Greetings ghosts and ghoulies and welcome to The Theatre of Terror the home of horror comic news, reviews, classic comic scans and creepy art from around the world. Just remember, it's not for the nervous!
Viper Comics is proud to announce its Digital 1st comic series which is being launched today, “Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter”. Get your digital copy for only .99 cents at Graphicly, iVerse, Comixology, iBooks and Amazon.
The series launched with the release of Issue #1 in March. Issue #2 followed on April 18th. Issue #3 is released on May 16 and Issue #4 releases on June 13. The trade comes out on July 11th. Just in time for Comic-Con 2012.
Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter
Written by Russell Nohelty | Art by Renzo Podesta
Ichabod Jones is a deranged, mentally unstable psychopath. He’s also on a mission to save the world. At least that’s what the bossy voice in his head tells him. The same voice that led him to be interred in a maximum security mental asylum in the first place. Now, he must escape from the asylum and rid the world of monsters in the midst of the Apocalypse. Of course he’s a psychopath, so who knows if anything going on in his head is real in the first place.
I love comic book trailers, take a look at this one below.
A few months ago I received Damaged Goods in the post. Normally I’d complain to the Post Office (hahahaha) but on this occasion it was a rather sinister looking graphic novel, and the pages within were anything but normal!
Writer, Richard McAuliffe, and artist, Mark Chilcott have crafted 128 pages of disturbing and morally questionable, extreme horror stories that will burrow in to your brain and mess around with the sanity settings in your head. The creative team seems to be in sync, both a little deranged but on the same wave length, and it shows, as the stories and art compliment each other well.
McAuliffe leaves no stones unturned and no boundaries uncrossed in his writing, delivering disgusting scenes of murder and mutilation and then following up with a psychological scare that often requires an instant re-read just to make sure your eyes weren’t deceiving you the first time. It’s interesting stuff and manages to keep you entertained all the way through.
Chilcott is also on top form. Horror stories can lose a lot of their punch if the art fails to deliver an horrific image that disturbs the reader. Not the case with this book. When called upon, Mark delivers the creepy in abundance, drawing some great expressions on the faces of both victims and psycho murderers alike. There’s also a variation in style that keeps the whole thing fresh.
Standout moments of this GN happen when the line between reader and participant is broken. On several occasions you’re dragged unwillingly in to the stories, made to feel more like a dirty voyeur, than just a comic book fan. It’s a powerful way of bringing the audience closer to the creators. It also means you can’t complain about the filthy crimes within the book, or tut at the authors for their twisted minds. You’re a part of this debauchery for wanting to read it in the first place.
You can purchase Damaged Goods via the Markosia website.
Tim Daniel and Mehdi Cheggour’s upcoming Image Comics/Shadowline one-shot Enormous looks like the sort of GN we could really get our teeth in to. It’s an apocalyptic tale concerning the rise of of huge creatures, dubbed ‘The Enormous’, all hell-bent on wiping out humanity, following an man-made ecological event gone wrong.
You are the bottom of the food chain. A fading point of light in the course of evolutionary history. A dying species. You are human. You are a child – and Ellen Grace is coming to collect you. The ‘Enormous’ have ravaged the planet. In their wake of destruction, mankind has fallen. The race to stave off extinction has begun.
This 64 page one-shot is described as being suitable for fans of:
Genre-based survivalist fiction like The Passage, The Terror, On The Beach, Alas Babylon, The Walking Dead, World War Z, The Mist, Monsters, Troll Hunter, Cloverfield, The Host, Giant Monsters, Kaiju, Godzilla, THEM!, The Blob, Universal Monsters, Hammer Films, Ray Harryhausen and more!
It’s clear from this list that writer, Tim Daniel, has a certain fondness for monsters and the apocalypse, so we know what to expect from Enormous, yet we can see that he is also treading new ground.
Check out this preview gallery below:
What really stands out about this project is their lovely looking website which has been slowly expanding in content over the last year. The Enormous team have been enlisting the help of artist to create teasers and pin-ups, running art competitions on forums and posting little bits of info on their website since April 2011. This new approach to slowly and organically growing interest in their project has helped to accrue a fan base prior to the launch.
This approach is a fantastic idea and should definitely be a part of every comic creators marketing scheme. If you’re putting together a comic you need a website as a point of interest for potential fans or distributors. Why not make it a great site? It can only help to increase excitement in your project and foster a connection with your audience.
Enourmous will be available July 2012. In the mean time take a trip to their feature-filled Enormous website for more on this exciting new comic.
