Graphic Content: Dark Ride Vol. 2 and 3 by Joshua Williamson, Andrei Bresses, and Adriano Lucas

One of the many ways I procrastinate when I should be writing is I watch roller coaster videos on Youtube. I have resorted to living vicariously through these videos because it takes a while to travel to the locations of these roller coasters and I don’t want to pay $20 for a corn dog. Luckily, writer Joshua Williamson and artists Andrei Bressen and Adriano Lucas have pooled their talents to create the graphic novel series Dark Ride, which combines two of my favorite things: amusement parks and horror. I reviewed Volume 1 of this series for the website No Flying, No Tights, and Volumes 2 and 3 offer a fitting end to this tale of Faustian bargains and trying/failing to live up to your parents’ expectations. 

Volume 1 of this story introduces readers to Devil Land, the Scariest Place on Earth, a horror-themed theme park designed by eccentric genius Arthur Dante. As heirs to his legacy, Arthur’s children Samhein (Sam), the dutiful son, and Halloween, the goth girl influencer, constantly try to show their father they are worthy to run the park, but they soon discover that there is something truly terrifying that helped Arthur build Devil Land. It turns out the streets of Devil Land are paved with human souls, and Sam and Halloween’s souls may be up for grabs. 

The series is enjoyable with Bressen and Lucas’s artwork helping writer Williamson fully realize the look for this park, especially the diabolical mascot that performs its own brand of vile mischief. Williamson, though, develops his characters to tell a compelling story, allowing Sam, an absentee father, becoming the book’s moral center as Halloween, often seen as shallow by her family, becoming a wild card that could save the day or send them all to Hell. For those horror fans that love the visual aesthetic as much as the spooky storytelling, all three volumes of Dark Ride are worth the price of admission, especially if you check it out at your local library. 

 

Graphic Content: Killadelphia Deluxe Edition Book 2 by Rodney Barnes and Jason Shawn Alexander

There are some that say horror shouldn’t deal with anything political. My initial response to such a statement is to ask the person making said statement how much actual horror they’ve seen in the last 50 or so years. Horror, indeed a great deal of speculative fiction, hits not only the universal truths of human existence but provides a mirror, no matter how cracked, into our currently broken times. Some may pejoratively call such horror “woke,” but such stories also bring a bright light to some very dark and harmful social issues. Rodney Barnes’s book Killadelphia is an excellent example of this, using the idea of vampires as the Founding Fathers as an example of our current broken system. I had already reviewed the first deluxe edition of this series, but Killadelphia Deluxe Edition Book 2, like any good sequel, raises the stakes for all the characters involved. 

The book opens with Philadephia as a fallen city. Abigail Adams, wife of former president John Adams, and her vampires are not roaming the streets at night to slaughter any innocent humans in their way while humans fighting for survival are turning on each other in the bright light of day. Undead detective James Sangster, Sr., along with his son, find help in the form of the enigmatic vampire Seesaw, a pack of werewolves who know a thing or two about war, and a trickster god, but the vampire army have boosted their numbers with the addition of founding fathers Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. 

With the stellar depictions of vampiric carnage rendered by artist Jason Shawn Alexander, the meat of the story is filled in by writer Barnes. Barnes does quite a bit of narrative lifting in this volume, having to handle so many new characters, from werewolves to new vampires. In the hands of an inexperienced writer, all the new characters could have flitted past the readers without leaving any impression, but Barnes balances them all, letting them all develop organically and contribute to the overall story in their own ways. Along with character development, Barnes uses the vampire metaphor to shine a light on the dark underbelly of America and the promises it has left unfulfilled with monologues by a man who helped build it. 

Have You Read This? The Salt Grows Heavy by Cassandra Khaw

There are works of horror that have violence and works of horror that are violent. They are violent with their depictions of a human body’s surgical deconstruction, violent with their brazen exploration of taboo subjects, and violent with their wanton disregard to the fairy tales that remain sacrosanct for many people. This is, of course, a good thing, even necessary, since horror is a genre that often pushes and even destroys boundaries. Cassandra Khaw’s retelling of The Little Mermaid story, The Salt Grows Heavy, is a novella that rejoices in its violence. 

