Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Pursuit of the Flesh

Not just Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, meaning his intellectual property, but a comic actually written by Clive Barker (and Christopher Monfette). Which I can’t say pays off very much as I didn’t care for the writing. There’s a lot of heavy breathing from the Cenobites that’s all just mumbo-jumbo. If you go back and watch the first movie, Pinhead doesn’t actually talk much. Just a handful of lines. In Pursuit of the Flesh he’s making speeches like this: “It is fruitless to wonder how this came to pass . . . History has no place in hell. We live our deaths within a final, unending chapter. Unraveling, unfolding, forever. And there is no prologue for us but pain.” There’s a lot of this stuff, and while it may sound cool, it means exactly nothing.

As far as I could understand it, the flesh being pursued here was that of poor Kirsty Cotton. Why? I think it has something to do with Pinhead wanting to become human again and he needs to provide her as some kind of blood sacrifice to the demonic powers that be. But I don’t know. And the reason I don’t know is that this book only contains the first four comics in a series and it’s not a complete story arc. It breaks off with a cliffhanger. So I’m not sure what was really going on.

If you want gore, you got it. Those chains with the hooks at the end get a lot of play. Many bodies are torn apart, and the art renders it all quite well. It’s a good looking comic. The story, however, was hard to follow. Something about a team of hell-hunters who each have experience dealing with the Cenobites trying to turn the tables and shut them down. Kirsty seems to be their leader. But it all’s kind of hazy and I didn’t grasp the mythology. The Clockwork Cenobite was a neat addition though.

Not sure I’ll keep going with this series. I’m curious, but not eager. And I watched all the movies!

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Tales from the Crypt Volume 1

Another EC horror comic series, very like The Haunt of Fear and The Vault of Horror. Same editor, same stable of artists and writers, same back story of migration from being part of an earlier title (Crime Patrol, in this case) to being its own series (originally The Crypt of Terror and then Tales from the Crypt).

As with the other EC horror comics there’s a genial host in the form of the Crypt-Keeper, who along with the Vault-Keeper and the Old Witch formed a triumvirate that EC tried, unsuccessfully, to brand as the Three Ghoulunatics. There were also a lot of crossovers between the three titles, and in one case there’s even a reprint of a story. “House of Horror” appeared first in The Haunt of Fear #15 (May-June1950), where it’s credited to “Ivan Klapper.” It runs again here in Tales from the Crypt #21 (December 1950-January 1951) where Al Feldstein is named as the author. I assume Ivan Klapper was a pseudonym Feldstein used but I haven’t been able to find any source for this.

Sticking with writing credits, the flash-fiction short stories interspersed with the comics aren’t attributed to any author. In The Haunt of Fear and the The Vault of Horror writing credit is given to either Feldstein or publisher Bill Gaines. I’d assume that they were responsible here as well, but I thought these stories were really inferior in quality so I can’t say for sure.

The contents are mostly in line with what you’d expect from EC at this time. There are werewolves. A vampire. And lots of digging up corpses and burying the living. The writers also seemed to have a thing for the use of quicksand as a plot device. I wonder what happened to quicksand. You used to see it a lot in the pop culture of the 1950s and 1960s. Not so much today. Same as those mail-order chemistry experiment kits that were advertised for $1. “Safe! Harmless!” they say, but I don’t think they’d pass muster now.

One thing that I thought set these stories slightly apart is that they’re more inclined toward rational explanations for a lot of the seemingly supernatural goings-on. A villain may be trying to drive someone insane by manufacturing spooky happenings, or it may be left up in the air as to whether the horrors were all just being imagined. Also, whenever possible scientific explanations are reached for to make things seem a little less crazy. So reviving the corpse of an executed killer by giving it an electric shock? Sort of Frankenstein-ish, but you can roll with it. And the best story in this volume, “℞ . . . Death” (written by Feldstein, art by Graham Ingels) also has a pseudo-scientific explainer thrown in at the end where the prescription that a fellow has been taking turns out to be digestive enzymes that eats him alive, turning him into a puddle of black tar.

Finally, keeping with “℞ . . . Death” I was also pleased to see that it was voted the readers’ favourite story in the next issue’s Crypt-Keeper’s Corner. This led me to think that maybe they weren’t just making those polls up, which is something I’ve always been suspicious about.

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Simpsons Comics Colossal Compendium: Volume Three

Not a bad collection. Some interesting longer stories, especially a huge three-parter about Krusty’s attempt to revive the flagging fortunes of the Radioactive Man comic. Radioactive Man seems to be a popular figure in these comics, perhaps for all the self-referential humour. They certainly do a number on the overuse of crossover plots here.

