#409-#410 = DEATH RATTLE, VOLUME 3 #5 (Kitchen Sink Press, June 1996) If you ever see one of these low-print-run, hard-to-find issues in the bargain bins, fans of horror and the “underground”style of comics should give this a trial. DEATH RATTLE was a black-and-white horror anthology published in three short volumes in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Back in the day when comics fell under the purview of the Comics Code - - DEATH RATTLE and other underground titles did not, which allowed it to feature more experimental content, including graphic violence, nudity and profanity - - things that don’t have as much regulation or public outcry in the comic publishing of today.
However, “Goodbye” by Swiss surrealist artist Thomas Ott would probably not be published today without a number of disclaimers. It’s about one man’s repeatedly failed attempts at suicide (until the matter is taken out of his responsibility). It’s by far the strongest and most disturbing story in this issue.
Second on my list of unsettling tales is a short preview of “Registry Of Death” by Matthew Coyle and Peter Lamb, about a hard-edge near future where “the different are hunted, and abattoirs are art galleries.”
Fortunately, the remaining two tales take more of a weird humor bent in “Klemdiggers” by Matt Howarth and “Dr Wrotwang’s Wratwerks” featuring some neat detailed art by Tom Sutton. THREE AND THREE-QUARTER STARS.
#411 = SUPERMAN #160 by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness (DC Comics, September 2000)
The DC editiorial staff dedicated an entire month of Superman books (four different titles) to one-off Bizarro stories. Mcguinness does a fine job here of mimicking the art style of those early Mad Magazine color comic books in a tale titled “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad World!”
A black-suited Superman is incarcerated in Arkham Asylum for the murder of Lex Luthor and breaks out of his chains. The call goes out to the JLA Watchtower, and is answered by Bizarro Superman. He fights Superman with wacky dialogue between the two, and returns him to prison. Lois Lane is even more powerful in this story, heading a corporation bigger than Luthor. Jimmy Olsen gets a cameo, as Bizarro’s best friend, as caretaker of the graveyard of solitude. THREE STARS.
#412-#413 = ZOMBIE TALES (Boom! Studios, 2005) Boom published several of these one-shot anthologies featuring zombie-themed stories featuring some gifted creators. There are six stories here of varying styles and themes, although I grew weary of zombie stuff before I finished the book. Guess my zombie quota has expired. However, the art makes this worthwhile.
I appreciated half of these stories the most:
“Severance” by Mike Nelson and Joe Abraham deals with scientists working on cure for the zombie plague and forced to experiment on their own children when they run out of test subjects. One scientist has had too much of it, claims to have solved the problem, and resigns from the corporation. His exit interview is a hoot.
“Daddy Smells Different” (John Rogers and Andy Kuhn) is centered around the punch line of that title. To tell more would give it away. Funny.
“If You’re So Smart” (Mark Waid and Carlos Magno) details school students struggling with a multiple-choice test (all zombie questions). It’s one quiz where you don’t want to have the highest score.
Other tales are “I, Zombie” (Andrew Cosby and Keith Giffen), “For Pete’s Sake” (Johanna Stokes and J.K. Woodward), and “Dead Meat” (Keith Giffen and Ron Lim). THREE AND ONE-HALF STARS.
#414-#415 THE GODDAMNED TRAGEDY one-shot by Chris Condon and Shawn Kuruneru (Oni Press, May 2025) I was engaged but not impressed upon a late-night first-time reading of this. Since I’m a fan of Condon’s crime comics, I thought perhaps I was half-asleep and not being fair to the story. Turns out that was correct. THE GODDAMNED TRAGEDY is another book to add to my list of nominations for best one-shot complete story of the year.
It requires more than one reading to absorb and pick up on all the nuances that Condon and Kuruneru built into the story. At first, the art seems off-putting. However, the minimalist style is well-suited to this story of isolation and desperation. That serves to highlight the expressive tone of the story, in both facial features, body language, and the selection of muted color washes that Kuruneru employs.
The story is inspired by the historical fate of the Donner party on the Oregon Trail, and is a masterful blend of the horror and western genres. Part ghost story, part survival tale.
The opening scenes serve as a preface to the sad story. In 1894 San Francisco, a woman (Ellen Janson) walks into the offices of journalist J.M. Rapp to inform him that his magazine story about the lost Janson party is inaccurate, and offers him the chance to make corrections for a new edition. She is the sole survivor of “your goddamned tragedy.”
