CREEPSHOW VOL 2 #1 (OF 5)
Story: Garth Ennis, Phil Hester
Art: Becky Cloonan, Phil Hester
Image, $3.99
This second volume of this title, based on various horror anthology TV shows and movies of the same name, has two stories.
"Make Your Choice," by writer Garth Ennis (Preacher) and artist Becky Cloonan (Gotham Academy) takes a surprising turn -- and is surprisingly political.
It stars a staunchly anti-abortion husband and his deferential wife. The former starts seeing visions of aborted fetuses coming out of his various orifices, which eventually begin talking to him. Neither the wife nor anyone else sees them.
Has he gone mad? Well, that's for you to say, as the visions increase and the story takes a surprising turn.
The tale is extremely well paced, and Cloonan's art is discreet about the bodily functions part, and horrifying where it needs to be. The ending, while I didn't see it coming, is perfectly in sync with today's world. I can't say more without entering Spoiler territory.
"Fossil Record" is by Phil Hester (Green Arrow, Black Terror) and is another story where I didn't anticipate where it was going to go.
"Record" stars an anthropoly professor who becomes obsessed with strange theories by a mentor who has become a recluse. The story is full of creepy displays of things from the past (trilobytes and the like) just so you don't get too comfortable, as various family members and colleagues reject our protagonist for being too weird.. When he finally goes to find his hero, he finds him in the bottom of a hole, where he's digging to prove a theory I sure didn't expect. We get to see this theory in action, but whether it's real or not is for the reader to judge.
And yes, it's awful as all get-out.
I said in the Comics Guide, if any medium should want to keep the horror anthology going, it's comics, a field that was literally persecuted in the 1950s for publishing them. So on a personal level I'm delighted to see books like Creepshow continue.
But they don't have to be this good, and Creepshow is. This book has two stories by A-list writers and artists, that surprised me with twist endings I didn't foresee (despite decades of reading horror anthologies) and that were genuinely creepy. I enjoyed this enough that I'm going to go back and read volume one.
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