[Comic Execution] 9/5 – ALICE COOPER, SILENT HILL DOWNPOUR, TALES OF TERROR

I’ve turned over a new leaf. You see, I passed up an opportunity this week. I could’ve reviewed the much anticipated GRENDEL VS THE SHADOW crossover and passed up on either ALICE COOPER or the new SILENT HILL comic, even though they actually fit better the horror movie format of DESTROY THE BRAIN. But I didn’t! So instead you get three reviews of three horror comics, and I’m going to try to stick more to horror comics from here on out, when I can.

Full disclosure; the GRENDEL VS THE SHADOW comic is $6! Honestly, this pretty well scared me away from doing it even more. Sure, I probably could’ve just reviewed that and skipped ALICE COOPER and SILENT HILL, but that would’ve been even more of a betrayal of DESTROY THE BRAIN.

You can trust me to be honest about these things. Really, you can.

HEY DON’T ROLL YOUR EYES AT ME.

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ALICE COOPER #1

Writer: Joe Harris
Artist: Eman Casallos
Colorist: Aikau Oliva

Publisher: Dynamite Entertainment
Price: $4 (Digital)

A comic book about Alice Cooper doesn’t immediately seem like it would be a draw, if you know anything about Alice Cooper. He’s an art student who basically stumbled into creating the glam goth persona he’d come to be well known for. The only controversy his personal life ever generated was a stint in rehab for alcohol abuse and subsequent conversion to Christianity, which didn’t have much impact on his career, surprisingly, given his shock theatrics. So, much like the KISS comic books, ALICE COOPER has almost nothing to do with Cooper’s actual life, instead written as a dark fantasy comic, a spiritual sequel of sorts to the 2005 Neil Gaiman-penned THE LAST TEMPTATION, in which the sinister Master of Ceremonies was clearly a stand-in for Cooper, intentionally so, as the comic was based on the concept Gaiman had created for Alice Cooper’s album of the same title.

This new ALICE COOPER comic is written by Joe Harris, a mainstay at Dynamite Entertainment who’s well-versed in scripting dark fantasy comics. His approach to this series, unlike Gaiman’s, is to make the set up of the new series a nod to Cooper’s musical legacy, then twisting that into a larger conflict. In this iteration, Alice Cooper is the Lord of Nightmares, a sort of goth Freddy Kreuger who’s been scaring pop stars into signing away their careers. The way Cooper and his demonic boss Lucius talk, it’s a pretty obvious nod to Cooper’s battle with both alcoholism and the stress of his early fame. But the really neat trick that Joe Harris pulls off is the blatant acknowledgment of how Cooper’s identity is confused; the target of his latest con recognizes him and the joke’s on him, as this brazenly moronic performer is a big fan. At least, he is, in the sense that he thinks Cooper is all about the same hedonistic, self-destructive rockstar lifestyle. There’s a lot of meta-commentary in the first half of the comic, conveying how Cooper, the real person, feels about his legacy. But this doesn’t last long, as the real plot gets underway and the so called Lord of Nightmares defies his master, the tale making a right turn into outright fantasy.

But while all this is happening, there’s another story, about a very familiar lad named Robbie, who tries to buy records at garage sale, only to have a cutthroat collector snidely buy everything. It’s a well placed dig at vinyl elitists and competitive hoarders and another example of how well Harris elevates what could be an rote Gaiman imitation to something more befitting its subject. This is especially so as Robbie’s story plays out, bearing no small resemblance to the persecuted boy named Steve, the subject of Alice Cooper’s celebrated “Welcome To My Nightmare” album, as they both become entangled in the world of Alice Cooper’s nightmarish fantasy world. There’s not telling exactly how that will play out with Robbie but something tells me the arc won’t go in quite the delirious direction that “Welcome To My Nightmare” did, but we’ll see. Regardless, as an opening issue, this is really well balanced and, despite being heavy with exposition, flies by surprisingly quick.

The illustrations for ALICE COOPER are done by Eman Casallos, best known for working with Garth Ennis on the femme fatale comic JENNIFER BLOOD. He’s a competent draftsman who handles both the weird and the mundane stuff equally well. His layouts are dynamic, though there’s more empty space on these pages than usual, padding out the length unnecessarily, but there are many pages where this pays off; the garage sale scene does a great job of using the sudden shift from a white background to a black one to deepen the eeriness of the scene, and the way the creepy guy running the garage sale takes up the whole background of the bottom of the page is deliciously spooky. There’s a brief split panel involving a flashback that’s also cleverly laid out, using the thorny vines of a rose to isolate it from the main continuity, placing Alice in the foreground of both to indicate his overwhelmed state. That said, Casallos needs a dedicated inker; his lineart is fine but his inks are so overbearingly deep and thick that any subtlety is lost and this is especially grating in closeups or simpler panels. Colorist Aikau Oliva undoes a majority of the damage from that by bombarding every panel with lively hues and heavy doses of atmosphere, generously cloaking unimportant details in shadow to bring mood to the right points while keeping the simpler pages more detailed, weaving in subtle textures and making generic backgrounds sizzle with energy. Sadly, the complete absence of Simon Bowland’s lettering is a huge letdown; the shattering of a vinyl record should be accompanied by a heart-breaking sound effect but it’s effectively muted with nothing to effect this sound for the reader, and this is one of dozens of examples of his failure.