Ellen then proceeds to tell her story from the beginning in 1846 Missouri
when Leo Janson decides to pack up and, with his wife and daughter, join a guided wagon train to California to seek their fortune mining for gold. He is sometimes drunk and abusive, and thinks himself clever when he buys a short-cut map and the family strikes off on their own to find a faster way to get there.
They get lost on the way there and encounter desperation, self-doubt, isolation, starvation, blizzards, a stalking Indian, voices in the head, a huge bear, anger, madness, etc. This turns out to be quite a story, and worthy of multiple readings like all great stand-alones. FIVE STARS.
#416-#417 = EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #12 of 12 (Oni Press/EC Comics, June 2025) This is the way to wrap up a final (for now) issue! Three tales true to the EC vibe with art and stories that recall the masters. It was hard to pick a favorite story, but I did. “Stilled The Waves” by Michael Conrad and Alison Sampson tells the sad tale of a young sister/brother suffering the abuse of an often drunk father who can’t get over the untimely death of their mother. He’s a security guard at the Sea Life Centre, the home of Aruna - the only great white shark that managed to survive in captivity. Brother Marcus has a strange bond to Aruna that begins to affect his demeanor.
Matt Kindt and Klaus Janson set “Help Less” in a post-apocalypse city where everyone seems to be homeless and focuses on a mother trying to find sustenance for her son. This one has a punch line at the end, a subtle commentary on current affairs.
Writer/artist Tyler Crook takes a domineering mother to the next level in “She Needs Help”. From birth, mother was sure something was wrong with her baby girl. Throughout her childhood, she dragged her to various doctors - sure that her daughter was suffering despite the diagnosis of perfect health. It was an obsession that would remain, even from the grave.
The issue is book-ended by a frontispiece and final epitaph featuring the Grave Digger by Dustin Weaver. His work on all twelve issues really helped capture that EC feel. The Grave Digger ends up digging his own grave, as the Tormentor entombs him as a way of introducing the new title - CATACOMB OF TORMENT. Can’t wait to read that one. FOUR STARS.
#418-#419 = HELLO DARKNESS #11 (Boom! Studios, June 2025) This is the weirdest issue yet, and I appreciate the strange. All the stories and artwork throughout this issue have that experimental “underground comics” feel and remind me of DEATH RATTLE (which I recently reviewed). The issue opens with a new take on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, which is not really revealed until the final page - where it hints at the possibility of more stories and also ends with a pun - - “The End . . . Is Neigh!” The story (“Hell Horse”) by Karen Egan and Gavin Smith centers around a disgruntled young man after his older brother and son use his horse Licorice to win a race but also ruin his ability to run again.
The strangest story this issue is “Shitcan” by Evan Skrederstu, an abnormal story of artist Zygote who searches for his fellow artist Shitcan inside an underground tunnel (allegedly in Los Angeles). He finds strange art work and an even stranger pack of raccoons that overtake him. The capper is that as part of his “Operation Under” Skrederstu actually painted a comic story inside an undisclosed underground tunnel, and these panels are the images that he produced there.
Equally abnormal on the strange-o-meter is “The Void That Lived In The Manor” by Shannon Hochman wherein Harlan Picardy checks into the manor in the 1924 seaside town of Barrow’s Inlet. He’s taunted inside by a shadow cat that eventually gets the best of him.
The final story is “Gas Station Snacks” by Dan Watters and Dani. A woman worries about her withdrawn and quiet friend, and decides to take a ride to a look-out spot, pausing for some gas station snacks on the way. Her friend finally opens up, just as familiar cities (built by aliens) suddenly dislodge and float into space. I kid you not. FOUR STARS.
#420 = VANISHING POINT #2 by Mark Russell and Ryan Alexander-Tanner (Mad Cave Studios, June 2025) This is the mission statement of the series: “VANISHING POINT is an anthology of short stories that are part science fiction and part existential horror. These are stories with a twist in which the twist is not the point of the story, but a beginning point from which to ask what it means to be alive.”
So far Russell is two for two in scripting sad, thoughtful stories. Despite that cartoonish cover (with the Tomorrow Family as a not-so-subtle homage to THE JETSONS, Hanna-Barbara’s 1960’s television cartoon series) this is not really a fun story. But, both issues have made an impression. Russell is known for his satire, but he’s definitely showing there’s a lot more in his bag of tricks.
