Welcome back readers to a special Halloween edition of Comic Quick Hits. This week I thought I’d celebrate my favorite holiday by reviewing a few horror titles you might want to give a look at. Pull up a chair turn all the lights on and then continue….
The Marquis: Danse Macabre
Take a look at this cover. What about the cover by Guy Davis doesn’t make you want to read this
book now? I mean seriously take another look, there isn’t a single square inch that doesn’t ooze with cool.
This little slice of black and white awesomeness is about a man in 1800’s France who is given a mask that allows him to see demons in our world as well as weapons with which to send them back to Hell. And they are given to him by the forces of Heaven……….or are they?
The Marquis: Danse Macabre is one of those rare books that forces you to think about Heaven and Hell and the ramifications of working for either side and it does it while you are absorbing the awesome fight scenes. There is a second volume I will be devouring this weekend and from what I’ve read there will eventually be three more.
Go pick this up and give it a shot if you read the whole thing and don’t like it i’ll buy the copy from you*.
*Offer not valid for residents of North or South Carolina.
The Master of Rampling Gate
OK, so apparently Anne Rice managed to beat Stephanie Meyer to the sweet money honeypot that is stories about strangely feminine-like vampires and the women who love them by a few years. Honestly if someone told me that Ms. Meyer wrote this as a warm-up to Twilight I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised.
This cover promised me something cool and the last time I was lied to this big my parents were telling me about Santa. I’d like to provide you with a review but honestly all you need to know is a strangely almost-androgynous, tortured vampire falls in love with a mortal female, blah, blah blah….If you like Twilight I’d give this a shot, however if you have fully-functioning Government-issued man parts give this a BIG skip.
Pigeons From Hell
Everyone knows Robert E Howard for his Conan books. But his writing also
went WELL beyond the sword and sorcery genre he helped create and wrote a scary little slice of Southern Gothic Horror called Pigeons From Hell. Don’t let the cutsey title fool you though, this is one scary comic. The set-up is familiar to anyone who’s watched more than one horror movie in their life. Two New Englanders John Branner and his friend Griswell spend the night at an abandoned Southern plantation mansion. John awakens to find his friend gone but sees him coming down the stairs as an animated corpse with a hatchet in his hand and a gaping wound to his head. John comes back the next day with the police and despite being the main suspect he begins to unravel the history of this one-proud house and the evil within that drove it into decay.
Eclipse Comics put out this creepy as hell adaptation that took Scott Hampton over two years to complete and it shows. Every page is crammed full of detail and I spot something new each time I look at it. For example there is one panel where the main character is struggling to see what is at the top of the stairs and I caught myself staring into the darkness at the top of the stairs along with him hoping in vain to catch a glimpse of what horror awaited us. Take a look at the bottom of this post to see what I mean if you dare.
Copies seem to be hard to come by and while I got lucky the copies online seem to start at $15.00 and go from there. I cannot recommend this title enough. Do not, and I am repeating, DO NOT read this after the sun goes down. When Stephen King says “Pigeons From Hell (is) one of the finest horror stories of our century” take his word.
The Price:
