Review: Creepy #13 / Author: Various / Artist: Various / Publisher: Dark Horse Comics / Release Date: Out now
Uncle Creepy returns for the latest instalment of Dark Horse’s revival of the classic horror anthology series, featuring killer cats, misunderstood ghosts and a ride into hell itself.
Josh Simmons and Dean Haspiel open the proceedings with an extended meditation on familial expectations that plays out as a coming of age drama akin to Charles Burns rewriting Ghost World. It’s a strong opening with a great twist, and one of the anthology’s high points.
John Habermas and D W Frydendall, who last worked together on the Slave Labor Graphics series Haunted Mansion, are reunited for the spooky Wild West tale The Prospector. The plot is a little cheesy, but Frydendall’s fantastic art carries the strip, like the love-child of Arthur Adams and Bernie Wrightson, delivering classic horror art and a great punchline.
Dan Braun and Lukas Ketner’s The Last Stop is another great tale about a subway ride gone wrong, really capturing the spirit of the original horror comics of the 1940s and 1950s. This story particularly made me feel like a little kid, sneaking a read of my dad’s old comic collection when I knew that I shouldn’t.
Archie Goodwin and Reed Crandall’s reprinted adaptation of Bram Stoker’s short story The Squaw is nothing short of brilliant, carrying itself with a class and realism that marks it out from the rest as the kind of strip that inspired us all to grow up obsessing over lurid horror!
Dan Braun and Peter Bagge’s comic relief strips were a misfire for me, but I never could really see the appeal off Bagge’s work, so that’s probably not a reflection on the quality of the strips.
Finally, Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook’s Deer X-Ing is a real gem, the less said to reveal the plot the better. Bunn is a talented writer and it’s great seeing such varied output coming from him at the minute.
Overall, in a lifetime spent devouring horror, the newest incarnation of Creepy doesn’t disappoint.
