#508-#509 = EYRIE Magazine #1 by various creators (Von Hoffman Publications, June 2025) Don’t look carefully, and you could be fooled into thinking this was a revival of Warren Publications’ EERIE black and white horror comic (from 1965 through 1983). The title is just different enough to avoid conflict, and adds the tag line - - “where horror comes to roost.” Some of these stories previously appeared in TOMB Magazine.
As the publisher explains in the letters column, “Fact is the TOMB Magazine was a little too off the beaten path to compete in the current marketplace, so you could see EYRIE as a rebranding, with one foot firmly in name-recognition-land and the other squarely facing ahead into the fluid future of Horror Comics, with new stories that stretch the limits of the genre and incorporate theme & topics relevant to today!”
Wow, not only is that an ambitious mission but it’s also a really long sentence! While this debut issue is promising, I hope they will steer more towards the latter part of that statement about “stretching the limits”. Issue One has a lot of familiar horror genre tropes, but fans will appreciate the efforts here -- with most of the six stories written by either Mike “Von” Hoffman or Jason Crawley, and plenty of artwork from Mike Hoffman.
My favorite story here, “In Perspective” with story & art by Von Hoffman, adheres to that “stretching the limits” promise, and is the most original and unique of the issue. Von Hoffman alters his style here to pay homage to Gene Colan in the tale of a pompous art professor who works extra hard to educate his bored class on perspective and illustration that creates the illusion of three dimensions. One night he is visited by a mysterious cloaked figure, a sorcerer and his monstrous minion who understand too well the professor’s points and make him an example of them.
Other stories deal with a mirror that reflects evil, a variation on the boy who cried wolf, space travelers adjusting to an alien planet’s weird ecology, inmates escaping a prison ship in outer space, and the monster in the closet. While these seem familiar themes, the story and art manage to entertain enough to overlook that.
There’s enough potential on display here for me to pick up another issue or two. Can the current market for horror comics anthologies accommodate yet another title? Time will tell. THREE AND ONE-QUARTER STARS.
#510-#513 = EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS, VOLUME ONE was reviewed here on August 13. Check the archive link to the right to read the article . . . .
For anyone still unfamiliar with the character from the 1980’s low budget Troma Films movies, “a hazardous chemical spill in the (fictional) town of Tromaville, New Jersey turned the town into a toxic site, transforming some residents into weird creatures . . . and outcast janitor Melvin Junko into the world’s most grotesque fighter for justice, the Toxic Avenger!”
Issue #2 re-introduces Sabrina (“I am Mushroom. I am a scizophyllum commune.”) who immerses herself in industrial waste and embraces the nickname ‘Fungirl’. There’s a serial killer (or group) running around, but Melvin Junko becomes the prime suspect. The group, led by the Great Auk, kidnap Sabrina/Fungirl from her hospital bed.
The Toxic Avenger escapes the police assault and sets out to find out who set him up. It’s a fun story with interesting art and plenty of blood. The interesting covers are done by Fred Harper and are thematic. Issue 2 was the ‘hard-boiled crime issue’ although there’s nothing inside that relates to this. The next theme is “science fiction” and expect the interior of Issue #3 won’t pertain to that cover either. THREE STARS.
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