To The Last Page

" Okay, this just got interesting ". Yep, you have to agree with that statement when it comes through just on page 21 of the 263 page graphic novel Alva in the Dark . It's been beautifully illustrated up to now in dark shadowy black and white, introducing a pair of burglars, Mini and Morten who have been given a tip where to find an apartment owned by a old man with a supply of gold. They are going to need Alva for this job, the young woman something of an acrobatic cat burglar, and she duly obliges for a cut. Maybe they should have thought more about it when a page earlier Alva says " Morten, I have a bad feeling about this place ", and you wonder why they haven't questioned earlier why an old man lives in a dump of a place when he apparently has a substantial hoard of gold. Realistically though, the lure of gold means a sign on the door of a concealed room saying LEAVE NOW is unlikely to be taken as a warning and more as a sign of ...well, isn't that i...

I'm not sure where to start describing this book, so I'll put this plainly upfront: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes is extraordinary and one of the best books of its kind I have ever read. What 'its kind' is might be harder to define and that's where the difficulties come in. It's literary science-fiction, fantasy, gothic horror, satire, comedy, and just dazzling in all those areas. I don't know if it's wholly original - several references come to mind now and again - but Ennes really strikes out in an area and style that is distinctive and original, wholly compelling body horror, bug horror (if that's even a defined genre). If there's one defining characteristic of the author's typical subject matter - and we only have the award-winning Leech and now The Works of Vermin so far to base his on - it's possibly monster bug horror. But as I say, also considerably more than that. Set in the city of Tiliard, a place that sits or hangs ove...

Sergio Bonelli's editorial for Dylan Dog, Color Fest 1 , published in August 2007, highlights it as the start of a new direction, the original creator Tiziano Sclavi stepping back from writing duties and giving other writers and artists - some new, some familiar with the character of Dylan Dog - some fresh new ideas and interpretations. And that's what we get in a great variety of styles and artwork in the first Color Fest, a 130 page issue containing four new stories, some of which work well, others not so much, but all very definitely in the established character of the London based Investigator of Nightmares and his sidekick Groucho. Dylan in Wonderland Story, script -  Giovanni Gualdoni Art -  Bruno Brindisi The opening story in the collection is a simple one that nonetheless operates on different levels, as you would expect to be the case of someone who often delves into the dark places between this reality and the one of nightmares. This childhood nightmare takes place i...

Regular readers of Dylan Dog will know that he doesn't have much luck with women. Hold on, let me rephrase that: Dylan manages to hook up with a beautiful woman almost every month, but they don't last any longer than the gap between monthly episodes. The beauty he loses in issue 175 is however perhaps more painful than any of the others. At the start of Il seme della follia (The Seed of Madness) Dylan is not only in despair at having lost another girlfriend even before the episode had really started, one moreover that seemed to be perfect for him in every way, but the way Amber has been taken from him is truly horrendous. Stopping off for a quick canoodle in the woods, Dylan and Amber are beset for no apparent reason by a group of youths wearing horror masks. Dylan is badly beaten and tied to a tree where he witnesses Amber tied to another tree in front of him, petrol poured over her and set alight. The doctor treating Dylan's wounds recommends he sees a psychiatrist, and ...

Winning the lottery doesn't exactly seem like the stuff of nightmares, but up to the moment that his number is called out Clarence Clough has had his share of misfortunes, but perhaps no more so than anyone else. There is the loss of both his parents in a car accident while he is a child, but luck is on his side when as a young man he meets up with Brittany, the girl he has dreamed of since college, they marry and have two children. True, they are separated now after Brittany found Clarence in a compromising position with the glamorous Gloria, but that's life. When he has a stroke of luck ( Un colpo di sfortuna ) and wins £5 million in the national lottery, true to form for Clarence, there's a downside, as he discovers soon after the win that he has a serious illness and only two months to live. There is certain a hand of date or just misfortune in Clarence's situation, but where does Dylan Dog, the investigator of nightmares, come into the picture? Well, aside from tha...

