And so we come to Halloween

We hope you've enjoyed this little tour through the scary and weird of the comic world.  It all seems to have become rather zombie orientated - maybe next year we'll try for a broader selection.

To recap, we had our original post linking to previously reviewed books that fitted in with the Halloween spirit, we've had intense drifting classrooms, a whole range of vampires, some quite frankly surreal stories by a guest reviewer, teenage zombie fights, a sci-fi story, zombie superheroes and an introduction to one off specials.

Had we the time, we would also have mentioned The Walking Dead, Scarecrow Year 1 (the counterpart to Two Face Year 1), Uzumaki bu Junji Ito, Batman: the Long Halloween and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, amongst others.  I'm sure we'll be covering them later, but if you like what you've read about so far, check the above out anyway!

Happy Halloween!

Museum of Terror: Tomie Vol 1

Writer and artist: Junji Ito
Publisher: Dark Horse

What's it about?
We meet Tomie as a beautiful teenage schoolgirl, she has a boyfriend and many other admirers.   She is brutally murdered, cut up, and her body parts redistribute around the town.

Then Tomie returns.  Like she'd never been away.  Driven to a frenzy, her killer attacks again.  Then more Tomies show up.  You see, every time she is killed, she is cut up and her pieces scattered.  Each piece regenerates into a fresh Tomie.  She provokes bloodlust in others, she teases and aggravates those she meets until all around her are haunted and driven mad.  You cannot get away from her.

Halloween specials from DC

Usually we at New readers don't feature individual issues but on this occasion we will break with tradition and mention a few.  Here we go...

Each year DC put out special Halloween issues.  They contain several short stories featuring various characters having Halloween themed adventures.  If you wanted a quick and not too expensive way into each publisher's universe, you could do worse than picking up these issues.

DC's book is titled DC Universe Halloween Special 2010:

Blackest Night

Blackest Night
Writer: Geoff Johns
Pencils: Ivan Reis
Inkers: Oclair Albert, Julio Ferreira, Robert Hunter, Joe Prado
Colorist: Alex Sinclair
Cover Artists: Rodolfo Migliari, Ivan Reis
Letters: Nick J. Napolitano
Publisher: DC Comics

What's It About?
Zombies, or, more specifically, "Black Lanterns," risen dead who have come back to fight the entire pantheon of DC's superheroes.  Blackest Night was DC's summer 2009 crossover (a story spanning several comic book titles).  Most exciting for long-time fans was the chance to see dead superheroes and villians brought back to "life," which lead to speculation about which ones would remain in the living.  This crossover was unique among crossoevers in that it centered around the Green Lantern Corps.  This trade collects the "main" story relating to Blackest Night, collecting Blackest Night issues 1-8, plus a special issue, Blackest Night: Director's Cut.

Planetary by Warren Ellis

Written by Warren Ellis
Art by John Cassaday
Colours by Laura Depuy
Publisher: Wildstorm

What’s It About?
Elijah Snow has been approached by the Planetary Foundation to become a member of their field team. Together with the enormously strong Jakita Wagner and the possibly-insane Drummer he travel to uncover the secret history of the world. As he uncovers mystery after mystery he finds himself with more and more questions:

Why does the Planetary Foundation exist? What agenda is it pursing? Can his new associates be trusted? And who is the mysterious Fourth Man who finances it all without question?

Runaways: Rock Zombies (vol 10)

Rock Zombies                                       Mollifest Destiny
Writer: Terry Moore                              Writer: Chris Yost
Penciller: Takeshi Miyazawa                   Artist: Sara Pichelli
Colourist: Christina Strain                     Colourist: Christina Strain
Inker: Takeshi Miyazawa,                      Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna
Norman Lee and Craig Yeung
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna

Truth or Dare
Writer: James Asmus
Artist: Emma Rios
Colourist: Christina Strain
Letterer: VC's Joe Caramagna

Publisher: Marvel

What's it about?
Rock Zombies is the main story here, and as you may have guessed, zombies are the predominant theme.  However, these poor souls are neither undead for hungry for brains, instead they are ordinary people cursed by a local radio station DJ to become swollen, misshapen, lumbering creatures.  Enter the Runaways who decide it's their job to fix this mess.