There’s also a lot of the usual surrealism, as when Professor Frink’s “Cool Juice” turns all the male inhabitants of Springfield into hipster Rat Packers, or when Milhouse’s dream life interacts with reality in chaotic ways. But there are also the jokes that land closer to home, like Homer telling Bart not to get angry at the news (“The TV can’t hear you, no matter how loud you yell, boy. Believe me, I’ve tried!”) and the way the Springfield Library is saved by becoming a homeless shelter. Also worth noting is the inking by Andrew Pepoy, which goes deep into heavy shadow effects. I liked the way it looked.

I thought the shorter stories were all duds, and to be honest I couldn’t see the point in several of them.

The papercraft Springfield building is the Kwik-E-Mart. It looks like it’s just a box with no add-ons, so not very interesting.

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Alien: Black, White & Blood

This oversized volume is part of Marvel’s Black, White & Blood series, which is distinguished by its use of a mostly black-and-white format with coloured accents in red to show blood (with a bit of green mixed in for Xenomorph blood here). You may think of the sort of thing that was done with colour (and its absence) in Frank Miller’s Sin City comics, and I think that’s a good analogy for both the level of violence on display as well as the noir sensibility. Noir referring both to the heavy and dramatic shadow as well as a lack of traditional good guys in an amoral universe.

The Alien run consisted of four issues, each with a part of a long story, “Utopia,” as well as two short pieces. They all have different writers and artists, but the same letterer (Clayton Cowles), which actually provides a lot more of a sense of continuity than you’d expect. I would have even appreciated cover pages for each of the individual stories because it’s easy to miss where one ends and another is getting started.

The large format makes covers and full-page spreads into poster-size art that you just want to enjoy. I’ve commented before on the cheaper reprints in the Marvel Masterworks and DC compact comics lines and how hard they can be to read, and it’s a real treat to read a big book like this that looks so good throughout. I especially liked the chonky stylized turn that Claire Roe gives her story, with illustrations that look almost like woodcuts.

If you want one word to describe the general sensibility I’d say it’s bleak. And that’s saying something considering these are Alien comics. There are no happy endings, and most of the stories are very unhappy in brutal and ironic ways. Even “Utopia,” about a ship full of socialists looking to colonize a new planet as a worker’s paradise, took a dark turn I found surprising. Mankind is clearly something to be surpassed. The final line in the book is “Any chance to eradicate humanity’s ugliness is beautiful.” That gives you some idea of where you’re going.

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Druuna: Carnivora

Another part of the Druuna saga, a story cycle that runs in place, never really going anywhere because time and place have no meaning in the Druunaverse. We’re told that Druuna’s boyfriend Shastar has become pure energy and his mind integrated with the ship’s computer, within which he is joined with the ship’s captain, Lewis. But they can both still make themselves manifest either through dreams or virtual reality. Meanwhile the monsters are proliferating and creating “replicants” of the crew members: exact doubles who don’t even seem to know that they are replicants. Well, some of the time they do, but most of the time they don’t. So Druuna doesn’t even know if she’s a replicant. In her human form she’s something special, not quite a sub- or ur-human “prolet,” but also something different from the more civilized crew members. More civilized, I think, mainly because they wear more clothes. Druuna doesn’t like wearing clothes. Or maybe she does but just often finds herself without any.

There’s sex. And violence. And sexual violence. And various attempts, all futile, to explain what’s going on. I love how Shastar actually tries to draw a diagram to show Druuna what’s happening . . . and it’s of no use at all. As near as I can figure it, there are two dimensions, one good the other evil, and the ship has come up to the boundary between them and the monsters are spilling over from the evil dimension and contaminating our own. At the end the character of Doc figures out some way to go back in time and avoid all this. Or maybe he doesn’t and it’s a dream and they’re all replicants now. I couldn’t tell you.

You just have to learn to let go with Druuna. It’s not meant to make sense. Judged against the other books in the series I’d probably rate Carnivora near the bottom because there’s more talk and less coherence than usual. Even the minimal structure of the hero’s journey is dropped, as it’s not clear if Druuna is actually on her way anywhere or has any particular mission. I barked out a laugh when, after talking to Shastar (or his avatar) she says she has to return to the ship’s crew to pass on the message that they’re in danger. As if they hadn’t figured that out! Most of them have already been killed and eaten! But if you’re a fan then none of this really matters. Nor, I would argue, is the sex all that important. You’re just here for the crazy.