The cartoonish Tomorrow Family doesn’t let setbacks interfere with their comfortable future family life for long, shrugging things off and moving in positive directions. Contrast that with the new friend of young Bobby Tomorrow - -Cosmo Warner, with less colorful clothes, a dirty face and an eyepatch who seems depressed and wants to hang with the Tomorrow family rather than go home. At one point, Bobby says to him: “I think you may be in the wrong cartoon.”
Later in the story, we find out who he really is, and he doesn’t live in a pleasant, hopeful world. So far, both societies depicted in Russell’s stories are rather dystopian.
Cosmos even asks sister Janey - “what happens when you die?” To which she replies: “I’ve heard that as your brian uses the last of its oxygen, it sets up a sort of base, a fortress inside your mind, the last place that will go blank before you die forever and that base becomes wherever it thinks you want to be . . . . Maybe that’s what Heaven is.”
Don’t be fooled by the mostly cute art and cover. This book is a downer.
But much respect here, considering the mission. FOUR STARS.
#421 = SISTER IMPERATOR #4 of 4 BY Tobias Forge (of hard rock band Ghost) and Corinna Bechko with art by Puste (Dark Horse Comics, June 2025) Issue #1 started out like a horror comic, with a corrupt evangelical priest being crucified upside down by Sister Imperator.He’s almost killed but the police arrive in time to stop Sister and place her in prison.
From that point on the story centers around a journalist interviewing Sister in her jail cell, and learning her back story/origins. The back story was interesting (which is why I bothered to pick up the final issue), and I was hoping that the history lesson by Sister would lead right up to the moments before her final arrest. Maybe she’d make a definitive statement that would put an appropriate conclusion to the series.
The final issue relates some other events to show how Sister was coerced by the ghosts of her twin baby sisters (still in their Halloween costumes) to correct the injustices of abusive males. It takes us right up to the final moments when Sister confronts the offensive priest (who happens to be her cruel stepfather), but stops short of the crucifixion scene.
The prison guard signals that the journalist’s time is up. Sister is then rescued by her female friend wearing a police uniform. The final scene is a hospital visit to the priest, now on oxygen and looking worn down, as he states to family members . . .”It’s your . . . empire . . . now.Take your turn.”
Groan. Are you really going to end it there? Hoping for a sequel? Please, no. THREE STARS.
#423-#424 = VATICAN CITY #3 of 3 by Mark Millar with art, colors and letters by Per Berg (Dark Horse Comics, June 2025. Note: $5.99 cover price.) This was a fun, action-paced story with good, realistic exchanges between the characters and some funny moments to break the tension. I’m also glad that Millar wrapped up the story within three issues instead of dragging things out.Per Berg is never going to make my list of favorite artists, but his style (angular panels and a wash of colors over crowd scenes) takes some getting used to before you can fully appreciate it.
Vampires have taken over almost the entire planet and converge on the Vatican, where the Queen of All Vampires is buried underneath awaiting resurrection. Young Guido, auditioning for the Swiss Guard (but not knowing they weren’t there when he arrived) quickly becomes the go-to guy for the resistance. He ends up recovering the Vampire Queen’s gigantic body (still comatose) and uses it as a bargaining chip to help those trapped inside the Vatican to escape. He wants a plane prepared to take them all to China, and the vampires to allow them to exit and journey to the airport. They’ve wrapped the Queen’s body with C-4 explosives and threaten to blow her sky high if the vampires resist.
In the final issue, they are driving towards the airport when a cocky Sister Dominque hangs out the window holding the kill switch and taunting the vampires, when a bump in the road sets off the explosion in the next vehicle with the Queen.
Guido and friends retreat to another church with an underground vault, where the vampires are determined to burn them to the ground - until (as Guido sees it) divine intervention in the form of a giant fireball/light eradicates the vampires world-wide.
What they don’t realize is that God wasn’t behind the saving move, and the world may never be the same as Guido’s group heads east to start over again. Sequel? I sure hope not.
I was entertained so I don’t regret reading this. However, it won’t be the title I refer to when I’m recommending Millar to new readers. THREE AND ONE-QUARTER STARS.