It starts with the tale that everyone is familiar with, that of a mermaid princess who falls in love with a prince whose kingdom is on land and her sacrifices to be with him. What those books don’t mention is how the prince mistreated the mermaid once she was his or how the mermaid’s daughters went on to eat the kingdom. Disney execs would likely be horrified to learn that this mermaid then goes on the run with a nonbinary plague doctor who discovers a village full of murderous children ruled by “saints” who really love performing surgery. 

As a novella, this is a quick read. As a story, it’s a fever dream/acid trip of a fairy tale retelling. This is mostly due to Khaw’s writing. Not content to simply describe events as they happen, she paints a gloriously visceral picture with her words, blurring the boundaries between what is beautiful and what is horrifying. In this retelling, the mermaid who is not named Ariel is no longer a victim; instead she is a force of nature that will tear through anything to get what she wants. 

Graphic Content: The Devil That Wears My Face written by David Pepose and illustrated by Alex Cormack

 

God bless Mad Cave Studios! I say this as a horror fan and a fan of horror graphic novels. They might not have the same name recognition as Image Comics or Boom Studios! However, this means that they’re able to establish themselves as the scrappy underdogs of horror comics, and scrap they do. They don’t post inflammatory posts about the major comic companies or challenge editors to street fights, but they garner attention by coming up with the most unusual subjects for their stories, often throwing away traditional genre conventions. Their latest horror series, The Devil That Wears My Face, written by David Pepose and illustrated by Alex Cormack, calls itself “‘Face/Off’ meets ‘The Exorcist’,” and no other elevator-pitch-style tagline sums up a series better. 

In 1740, conflicted priest Father Vieri was summoned to Spain to perform an exorcism. The demon known as Legion has killed lesser priests who have tried to force him out of the Spanish nobleman in which he resides. When Vierti tries to remove the demon, Legion turns the tables on him and ends up switching bodies with Vieri. Now Legion is loose in the Vatican, spreading violence and chaos wherever he goes, and Father Vieri, whose captors believe he is the possessed Spanish nobleman, must stop Legion in his body before he burns the Vatican down. 

This book and Cormack’s gruesomely gory artwork, featuring people not just murdered but exploded, plants it firmly in the adult horror category, along with its use of demonic possession, but Pepose’s story owes a lot to Face/Off, the face-switching action film from the ‘90s, not only in its plot similarities but in its overall tone. This book zooms at an action movie pace as the stalwart heroes try to apprehend Legion and stop the demon’s carnage. And the delightfully evil Legion himself hams it up in a way that would make Castor Troy, Face/Off’s main villain, proud. Movie fans who gravitate between Jerry Bruckenheimer action and James Wan splatter might enjoy this horrific trip to 1700s Italy.

Graphic Content: Dark Spaces: The Hollywood Special written by Jeremy Lambert and illustrated by Claire Roe

 

Anthology series are some of my favorite kinds of horror graphic novels. Perhaps it’s because I grew up in the ‘80s where movies like Creepshow and shows like Tales from the Darkside reigned supreme. It might also have to do with my love of short stories, after all, I’ve always admired the way an author can tell a self-contained story. Dark Spaces, an anthology series created by Scott Snyder, is continuing this horror anthology tradition, even though their stories take place over multiple issues. However, the stories include multiple authors and artists and all tell their own unique stories while falling under the Dark Spaces umbrella. Writer Jeremy Lambert has created a story that somehow combines Old Hollywood with the setting of a Pennsylvania mining town in Dark Spaces: The Hollywood Special. 

The Hollywood Special is a luxury train traveling the country in support of the war effort, carrying fading star  and functional alcoholic Vivian Drake, who is there to boost morale even as her own career and family life falls apart. The train makes a stop in Minersville, Pennsylvania, a mining town that is reeling from a mine collapse. And locals know that the Mishmash Man, a creature that feeds on human misery, will feast on such a tragedy and Vivian discovers that she has plenty of misery to whet the Mishmash Man’s appetite. 