In some respects Ronald Malfi's Senseless is a standard thriller with familiar elements in place. The novel opens with a serial killer situation developing, the body of a young woman discovered in the desert outside Los Angeles a year after the similar horrific killing and mutilation (not necessarily in that order) of an actress in horror B-movies. The cop investigating the murder has been going through a difficult time after his wife's death from cancer, and this is a setback because he believed that he had found the killer after the first murder There is a little twist here - not really a spoiler, but certainly something that is essential to note since it adds another element of uncertainty and ambiguity to the case - in that it's suggested that Detective Bill Rennie had 'resolved' the previous case by helping the husband of the dead woman bury the body of the man they believed was her killer. The question that troubles him - aside from getting found out - is whe...

Having come to Thilliez and Sharko via the more common route of the later Le Syndrome [E] and subsequent follow-ups with Lucie Hennebelle in  [Gataca] and Atom[ka] , I knew a little about what happened in Thilliez's first Sharko thriller Train d’enfer pour ange rouge , or at least one significant outcome. I also had a good idea of the dark tone that the book would take as that is characteristic of the author's writing and certainly the traumatic experience of this case in the first book has an outcome that marks Sharko deeply and is felt throughout the rest of the series. I'm not sure how much more of this I can say without giving away what might be considered a spoiler, but sure the book has been out for a number of years now and Thilliez has not yet had anything significant published in English, so it should be safe enough. I'll tiptoe around it just in case. So I had some idea what to expect in Train d’enfer pour ange rouge (literally, Hell Train for Red Angel). W...

Some people are just magnets for trouble and Dylan Dog is definitely one of them, thankfully I suppose, as otherwise there wouldn't be an adventure for us every month. It wouldn't be entirely correct then to say that what happens in Il sonno della ragione (The Dream of Reason) is the strangest thing to happen to him (you need only look back at Dylan Dog 153 - La strada verso il nulla for example), but with the Edvard Munch inspired cover (why not Goya?) you have to consider that there is something in Il sonno della ragione that pushes him to the limit this time. It all starts when Dylan discovers an extremely thin entirely naked woman lying in an alley close to his home. It looks like a case of a drug overdose, but something strange passes through Dylan when he lifts her up to take her to the hospital. Even stranger is what Dr Oldbright discovers when the woman is put through a CT scan. The entire left hemisphere of her brain has been removed, and not recently either. As wel...

The original story for Dylan Dog 153, La strada verso il nulla (The Road to Nowhere), was developed by Italian crime writer Carlo Lucarelli ( Commissario De Luca ), the final script adapted by the creator of the series, Tiziano Sclavi. It's a classic horror tale, following the logic of a nightmare that feels impossible to escape from, touching on the usual horror movie references, but fully retaining the character of Dylan Dog with a self-referential tone not uncommon in Sclavi’s series. It's a classic Dylan Dog story, working in multiple levels, dark and reflective, touching and humorous, recognising the conventions and playing with them, and it's brilliantly illustrated. Dylan has just been dumped by his latest girlfriend, Louanne, despite Dylan believing they have had an ideal relationship for the whole month they were together (the maximum allotted time for a romantic relationship in this monthly series). It's an acrimonious breakup, the end of the road for them as...

Despite having limited experience in the field of cinema, Simon Clark's idea for The Protos Experiment seemed a natural for it to be developed as a film script. That ambition has come to fruition with the movie directed by Laurence and Brian Avenet-Bradley premiering at Cannes this year. Although not yet on general release, Clark's own novelisation appears to retain much of that cinematic quality, but also some novelistic originality and ambition. Ironically, for something that has such a strong visual presence, the novel opens with a scene in a room of near complete darkness where, after convincing himself that he is not dead and opening his eyes, a man discovers that he is in some kind of chamber divided by plastic sheets (always a worrying sign) where a number of other people who can't see each other are chained up. John discovers that he himself is chained to a deranged monster of a man who is going to kill them all. It's a bold and compelling way to start the nove...

Dylan Dog is a comic series - a fumetto  in Italian - that has been running in Italy since 1986. Originally created by Tiziano Sclavi, it is still published monthly with additional specials, collections and colour editions. With each book running to almost 100 pages, some double that length, there are evidently different artist and writer teams needed which helps keeps the character and the series fresh with ideas and approaches. Published in digest format - a little like the Commando books that I used to read as a child - if not for Dark Horse publishing a few selected books in this and the Martin Mystery series in the same format in the 90s, Dylan Dog would probably remain largely unknown outside of Italy and some European countries where some of the books are translated. Those US translations featured new covers by Mike Mignola, appropriately since Dylan Dog is an investigator of the paranormal, or rather one who seems to attract all manner of horrors. Dylan Dog indeed descr...

