Shook! [Part Two] - Second Sight Publishing

SHOOK!, March 2023

For those three hundred and sixty-eight backers who pledged $52,744 to help publish this super-sized “EC Comics styled horror anthology”, Rodney Barnes’ twelve-page tale of prejudicial persecution on the Mississippi in 1972 is bound to be one of their reading highlights. Indeed, it’s difficult to imagine a more potent mixture of shambling undead, brain chomping revenge and right-wing white supremacists’ finally getting their just desserts; “I speak now to all who walked in a world that spat on your existence… I ask you now to rise for one last task in the world of flesh and blood.”

Quite possibly this tale’s biggest hook though, doesn’t lie with simply watching a number of robed racists getting mercilessly ripped asunder by the living corpses of those they’ve previously wronged by hanging. But rather with the American screenwriter’s suggestion that perhaps the loathsome Klan’s cowardly chief might somehow actually make it out of the slaughter alive if he manages to convince Buck Hawkins he’s genuinely repentant for all the murderous mayhem the Klansmen’s detestable activities have caused in the past.

Admittedly, such forgiveness isn’t that likely considering just how vile a creature the hooded “magician” is made out to be, especially when the man adamantly refuses to acknowledge that it’s his own bigoted narrow-mindedness which has lead him to being barricaded inside a small wooden farm building surrounded by flesh-starved zombies. However, right up until the cultist’s intended victim ruthlessly opens the door and lets in a horde of putrefying ghouls, there is an intriguingly slim possibility for clemency, and this notion debatably holds this grim narrative’s audience absolutely spellbound throughout the story-telling.

Equally as enthralling is David Brame’s artwork, which absolutely nails the terrifying demise of this yarn’s numerous Klansmen, as well imbues Buck with all the mesmerising magical abilities one who expect from someone able to bring the dead back to life with an all-too deadly purpose. In addition, the illustrator does a first-rate job in depicting the mental anguish endured by Hawkins’ would-be-killer, and the gratuitously grotesque death that befalls him when his former fatalities painfully tear the flesh from his bones.

Written by: Rodney Barnes, Illustrated by: David Brame, and Lettered by: Hector Negrete