Lambert’s story blends a lot of setting elements that seem an odd fit within the narrative (Old Hollywood and Appalachian folk horror don’t go together like chocolate and peanut butter). However, the pairing works with the glue between them being the theme of dreams like Vivian’s career as a movie star and Minersville resident’s visions of prosperity left to rot in the darkness. Drake is also an intriguing character whose layers slowly unfurl to show why she chooses to hide inside a bottle. What really sells this story, however, is Claire Roe’s artwork, providing some bizarre dreamlike imagery as the narrative shifts from past to present, from real to imaginary. What her art does for the Mishmash Man makes this a book a must for body horror fans, but those who love a creepy atmospheric story will want to ride the Hollywood Special. 

Graphic Content: Dark Spaces: Dungeon by Scott Snyder and Hayden Sherman

 

Horror once focused on the moment where a protagonist or a character met the monster or faced their fear, a single moment of terror that was like an adrenaline shot to the reader’s heart. However, horror has recently looked not just at terrors attacking characters in the past but traumas from the past that have buried deep underneath the characters’ skin, festering throughout their lives. One such person is the investigator at the center of Dark Spaces: Dungeon. Written by Scott Snyder and illustrated by Hayden Sherman, this entry into the Dark Spaces anthology series looks at how many people live in dungeons of their own making. 

The story begins with tech entrepreneur Tyler Letts who’s left the fast-paced lifestyle of New York for a quieter life in the country. And while the view outside his window is scenic, it’s the dungeon that’s under his basement that has him calling the FBI (this despite the message painted on the wall that says “Tell No One”). Enter Special Agent Madok, who knows that this is the kind of chamber used by the Keep, an individual whose MO is to keep his prisoners in boxes designed to break bones and wills. Madok is all too aware of the Keeper’s methods, and when Tyler’s son goes missing, Tyler must match wits with the demented dungeon keeper while the clock ticks. 

Snyder’s story reads at first like a straightforward procedural, but as mentioned before, the Keep doesn’t just kill his victims. Sherman’s artwork renders in gruesome detail the Keep’s victims after they’ve spent time in his dungeon. People might be tempted to call this a Saw rip-off, especially considering the elaborate designs of these dungeons, but Snyder’s work is more psychological, delving deep into the trauma is both a help and a hindrance to agent Madok, and the secrets held by both him and the Keep drive the conflict of this work to a shocking twist that just may trap the reader.  

New Arrival: I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

 

Stephen Graham Jones may be entering his Stephen King phase. Not only is his name becoming synonymous with horror, thanks to novels like Mongrels and the Jade Daniels series, but he’s also demonstrating just how prolific he can be. He seems to be writing at a blistering pace where the novels just seem to fall out of his head as fully formed as Athena, but he’s also been branching out into other mediums, like comics. His current novel is a return to one of his tried-and-true favorite horror subgenre: the slasher. However, I Was a Teenage Slasher is far from a rehash of his previous work in the Jade Danies series; rather, it’s a tragic tale of a future slasher who’s agency was stolen from him. 

Lamesa, Texas circa 1989 is far from a bustling town. Their main exports are oil, cotton, and death. Death comes in the form of Tolly Driver, a rudderless seventeen-year-old who hangs out with his best friend Amber while trying to process the death of his father. One fateful night, Tolly becomes something worse than a disaffected teen; he becomes a slasher, an unstoppable killing machine that attacks the teens of Lamesa, taking full advantage of the Slasher rules that govern his abilities and drive him to murder everyone who wronged him. 

Made for fans of slashers but with more emotional heft than most slasher films, the story of Tolly discovering his abilities has more in common with superhero stories than slasher films. Much like superheroes (or villains, in Tolly’s case), his story involves struggling to accept what he’s become. Like the Jade Daniels series, this book is a loving homage to the slasher genre, but Jones flips the script by putting readers in the mind of the killer. That killer, it turns out, does not necessarily want to be a murder machine; rather, he is merely fulfilling the role this universe has given him. To put it another way, one could compare the moral of Tolly’s story to Uncle Ben’s advice to his nephew, the Amazing Spider-Man: With great power comes great responsibility (for Tolly, it should probably be “With great power comes a substantial body count”).