ALICE COOPER is a $4 comic for 21 full pages. Here’s where that kind of pricing matters. Is ALICE COOPER worth that kind of expense? If you’re an ALICE COOPER fan, or even a fan of horror-themed music, you have to have this. But honestly, horror fans in general won’t appreciate how deeply the comic respects and honors its source material, which leaves a pretty lackluster story and art that rises above mediocrity, but not by much. That being said, this issue appears to set the stage, so I’m going to give it to #2 before I make a decision.

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SILENT HILL: DOWNPOUR #1

Writer: Tom Waltz
Artist: Tristan Jones
Colorist: Michael Spicer

Publisher: IDW Publishing
Price: $4 (Digital)

I’m a pretty ambivalent SILENT HILL fan. Oh, sure, I played the first game on the Playstation a few years after it came out and was fully scared to incomprehension by it, and I also went and saw the first movie in theatres because A) SILENT HILL and B) Christophe Gans and enjoyed it more than I should’ve (though certainly not scared to incomprehension by it). Yet I’ve never so much as laid a finger on any of the video game sequels or bothered with the second movie (to my benefit I’m told) despite proclaiming a fervent desire for more SILENT HILL. It’s hard to estimate the fullness of my fierce desire that the Guillermo Del Toro and Hideo Kojima SILENT HILLS thing be as impossibly transcendent as I hope it will be, yet it’s not something I’ll be in possession of day one. A SILENT HILL comic would’ve been an absolute must-have but I wasn’t even aware they existed until recently and, unfortunately, they appear to now be based on the lackluster SILENT HILL DOWNPOUR game, of which the less I say the better. But with the SILENT HILLS announcement, I thought it would be a good time to give these new comics a chance, and so here we are.

DOWNPOUR followed a convict, Murphy Pendleton, who escaped his captors during a routine prison transfer but then stumbled into the shapeshifting purgatory town of Silent Hill. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire! Apparently, he was pursued INTO Silent Hill by a cop named Anne Cunningham and while she might have to forge her way through a nightmare realm of mind-warping horror, this is one cop who always gets her man. We meet her as things appear to be going about as poorly as they can and before we can witness the dropping of the other shoe, we’re treated to a jittery flashback verifying the details of her arrival in Silent Hill while also fleshing out, in bursts, her tense interactions with the prisoner as well as her fellow corrections officers. As with SILENT HILL DOWNPOUR, none of the characters are particularly likable, Anne least of all, so it’s with some reluctance that we withdraw from the flashback to discover that she’s survived her predicament.

She immediately discovers a dead co-worker nearby, so there’s no reassurance that things are looking up. Sure enough, nothing’s what it seems and, as they are wont to do in Silent Hill, bodies start getting up and being creepy. Or do they? That’s the trick to Silent Hill; what dangers are real, and which are simply the delusions of a mind driven to delirium by the hell they’re trapped in? Is this other officer she now pursues an illusion as well? How come she doesn’t start second guessing herself right away? But then, what we know of her, it’s not surprising that she’s headstrong, but still; into a giant cave shaped like an evil mouth? With a sign out front labeling it “Devil’s Pit?” Not brilliant. Fortunately, it’s easy to forgive that bit of uncharacteristic idiocy as the payoff is spine-tingling when she flips on her flashlight, both that and the thing waiting in the dark delightfully recalling classic Silent Hill moments.

Then, MORE flashbacks, this time giving us an idea of why Anne’s such a dedicated officer of the law but also detailing why she maybe might not be the best officer of the law, either. For once, it’s kind of nice to see a character who’s a bit of an asshole actually fleshed out as to why they are that way, and not in a cliche manner. Back in Silent Hill, though, the scene gets too weird for Anne and she flees, only to run into another inmate who is then promptly gets dispatched right before her very eyes. She’s rescued by a train conductor, but isn’t really rescued at all, as he’s basically lured her into his own recurring nightmare/punishment. Some creep in a gas mask and cloak (Hello, My Bloody Valentine reference) looms over the affair. A flashback cuts in and as her memories slowly begin to echo into the damned space of Silent Hill itself, we discover exactly WHY she’s A) kind of a dick B) so determined to track down Pendleton. It’s quite the twist, one that’s hard to see coming thanks to the non-stop intensity of the action.

