brief glimpse of how this devastation came to be. To explain it would ruin it (because I wouldn’t do it justice) but needless to say, it is full of twists and turns even the most hardened Future Shock reader won’t see coming a mile off. All the things about the web-series I love are here in abundance; the rich characters, the bonkers over-the-top violence and the humour – Spurrier’s use of Icelandic and its subsequent translation on the page is excellent.
And then there’s the artwork. As I mentioned in the Stitched review, some of the artists working at Avatar are producing incredible work; the European style of near-realism, lavishly detailed backgrounds and character expressions you believe in are draining my bank account monthly. Gabriel Andrade is no exception. His work here is married seamlessly to Spurrier’s script – the action sequences are brutally and beautifully realised and the characters are consistent throughout the different time periods explored. But where the artwork really shines is when Andrade shows us how insane Jackson is by giving us an insight of what’s happening in his head in ‘real time’, producing a seriously nightmarish vision that gets more intense throughout the story, culminating in much of the background and (cleverly) the panel guttering being filled with foulness that gives added depth to his increasingly manic actions. Enhanced by lavishly rich colours by Digikore Studios, this is a vision of clinical insanity I’ve not seen done this well in comics for a while, if ever.
There’s a danger with some of the Crossed stories that they might run too far into ‘torture porn’ territory, losing some of its integrity and individuality in favour of being twisted for twisted sake. But Spurrier and Andrade dispel this, producing a story and developing a character that stands so well on its own, it’s hard not to want more.
You can read the entirety of Simon Spurrier’s Crossed: Wish You Were Here web-comic at www.crossedcomic.com and buy the Crossed 2013 Annual from all good local comic shops.
by
Ghastly McNasty
When I were a lad, the BBC released an adaptation of the Chronicles of Narnia. None of this sweeping, multi-million dollar teeny bopper bollocks with Liam Neeson voicing the lion (‘I will find you, White Witch…and I will kill you’) but a budget version, with a brilliantly realised animatronic lion, intense over-acting and people dressed up as beavers that made them look like the dirty bear from Bo’ Selecta. It was great. Until we were introduced to Maugrim, the White Witch’s ‘chief of police’, who just happened to be a werewolf. And then I shit my pants.
Werewolves get a bit of a bum deal in fiction. Maugrim is an example of how werewolves should be; change-your-trousers scary, but there’s not enough of them to make a real dent in today’s horror market, particularly in comics. Ben Templesmith’s Welcome to Hoxford is the stand out example of how to do a werewolf comic (the fan-made film adaptation is totally worth 20 minutes of life). And now, there’s Ferals, a comic that is more Dog Soldiers than Taylor Lautner. Thank God.
The story is seemingly standard werewolf fare. Man meets seductive lady in a bar, they get frisky, she scratches him, he wakes up with long nails, a hairy back and a sudden urge to howl at the Moon. Not so. We follow Officer Dale Chesnutt, who’s called out to a brutal crime scene where they find the body of his friend, torn limb from limb. Drinking himself into oblivion to forget what he’s seen, he meets and beds (well, ‘toilets’ in this instance) the mysterious Gerda (a really well written femme fatale; a totally unpredictable personality) who turns out to be on the run from a secret society of werewolves who have found their way of life to be threatened. Terrorising Chesnutt’s town is ‘The Great One’, a monster who seems intent on killing the ones closest to Dale. But for what reason?
Writer David Lapham keeps us guessing throughout this first arc, which ends quite abruptly, leaving you with more questions than answers. Who are the ‘men in black’ that know about the werewolf community? What’s the strange, almost spiritual connection between Chesnutt and Gerda? And why would a werewolf leave a severed penis in the mouth of said victim? (Yes, it’s in there; yes, it’s disturbing).
Lapham isn’t afraid to rewrite the rules, too, which is great to see. The beast is out in the daylight, silver bullets aren’t needed, the werewolf lineage is almost treated like a disease with something bizarre, almost alien, planted in the bodies of those who are ‘on the turn’, so to speak. And behind all this, a strong cast of characters, many of whom you find yourself disliking, Chesnutt included, because they’re all out to screw each other over. This adds to the dynamic of the story, adding an air of volatility to proceedings. Just as well because Lapham, he likes a good dismemberment, he does, and when those heads roll, it could be anybody’s.
And who better to do it than Gabriel Andrade. His work on the Crossed 2013 Annual was outstanding and he’s on excellent form here. His lines and character work are all top notch but it’s the beast itself where he’s excelled. With its almost overly long limbs, hulking body and long-toothed grin, it’s a force of nature that literally tears into anything and anyone it comes across.
What both Lapham and Andrade do very well in this comic is action. There are some brilliant set pieces in this book; the beast ploughing its way into the town’s police station to get at Chesnutt is great as is the final showdown, bringing all the major players together for a climatic bloodbath. It’s good, (not so) clean fun that tweaks the werewolf genre slightly but doesn’t totally reinvent it. The mysterious suited government types are a nice addition and it’ll be interesting to see how this angle plays out. Ferals is about to finish its second arc, expect a volume 2 trade soon. Unless, of course, Lapham and Andrade decide to dismember all the characters. It’ll probably finish then.
Buy Ferals Volume 1 via Amazon
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