It’s not like we’ve ever needed an extra reason to look at men’s mag Playboy but this month issue features an origin story of fan’s favourite Michonne written and drawn by series creator Robert Kirkman and art regular Charlie Adlard.
If you haven’t already delved in to the world of Locke & Key then this handy sale over on Comixology should give you the final push you need. Writer Joe Hill and artist Gabriel Rodriguez have crafted a wonderful story centered on Keyhouse, an old estate filled with magical keys which open doors in to other worlds and grant their users special powers. It’s a delight to read, offering a youthful cast and thrilling adventures, and packed full of great ideas.
Following a two-year break, horror anthology London Horror Comic returns with Issue #4. The series was initially intended to be complete with Issue #3, but continued fan interest and support prompted creator, writer, and publisher John-Paul Kamath to dive into this deranged world once again. Kamath notes that feedback at many UK comic conventions for the first three issues was “really strong, and being a sucker for punishment, I decided to put out a fourth one.”
The book features 36 pages of self-contained, full-color stories and retails for £3.50. It is currently available at the publisher’s website, www.londonhorrorcomic.com, for £3.50 worldwide. Previews of all four issues are also available at the site.
In issue four: a traveller takes a paranoid train journey on London’s Underground. A super villain has to deal with life in the real world when he becomes a trainee in a local coffee shop. And the terrors of working the night-shift and repercussions of the credit crunch are also covered in three other stories.
The upcoming Damages Goods graphic novel from the twisted minds of Richard McAuliffe (writer) and Mark Chilcott (artist) is now available to pre-order on the Markosia website. The creator’s goals were to “come up with something disturbing and nasty” which by all account they seem to have achieved.
A collection of dark, twisted horror stories designed to get into your head and under your skin. Nobody is safe. Nothing is off limits. No one can be trusted.
This tome of twisted and sometimes horrific tales explains why not all damaged goods can be returned!
Damaged Goods is primal horror that permeates your very soul and will be sure to stay with you long after you put the book down!
Damaged Goods will be getting its official launch at the Cardiff International Comic and Animation Expo on the 25/26th Feb 2012.
Horror writer Steve Niles (30 Days of Night, Criminal Macarbe) has left a little treat for horror fans over on his website. His short story, illustrated by Andrew Ritchie, titles Pieces of Mom is a zombie tale created to shock.
Take a trip over to his website and you can download Pieces for Mom for free. Make sure you read the Steve’s reasons for releasing his work for free. The man has a point.
There are some amazing freebie horror comics to read over on the Dark Horse website and all they ask for in return is for you to sign up for a free account. Doing so will give you access to episodes of Criminal Macarbe, Falling Skies, B.P.R.D. and now a new comic book prequel to the upcoming ‘The Thing’ movie prequel entitled The Thing: The Northman Nightmare.
Taking us into frigid Greenland, the comic introduces us to a group of Norsemen who find themselves caught in a game of survival when they discover a terrifying creature. The shape-shifting monster has the ability to turn itself into a perfect replica of any living being. It can look just like you or me, but inside, it remains inhuman. And it hides somewhere in a desolate village with few human survivors, among them a strange group of women…
The Thing: The Northman Nightmare is written by Steve Niles (Criminal Macabre), with art by Patric Reynolds (Serenity), colors by Dave Stewart (Hellboy) and a cover by Menton3 (Silent Hill). The Thing: The Northman Nightmare comes to readers as a prequel to Universal Pictures’ upcoming prelude to John Carpenter’s classic 1982 film of the same name.
The remaining 2 issues of the comic will be released on September 28th and October 5th.
You can find out more about the movie by visiting the official The Thing Movie site.
Turf is a five-issue comic series from Image Comics written by Jonathan Ross and illustrated by Tommy Lee Edwards. I was slightly dubious about Turf mostly because of my pre-conceptions about writer Jonathon Ross. Generally, I think the guy is a legend, despite his well publicised mistakes, as he wears his geekiness on his sleeve and has a genuine love for comics which rare to see from a celebrity. However, I recently read an interview in Bizarre magazine where Ross was his typical over-confident self, spouting simple ideas like he believed he was a creative genius when really he just sounded like a bit of a knob. The premise for Turf feels fairly haphazard itself – Vampires, Aliens and Gangsters in 1920s prohibition-era New York. It almost sounds like the author threw a load of nouns in to a tombola, gave it a quick spin, and choose 4 at random to create the storyline.