The art is largely handled by Tristan Jones and he deserves accolades for making this comic a frightening and visceral manifestation of how Silent Hill is supposed to look. I haven’t seen it this faithfully portrayed since Christophe Gans’ movie, and really it does that one better. Tristan’s lines are appropriately loose and expressive but never fail to convey the necessary depth and detail to bring Silent Hill alive (or whatever it is). His characters are expressive in intimate ways, with close-ups really wringing the emotion from their textured, fully-realized faces, and he also handles environments with exacting detail. But that’s not all! His layouts are perpetually unsettling and diverse, using gutters expressively but defying them where appropriate, going full bore messy with gore and, let me tell you, his Bogeyman is a helluva thing to witness. It’s going to be REALLY hard to read another Silent Hill comic without comparing the art to this guy’s perfection. AND THE COLORS! Michael Spicer deserves 50% of the credit for this being one of my favorite new books visually, as he renders Tristan’s lines into the visual equivalent of a Neurosis album. So much grime, gloom, tension, despair conveyed by his saturation of these pages in muddy grays, swallowing black, blooming blood reds, misty pale white… Huge props for perfectly conveying the signature mist that perpetually envelopes Silent Hill. And the lettering is right there with every beat, keeping a low profile but perfectly flavoring the horror with intense sound effects, like jagged chewing noises, disruptive gun blasts, impact thuds, etc.

Despite being a spin-off of the game, it doesn’t take much work to get invested in Anne’s story right off the bat, thanks to the enthusiasm of experienced Silent Hill scribe Tom Waltz, who understands and passionately conveys the true nightmare that is Silent Hill. His art team is absolutely the draw here and I cannot recommend enough that all fans of Silent Hill and good horror comics go pick this up. Yes, it’s $4, but this is absolutely worth those dollars and more. I can’t wait for the next issue, myself.

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GRIMM TALES OF TERROR #2

Writer: Shane McKenzie
Artist: Przemyslaw Klosin
Colorist: Fran Gamboa

Publisher: Zenescope Entertainment
Price: $3 (Digital)

It’s hard to condone the conservative, nostalgia-tinted presentation of GRIMM TALES OF TERROR when there’s so much good, original horror comics being spawned right now. This year alone saw the debut of NAILBITER, AND THEN EMILY WAS GONE, and THE EMPTY MAN. And it’s not like the old guard are done anyway; Richard Corben’s new adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe’s stuff is just fantastic and impossible not to enjoy, and there’s plenty of revived anthologies like EERIE or the ongoing collected classics of HAUNTED HORROR. So publisher ultra low-brow publisher Zenescope was definitely setting themselves up for failure by attempting a “return” to old school horror with TALES OF TERROR.

The last issue wasn’t so great, writing wise. This issue continues the trend of introducing us to a hyperbolically loathsome character who’s going to get his dues for sure somehow, then segueing into a “meanwhile” that takes a very, very predictable if well-executed jaunt into some of the dumbest horror I’ve ever seen. There’s a Spider-Queen, a tribe of her worshippers, some white morons who try to steal the Spider-Queen’s idol statue (and/or find out what happened to their father) and it all just takes TOO DAMN LONG to get where it needs to go to keep my attention. I mean, for crying out loud, not a single horrifying thing happens for an entire 15 pages! Neither the characters nor the story are interesting enough to hold my attention for that long unless I’m writing a review, which is never a good sign.

Thankfully, when the creepy stuff DOES finally kick off, it’s pretty graphic; idiots get swarmed by spiders, someone is creatively kabob’ed by the natives (yeah, no, it’s offensive) and then the dumb white men get to discover what it’s like to give birth to thousands of arachnids and one giant one. People exploding into shows of spiders is pretty cool and the emergence of the Spider Queen is actually pretty genuinely gross but I mean, spiders? Really? What a cheap, uncreative monster to use! Not to mention like, holy shit, it’s not okay anymore to portray natives as bloodthirsty monsters and no, white dudes invading their sacred places does not excuse that sort of pathetic stereotyping. Though the big climax does deserve some credit for being so well thought out; it’s implied that the spiders “penetrate” their victim, much like he did to their sacred cave, and there’s just nothing I can complain about when a giant spider explodes out of a dude. Oh, and the guy from the opening story gets his comeuppance in a fun way, though it feels like it was ripped straight out of a FINAL DESTINATION movie.

The art is far better than this half-assed story deserves. Przemyslaw Klosin nails the wide variety of scenery and characters, as well as the gore. His character expressions are good and there’s no stiffness to his action. The layouts are basic until the serious action goes down and that’s when he fills the gutters with spider webbing and packs a dozen panels into a full two-page spread. That’s it though, as the rest of the issue reverts to basic, yawn-inducing layouts. Fran Gamboa’s colors are good too, very strong presence, though a bit short on mood, opting to show rather than hide, but the handling of gore is delightfully nauseating. Jim Campbell, letterer, steals the show with a big effort from page one, garishly plastering gleeful SFX into the panels, making the comic an appropriately ear-pleasing delight. There’s the eerie melody that an enigmatic woman hums in an early page that’s color-inverted; white musical notes on a black speech bubble. A wonderfully ominous creak sneaks into a panel when they’re in the cave and stealing something from a corpses hand. But it’s the noises the victims of the Spider Queen make as they’re ripped apart from the inside that make me want to shake Campbell’s hand; splattered crimson-lined letters of bold white splash across the page. It’s definitely a big reason that the climax of the story is so satisfying.

While this is a $3 comic frankly, there’s just much better horror comics out there for the same price. If TALES OF TERROR could manage a really solid writer and a great art team, they’d have a chance, but they just can’t manage to do good both ways, so it’s with a heavy heart that I send this ambitious anthology to the graveyard.