Mollifest Destiny is about Molly Hayes, the youngest of the team, meeting the X-Men and being invited to join their ranks.  It turns out they were not quite prepared for the full on Molly experience.  Truth Or Dare has the Runaways playing a simple game that gets a little out of control.

THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD And Other Curious Objects

Writers: Mike Mignola, Katie Mignola

Art: Mike Mignola

Colors: Dave Stewart

Letters: Clem Robins and Pat Brosseau

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Today's review is a guest post brought to you by Mothee.  Mothee is a comics fan, about to graduate from film school and would like to be a writer.  You can find Mothee at the following places:

Twitter: @Mothee

Blogspot: http://mothee.blogspot.com

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mothee

On with the review!

What’s it about?

A clever collection of short stories and art by comics auteur Mike Mignola. For those who may be unfamiliar with his work, Mignola is best known as the creator of Hellboy (you may have seen or heard about the film that was released in 2004). He’s a writer/artist with a flair for the fantastic with a twinge of horror and oddities thrown in for good measure.

Included in this collection:

Tales of the Vampires

Writers: Joss Whedon, Jane Espenson, Brett Matthews, Sam Loeb, Drew Goddard, Ben Edlund
Artists: Scott Morse, Jeff Parker, Vatchie Mavlian, Cameron Stewart, Tim Sale, Paul Lee, Sean Philips, Ben Stenbeck, Cliff Richards
Pencils: Alex Sanchez, J. Alexander, Ben Edlund
Colours: Michelle Madsen, Chip Zdarsky, David Nestelle
Inks: Derek Fridolfs
Letters: Annie Parkhouse, Richard Starkings, Comicraft
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics

Note: Credits are shown as listed in the book.  Some people describe themselves as artists, some describe themselves as pencillers, hence the variety of titles.
This book is made up of ten different stories.  Each story has one writer and an art team, i.e., there are not three different writers for one story and three different pencillers, although some artists and writers worked on more than one story.

What's it about?
Vampires, and vampires are scary. They are more powerful than us, more violent than us and more singleminded than us.  They can kill us slowly and painfully or quickly and stealthily.  Vampires are scary.  These ones are no different.

The Drifting Classroom

Writer and Artist: Kazuo Umezu
Publisher: Viz Media

What's it about?
This is a superbly spooky horror tale.  Leading the cast is Sho, an 11 or 12 year old boy who attends Yamato primary school.  One day the school disappears and is replaced by a gaping rock and sand filled hole.  From the perspective of those inside the school there is a different scenario - to the students and teachers it seems that the outside world has disappeared.

Cut off from everywhere the children and adults soon panic.  Phone lines are down, radio stations don't work and no one can understand what has happened.  Some scream, some cry, some fight.  All are despairing.

It's Halloween!

Prepare for theme month number 3 - Halloween!


For the remainder of this month we will do our best to bring you reviews of the spooky, the scary, the gory and the weird of the comics world.  I can promise you a minimum of zombies, otherworldly dimensions, vampires and replicating schoolchildren.

To whet your appetite, here's a roundup of the Halloween esque collections we have reviewed previously:

Green Lantern: No Fear

Green Lantern: No Fear, 2005

Writer: Geoff Johns

Pencillers: Simone Bianchi, Darwyn Cooke, Carlos Pacheco, Ethan Van Sciver

Inkers: Simone Bianchi, Darwyn Cooke, Jesus Merino, Prentis Rollins, Ethan Van Sciver

Colorists: W. Moose Baumann, Nathan Eyring, Dave Stewart

Letterers: Jared K. Fletcher, Rob Leigh

Cover Art: Alex Ross

Publisher: DC

What's It About? 
Green Lantern: No Fear marked the start of a new ongoing Green Lantern series, and it collects issues 1-6 of the new title, plus a special issue, Green Lantern: Secret Files and Origins.

Prior to this new Green Lantern series, Hal Jordan, Earth's most prominent Green Lantern, had become a villian, died, and was brought back to life as The Spectre.  But you don't need to worry about any of that to enjoy this book.