Postscript: My hardcover edition of this book is basically in mint condition. When I last checked there was only one for sale, used, on Amazon for $545. If I just hold on to mine for another thirty years I’ll be rich.

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Big Trouble in Little China (Legacy Edition Book Two)

I enjoyed the first volume of this series so much that two years later I had no trouble remembering where it left off: with Jack Burton being transported into the twenty-first century as a roadside attraction. Usually two years is more than long enough for me to forget plot lines entirely.

This collection contains three main storylines. In the first, after being brought out of suspended animation in the year 2015, Jack meets up with some of his old pals (and their children), and gets involved in a plot to take down a billionaire who collects pop culture artefacts from the 1980s. One such artefact being Jack’s rig the Pork Chop Express.

We’re introduced here to the girl who will become Jack’s new sidekick, his buddy Wang’s daughter Winona. Though of course Winona thinks of herself as more than a sidekick, and it’s her skill in martial arts that saves Jack’s bacon more often than he saves her. She’s also helpful in explaining the changes that have taken place in America since the Reagan years, which is the source of lots of the usual kinds of jokes stemming from Jack and Winona speaking what amount to different languages.

The second story has Jack and Winona and the rest of the gang heading off to Macao to take part in a poker tournament and rescue Margo Litzenberger from Koschei the Deathless. Here they are reunited with Egg Shen, who inadvertently sends Jack and Winona back to 1906 San Francisco, just before the earthquake is about to hit. This marks the beginning of the third story. In San Francisco Jack and Winona meet a younger Egg Shen and also get the origin story for the evil wizard Lo Pan before sorting out their respective timelines.

I liked this just as much as the first volume. The period gags are all on point, from the A-Team spin-off in the first story, to the Harry Potter kid in Macao, to Jack’s ongoing hunt for a payphone. And plot-wise it keeps spinning off in all kinds of crazy directions, including a crossover event revisiting scenes from the movie. The only place it dragged for me was in the primer on the rules of Texas hold’em, as presented by the Three Storms. And I guess the land developer/casino operator who becomes a nativist politician in San Francisco was a bit unnecessary. It’s interesting to note how often this character kept popping up in comics around this time.

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Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Four

In my notes on Saga of the Swamp Thing Book Three I talked about how I preferred the back-to-basics Swamp Thing stories that played like X-Files “monster of the week” episodes to the epic storylines involving some grand cosmic battle between good and evil. I felt that way again here, as I really enjoyed the introductory stories about the druggies eating some sweet potato that has fallen off Swampy’s back and going on hallucinatory trips, and “Ghost Dance,” about the legacy of a gun manufacturer playing out in a haunted house (a story that was a personal favourite of Alan Moore’s). But once we get back into the preparation for a final battle between a newly awakened power of evil and the forces of light, I thought things weakened. Sticking with the comparison to the X-Files, you spend all this time building up the main storyline or “mytharc” about Fox’s missing sister and alien abductions and black oil, but when you finally go on board the mothership you know you’re going to be disappointed. I mean, where do you go from a build-up like what we get here: “This is ultimate dark, ultimate light. The forces and the stakes here are fundamental and absolute . . . and whichever side meets its final destruction this day, everything will be changed.”

That said, I thought the final battle was well choreographed. A host of characters are assembled. John Constantine is holding a completely useless séance with a group Neil Gaiman describes as “the detritus, the flotsam and jetsam of the DC occult universe.” Swampy is in hell (or thereabouts) and is joined by Deadman, Phantom Stranger, the rhyming demon Etrigan, and the Spectre. They’re trying to stop the aforementioned evil. Or maybe it isn’t evil. Maybe it’s just misunderstood. In any event, the glowing hand of God descends from heaven and the world just continues on its merry way. “Nothing has happened. Everything has happened.” Good and evil are necessarily linked, you see. Can’t have one without the other. According to Gaiman’s introduction, Moore thought this had something to do with the Manichaeism of American culture, and what happens is an answer to Swamp Thing’s questioning if there is “some truth . . . that may be divined . . . from the entrails of America.”

Well, colour me unimpressed with these flabby conclusions. Getting to them was a lot of fun though, even if Swampy himself remains a remarkably passive as well as ponderous figure throughout. I think maybe Moore came up with the character of John Constantine just to liven things up. I do like what Moore did with this series, but at the same time I don’t think he was ever as interested in Swamp Thing as he was in doing his own thing.

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The Owl and the Pussycat

I’ve said before how much I love this Visions in Poetry series, and in particular how the illustrations really offer up new interpretations of classic poems. Stéphane Jorisch’s take on Edward Lear’s “The Owl and the Pussycat” is another great example, presenting the poem in a way that I’d never thought of before.

