Nightmares Illustrated 020 New Year’s Day

by Wayne Edwards (Jan 4, 2012)

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Top Five Picks This Month…Buy These Right Now.

1. Locke & Key Clockworks #3 (IDW).

2. Columbia’s Underbelly (Dark Brain).

3. H. P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror #1-3 (IDW).

4. Annihilators Earthfall #4 (Marvel).

5. Crossed Badlands Opening Salvo (Avatar).

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Happy New Year, people! 2011 was just one kick in the balls after another for me. Still, my life is better than most other people’s lives throughout the world so I am going to try not to act like a self-entitled asshole. It’s not easy because my tendency is to be an asshole, but I making an effort. I’ll let you know how that turns out. Meanwhile, here are a few recommendations for 2012 before the first shot to the sack in the new year sours my disposition.

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I am trying to understand the people at Highway 62 Press. You can go to their website (www.highway-62.com) and look at entire books for free. Every page, one page at a time. What I am trying to understand is how they make any money – there is not a lot of revenue in “free”. Now, you can buy hardcopies. The next trade paperback is Strangeways: The Thirsty, written by Matt Maxwell and priced at a very reasonable $17.95. But if you can read it for free would you buy the book? I would, but I’m an old guy and I like to hold the book in my hand. Besides that, I don’t like be constantly plugged into the internet and I prefer to read by candlelight with a cozy wool throw tucked under my butt. OK, it is not quite that bad, but I do prefer to read books rather than monitors, whatever the size. Kids today, though, who knows what they will do. It is true you’ll be able to get the whole story in the print form before the serialization is complete on line, so those of you with a positive time preference (jargon jargon jargon) will want to grab the hardcopy. But even if you are patient, buying the book is a good deal and a nice way to support the process.

Good deal: you get all five parts of The Thirsty, a tasty vampire tale set in the old West. The artwork, by Gervasio and Jok, reminds me a little of Eddie Campbell’s work in Alan Moore’s From Hell. Let that sink in for a second. The back-up feature, “Red hands,” is a great vampire story with beautiful artwork (by Luis Guaragna) in a classic style. The plot concerns one of the characters in The Thirsty and is kind of a prequel.

Support the process: it is harder and harder to be an artist of any stripe these days. Because of the way information is transmitted, shared, and, yes, stolen, it has become extremely difficult for writers, graphic artists, and musicians to make a living. Even if you read the book on line for free, if you liked it you should kick in a couple of bucks to pay for your recreation and enjoyment because, after all, it wasn’t free to create it — it took time, effort, and talent.

The book doesn’t ship from Diamond until March 2012, so consider me the DEW Line on this one (look it up, youngsters). I was pleasantly surprised by Strangeways: The Thirsty. No fooling, I enjoyed every page. Highly recommended.

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Hellblazer Annual 2011 (Vertigo). There are not a lot of annuals in the Hellblazer canon. In fact, I believe there is only one besides 2011’s Suicide Bridge, and that one was way back when. The thirty eight pages of story justifies the $4.99 cover price, even for a mediocre attempt, but Peter Milligan delivers on the high end of his arc with a moving and emotionally jarring walk down Purgatory Lane. The story doesn’t cover much new territory as it has Constantine investigating a missing person and encountering ghosts from his own past. Even so, Milligan and Simon Bisley achieve synergy in this self-contained one-shot as they have before in the regular series. The touchy subject of suicide is handled with no crass appeals and the ending, while harsh, is balanced across characters with a display of kindness. In all, an excellent story that reads better here in the extended annual format than it might have as a two-issue mini-arc. Highly recommended.

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Vampirella Annual 2011 (Dynamite). The best thing about Vampirella’s first Dynamite Annual is the Lucio Parrillo cover. I’d almost pay the five bucks just for an image of that one beautiful painting. The main story, “Bound,” written by Brandon Jerwa, is fairly perfunctory. It runs twenty five pages and so could have been comfortably held in a single issue of the regular monthly. The annual bulks out with the addition of a minor reprint of the wordless “Sanctuary” by Christopher Priest from the earlier (1999) Harris series, Vampirella #19. Look folks, hardly anyone is a greater Vampirella advocate than me, but even for me this annual smacks of the bargain bin. Dynamite is backing the character aggressively and is publishing a large amount of original material along with classic reprints. I want to support that, and I think horror comics fans want to support this kind of effort, too, but let us not prop up mediocrity. With that in mind, allow me to encourage you to pass on this annual and instead spend some money on the Dynamite Vampirella monthly and the minis, like the recent Scarlet Legion and the upcoming Vampirella Vs. Dracula. We want more Vampirella, but we want good Vampirella. Send a message.

So let it be written. So let it be done.

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Buy These Too…

Godzilla: Legends (IDW). We should all be buying the Godzilla books IDW is publishing. Every new incarnation is at once familiar (we know the monsters) and fun. The Legends series features a classic Toho monster in each issue. #1 is Anguirus. #2 is Rodan. So far so good. Buy ’em.

DC Comics Presents Elseworlds 80-Page Giant #1 (DC). After the original publication was withdrawn and pulped ten years ago, the stories contained in it were labeled “lost,” although they weren’t lost at all and eventually appeared elsewhere. Here, though, is the first presentation of the material from that famous mistake published together in one place. The giant is extremely light on the horror except for the famous baby-in-the-microwave scene. I am only going to recommended it for the hopelessly curious.

Artifacts #12 (Image). We’ve come this far, right? One more to go. Take a deep breath and try to finish strong. I’m only joking – this has been a good crossover. My complaint all along has been that it is taking a long time to finish up. I’ll review the whole thing when the last issue comes out. Meanwhile, keep reading.

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