In the spirit of Nick Aten, the protagonist from the first Blood Crazy book who is back again for the third (and final?) installment of the series and isn't afraid to make a pun, mix a metaphor or state the obvious, Blood Crazy: Aten Present starts out in an explosive fashion as Nick meets up with Jack Ranzic from Book Two: Aten in Absentia . It's an appropriate way for the leads of the first two books to meet up and Nick's forthrightness and down-to-earth qualities are appreciated, but otherwise neither of the two young survivors of the crisis that has overwhelmed the planet are in a better place by the time they unite in the third book in the series. Well, the Creosotes weren't going to disappear overnight, were they? Creosotes is the name that the groups of young survivors have given to adults over age of 19 who three years ago all turned overnight into shambling bloodthirsty monsters. It's a constant struggle for survival and despite some theories about the na...

The path of travel of a robot gaining AI intelligence had already been intimated in the first part of My Name is Shingo . Although not yet named as such, the implication is that Shingo started out “life” as 'Monroe', a construction robot at the factory where Konma’s dad works. Since the workers there know little about computer technology, Konma has helped Monroe develop self-learning capabilities. Perhaps not as much as he thinks when he starts playing with the programming, but at the same time although those changes are taking place gradually at the start of this second Perfect Collection of the series, there is clearly a long way to self-awareness yet. Funnily enough - though not if you are familiar with Umezz - his young children protagonists are embarking on a similar journey. There is a bit of a setback for Konma at the start of Volume 2, when Marin's diplomat father takes the family to England. Monroe is also behaving erratically and the factory, as might have been f...

Japanese artist Gou Tanabe continues his graphic manga adaptations of the dark horror of H.P Lovecraft with At The Mountains of Madness , an extended tale that delves into the origins of his some of his most famous creations spoken of in the Necronomicon; the Old Ones, the Cthulu and the fearsome Shoggoth. The story of their arrival on our planet, their enforced 'hibernation' in the Antarctic and their terrifying re-awakening. It's a story to inspire the most imaginative of visual presentations and Gou Tanabe does that impressively across two volumes. In1930, the Miskatonic University expedition led by Professor Dyer delves deeper into this frozen and inhospitable continent than anyone has been before. They soon discover some fossils of great interest, of a kind never seen before, and excitedly one of the scientists, Lake has commandeered some planes and a team to explore further inland. Despite an incoming storm, they discover a hitherto unknown range of dark jagged mounta...

The dark imaginative worlds of H.P. Lovecraft, his created mythology and monsters, are among the most influential works in the horror genre, and yet the visualisation of those worlds are as difficult to pin down as it is to measure the increments of rising fear they inspire. Lovecraft had a way to tapping into those deep primal fears, leaving much to the imagination, making them feel like part of a mythology based on another reality that is within reach - which, if you consider it as fear, is exactly what it is. When it comes to visual depictions of his work, it must similarly be a case of capturing that sense of inner fear rather than seek to make it concrete in images. And yet, there is always something fascinating about seeing how others visualise those tales. The Japanese artist and writer Gou Tanabe works not in the typical manga style, although it is certainly comparable to the more refined artwork of latter day Junji Ito, but closer to the style of Bernie Wrightson's elabora...

Now 87 years old and retired for a few decades, Kazuo Umezz is considered one of the most important and influential of Japanese manga artists in the horror genre, a master recognised by current leading artists in the genre including Junji Ito , but until relatively recently little of his work has been translated into English. One feature that is becoming common now that more works are being published in the West, is the question of how children relate to the the world their parents have created for them, whether it's the apocalyptic landscapes of his masterpiece The Drifting Classroom or the legacy faced by a child twisted by her mother's complex with her appearance in Baptism . The first volume of My Name is Shingo , now being published by Viz, is another major Umezz work that points in the same direction. The subject that influences 12 year old Satoru Konma and sets him apart from his parents appears to be their relationship to new technology, but inevitably the situation is...