My own sense has always been that the Owl and Pussycat were an odd but natural fit. After all, opposites attract. Jorisch, however, emphasizes their difference, making them into a sort of Romeo and Juliet coupling. The beautiful pea-green boat takes them away from an apartheid society where dogs and cats and owls never mix. The other species look on at the Owl and the Pussycat and whisper. The couples that cruise by on the Chez Noah stare (no interspecies sex there!). Even the fish in the sea stick their heads out of the water to watch them sailing by. And so our happy couple, who only have eyes for each other, have to go to the land where the Bong-Tree grows to be married by a singular turkey, after buying a ring from a singular pig. Mythical beasts like unicorns and mermaids approve.

As I say, this is never the way I’ve read “The Owl and the Pussycat,” and I don’t think it’s a reading I’d adopt as my own. Jorisch does, however, very much make it his own and I thought the book another splendid entry in a series that never disappointed. I only wish they’d published more!

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Chew Volume Five: Major League Chew

When last we left off, Tony Chu’s daughter Olive had just been kidnapped by Mason Savoy. His reasons are at least generally clear: he wants to act as her mentor, bringing her cibopathic powers along so that she can aid him in his plans, which have something to do with uncovering the conspiracy behind the bird flu. And as bad luck would have it, Tony himself is also kidnapped at the same time, by one of Amelia’s coworkers, a guy who wants to feed him the body parts of long-dead baseball players so that Tony can spill the beans on their sordid sex lives. This will allow him (the kidnapper) to score a big advance for writing a sleazy book on the subject (Superstar Sluggers’ Untold Sex Tales) after which he’ll auction Tony off to underground figures who want to do scientific testing on him.

This volume doesn’t do a lot to advance the main storyline, but it does throw in a lot of the sort of madcap madness that fans will love. Tony is busted from the F.D.A. and becomes a traffic cop, leaving his former partner Colby teamed up with a cyborg lion while working for the lusty ladies of the U.S.D.A. And once again Colby has to hop in bed with the boss to help Tony out.

A lot of the regulars are sidelined. Tony’s brother and sister only pop in as cameos, and the redoubtable Poyo doesn’t appear until the triumphant final page. It looks like he’s had some work done and is even more of a mean fighting machine than ever. There’s also nothing said about the aliens or the vampires. But we do meet Hershel Brown, a xocoscalpere. This means he can sculpt anything out of chocolate so realistically that it exactly mimics its real-world counterpart. So a chocolate machine gun or samurai sword is totally lethal. Alas, this skill doesn’t save him from being cut into pieces by some Russians (or Serbians, or “some damn thing”).

Tony gets rescued by Amelia, Colby gets a new partner, and Olive is starting to grow into her awakening powers. I haven’t been disappointed by this series yet and look forward to what’s next.

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Doctor Strange: Strange Origin

Yet another reboot origin story, this time for Doctor Strange. Except author Greg Pak doesn’t change up the original origin story (I had fun writing that) very much. It’s still Dr. Stephen Strange being an arrogant surgeon who loses use of his hands in a car accident and then seeking out the Ancient One, a mysterious figure who introduces him to the world of magic. While at the temple of the Ancient One, Dr. Strange meets Mordo, the bad student, and Wong, who will go on to become Dr. Strange’s manservant (he’s a little more independent than that here, but still fills the same role).

On the plus side it’s a pretty condensed retelling, with Dr. Strange getting up to speed just by memorizing a few incantations. After that, he and Wong and a sexy Italian sidekick are off hunting down the three rings of power to prevent Mordo from getting his hands on them. Yawn. Come on. We’re really doing this rings of power thing again?

At each stage there are portals opened and demons burst through that then have to be banished through an appeal to the Vishanti or else good ol’-fashioned fisticuffs. And Dr. Strange proves himself worthy to become a Sorcerer Supreme by renouncing the power of the rings and going back to the Ancient One to continue his training.

It wasn’t my thing. I liked the giant tiger of the Vishanti, and the art by Emma Ríos is distinct in a sketchy sort of style, but I also found it hard to read in places. The demons sometimes seem like balls of ectoplasmic yarn. And the story was underwhelming for the reasons given. Also included in this volume is a teaser for a different storyline (The Way of the Weird, which I already had a copy of), and that felt out of place even if it is just bonus content. The origin story there is presented as a flashback to the original, and not to the book we just read.

If you’re a Dr. Strange fan I’d give this a look mainly for the different style of the art, but otherwise it should be a pass.

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