The word genius has become a tired, catch-all phrase that’s overused and abused by sycophantic critics in an attempt to score points with the artist, writer, musician, or filmmaker whose work they’ve been charged with analysing and dissecting for their audience. However, that doesn’t mean that geniuses don’t exist, they do and their work pushes the boundaries of the creative fields that they’re a part of, and forces their contemporaries to either rise to the challenge of meeting them head on and by doing so, collectively become better at whatever it is they do, or accept their limitations and ..read more

Affairs of the heart have led to the ruin of many a good man and woman, but Hellboy has for the most part, managed to avoid becoming a victim of Eros’ bowmanship. Until now. Or rather, until a fateful train journey through the English countryside in June 1979, when he was assigned to protect, unbeknownst to her, Doctor Anastasia Bransfield and the artefacts in her care, by her employer, the British Museum who called in a long overdue favour from the BPRD. Said favour being Big Red, who finds himself on the wrong side of goblins and witches and cults*, as the soon to be subject of his affectio ..read more

Following in the blood-soaked footsteps of The Cryptkeeper and The Mistress Of The Dark herself Elvira, is the insatiable Desdaemona Nimue Moreau, the newest ghost host with the most from creator Cullen Bunn. Given it’s not as snappy a moniker, as some of its predecessors Moreau is nonetheless the spookiest, freakiest comic shop proprietor this side of Transylvania and she’s on hand to point you towards some of the more macabre stories she has to offer in the Shock Shop. The first issue offers up two spinechilling tales which will give you the willies this winter. It kicks off with the fantas ..read more

If you’ve ever seen Dawn Of The Dead or Stranger Things or any number of horror movies that are set in a shopping mall, then you’ll be aware of their natural predisposition as the perfect setting for a slaying. As the hustle and bustle of the daily grind with shoppers getting their fill of retail therapy, makes way for the eerie quietness, where the occasional one-off noise can cause a brief heart flutter or flicker of a light casts shadows that didn’t previously exist. It’s within that classic setting that Adam Cesare has chosen to base his latest outing Dead Mall. Ladies and Gentlemen welco ..read more

Spread the love Monsters, mayhem and madness are, to coin an often overused phrase, like a four colour red rag to my comic devouring bull. If a book has one or more of them, I will, much like a less homicidal Liam Neeson, find it and read it. And the higher panel and page percentage of any combination of the three that are included between the covers, the more likely it is that I’ll geek out over the book and do my happy little funny book dance while rabidly consuming its contents. As Kyle Starks book about a gated community of serial killing slasher stars facing off against a legion of ar ..read more

Spread the love By the end of the first chapter of Project Monarch, you’ll feel as though your mind has been splintered into a thousand different pieces and projected through the Lewis Carroll’s infamous looking glass, by the time you reach the conclusion of the second instalment you’ll know that you’re not in Kansas any more and by the time the third and fourth acts have come to close, you’ll be unsure of which of the many tangled webs it spins, if any, to believe. But that, was and is, Oeming and Santos’ intent with this masterclass in prestidigitation that explores the underlying, funda ..read more

Spread the love Imagine a world where the classic portmanteau films of yesteryear were still a thing, where pulp horror anthologies and the fantastical televisual tales dreamt up by Rod Serling still took centre stage and continued to weave their hypnotic magic on generations of adoring fans and willing supplicants. Can you picture it? How wonderful would it be to live there if such a place existed? Well, wonder no more, as the one shots that Mike Mignola (this time with a little help from his literary compadres in fearful fiction, Christopher Golden and Olivier Vatine) has been breathing ..read more

Spread the love Bad guys as it turns out, don’t actually have all the fun. In fact, in the superhero community, if you’re way, way down the pecking order, being a supervillain is about as much fun as running out of gas in the middle of the Mojave Desert when you’re the designated driver ferrying a bunch of tequila sodden insurance salesmen home after the company they worked from went bust because the CEO emptied the bank accounts and ran off to live in Belize with his twenty something mistress. In other words, it’s not a whole bunch of fun when you’re trying to make a living holding up sec ..read more

Spread the love I can’t be the only person in the room who always fixates on that strange old nursery rhyme about baking and pies whenever he hears the word blackbird, can I? At least I hope I’m not…And after that brief interlude, it’s time to address the business in hand, Castle Full Of Blackbirds, or as I’ve come to refer to it, The Continuing Adventures of Sara May Blackburn. This slow burning, delightfully creepy tale of a young witch following her “mentor” to, and seeking her fortune in, the big city is crammed full of odd characters, all of whom are being pulled in all manner of diff ..read more

Spread the love Moving can be hard on the soul and psyche no matter how old you are, but when you’re on the cusp of adolescence, it can seem like the end of the world. Having been forced to leave everything that he knows behind in New Mexico in order to start anew with the B.P.R.D. in Connecticut with his adopted father Trevor Bruttenholm, Hellboy isn’t exactly happy. I mean, what is there for an imaginative young Harbinger of the Apocalypse to do in the middle of nowhere (comparatively) in 1957 apart from read pulp magazines and books about his hero Lobster Johnson? And when he gets sick ..read more