The first 20,000 copies of issue 1 sold out on pre-orders alone and that is probably testament to Ross’s likeable personality and fame. When I picked up the first issue I was fairly unimpressed by the cover art and as i began to read through the pages was filled with dread by the vast amount of text that filled huge sections of the pages. The text itself also seemed to lack any of Ross’s humour, which I initially felt was a huge loss to the potential of the comic. Very little seemed to happen in the first issue as well leaving me feeling a little cold as I had to put in a lot of work reading for very little reward. At least it takes a while to finish unlike most comics which I can finish in minutes.
I’m not the sort to quit after just one issue so continued to plow on through the remaining 4 issues. I’m pleased to report I emerged from the experience with a different outlook to Turf which I now regard as a jolly good read filled with interesting ideas seamlessly blended together to create a strong and fascinating tale. Sure the whole thing feels oddly paced in places and occasionally Tommy Lee Edwards’s artwork feels a little rushed but for a chat show host’s debut comic it’s pretty darn good.
Anti-hero thug and all round bad-guy Eddie Falco is the series’ main protagonist, amongst a cast of very strong characters, and his journey from malicious thug to righteous hero helps to ground the sometimes bonkers plot. There are plenty of fresh ideas which I throughly enjoyed. Falco’s relationship with the alien Squeed, The Orchard, the slow lead up to the final battle and its climax, Tommy Lee Edwards representaion of the flying Vampires. This comic has a lot to offer. Occasionally the scheming vampires and ‘Nooo York’ gangsters seem a little cliche but when rolled together with a splash of alien they make a unique and intoxicating blend.
There was talk of a movie adaptation to be directed by Matthew Vaughan (Kick Ass, X-Men: First Class) but it’s all gone quiet at the moment. There’s certainly room for a second series of Turf which is hinted at the end of the final issue. Can Ross and Edwards deliver again? I certainly hope so.
I’ve written several posts regarding The Walking Dead TV show – updates, show times, behind the scenes stuff. In fact there are way more posts about the TV show than the actual comic. So, it’s about time I took a look at the Kirkman and Aldman zombie epic in its original form compared to the TV show.
I’ve been buying the trade paperbacks since the first volume, ‘Days Gone Bye‘, which was released back in 2006. You may think the title ‘No Way Out’ refers to the position I find myself in now having collected all 14 trade paperbacks, which combined, counts as a whopping 84 individual comics. Writer Robert Kirkman promised us a continuous story and by jolly that’s what we’re getting. No wonder he is the current darling of the comic world having sold so many copies of The Walking Dead to thousands of eager comic fans who loved the idea of an never-ending tale what would happen in the days/years after the zombie apocalypse. No Way Out actually refers to a story arc which runs from issues #80-84.
I will not mention any specifics for those of you who haven’t read it yet, vaguely put, No Way Out covers an event which shatters the peaceful situation in which the survivors were currently living in. Sitting down to tuck into volume 14 I was very excited to catch up with a dose of zombie mayhem. Reading the trade paperbacks means you have to wait for long portions of time until the next is released. Ever since Rick Grimes and his gang had settled in to a walled, secure community the tension has been building. Kirkman is a wily old fox, who has on several occasions in the long running series pulled me back from being disinterested and bored with the meandering storyline, to edge-of-the seat, eye-bulging excitment, thanks to an unseen twist or the brutal massacre of a key group of cast members. I was hoping for good things from No Way Out and I was not dissapointed!
The story arc starts slowly but issues 83 & 84 are quite possible the most exciting, horrific and emotional horror comics this century. It’s restored my faith that The Walking Dead still has something to offer those who have invested their time and money in the series. It’s also confirmed that the TV series will never be as good as the comics. AMC’s show will never show graphic images like that on TV, nor will the budget cover the ideas that are coming out of the comic. Basically, comics rule.
I still care about the TV show. I care because it IS The Walking Dead for those who will never pick up a comic. I care because The Walking Dead represents horror comics being so good that they make it on to TV. However, for those who only want to watch the TV series, you are getting a watered down, commercialized, hollywood-style experience that lacks the magic only the original comic version can supply. Comics are not under the immense pressure to perform that a network TV show is. They do not have to worry about suited corporate losers who only care about ratings and advertising revenue. Sure, a comic will be canned if no-one reads it but a comic just has to be itself, if the premise and characters are good enough the comic will prevail. The fact The Walking Dead comic series is still going is testament to its quality. If the TV show is rubbish then people will think the comic is rubbish. So come on AMC, you better make sure the 2nd series is good…
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A few months ago I received Damaged Goods in the post. Normally I’d complain to the Post Office (hahahaha) but on this occasion it was a rather sinister looking graphic novel, and the pages within were anything but normal!
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