Creepshow #1 // Review
The Creep has a pair of new stories for the new month. There darkness, murder and blood, but there’s much more than just that in Creepshow #1. The third Creepshow series for Skybound/Image comics features a couple of respectably well-told tales of horror that continue the long-established tradition of comic book horror anthologies that reach back to the dawn of comics. Writer Chip Zdarski and artist Kagan McLeod tell a story of a woman who is trying to get her daughter back from the clutches of a cult while writer/artist James Stokoe tells a tale of a man who gets more than he expected when he goes looking for a story.
Mrs. Miller’s daughter went off to join the cult of the Higher Heart. Everyone knows that the cult leader Guru-la is a major drug supplier for the region, but they aren’t able to do anything about it and since Mrs. Miller’s daughter is 18, the authorities can’t do anything about THAT either. Mrs. Miller’s been accused of being a bit conservative. That reputation is about to be put to the test. Elsewhere there’s a man looking for a story on a tiny island. He’s a reporter...writes a business column for The Journal. The island has some potential. The story he’s going to be told isn’t quite what he’s expecting.
Zdarski moves a remarkably tight narrative through only a few pages. Really, this is the type of story that would have made a lot more sense in a much larger full issue treatment. However, he has cleverly scaled the back of the scope of what could have been written into a very concise and tightly-woven tale of supernatural horror. Stokoe’s story doesn't necessarily have a whole lot going on for it conceptually. However, it is an admirable attempt to get into the dark heart of storytelling and pull something sinister out of it. For the most part, Stokoe is successful.
McLeod does a solidly good job of delivering the drama to the page. However, there is quite a lot going on psychedelically in the story that really could have hit the page with a bit more of a dynamic perspective. The contrast between the mayhem and the gleaming world of psychedelic trip could have been a bit more prominent on the page. That sort of thing could be really disturbing if done well. Stokoe’s art style is so very distinctive. So much of what tells the story and makes it unique lies specifically in the gorgeous heavy-ink style that Stokoe graces the page with.
It's nice to see that this format continues to be popular. There are so many possibilities in three or four page standalone stories that keep this format, fresh and new decades into its first appearance on the comic book rack back in the 1940s. The challenge moving forward is to continue to find fresh and no way to tell stories of a type that have been around for a very long time. Once again. Creepshow entertains while tackling the challenge in a fun new issue at the opening of a whole new series.
Grade: B
