Creepshow: Joe Hill's Wolverton Station #1 - Image Comics

CREEPSHOW: JOE HILL'S WOLVERTON STATION No. 1, February 2024

For those “kiddies” somehow able to navigate their way through twenty-four pages of abhorrent, expletive-laden dialogue, this comic book adaption/expansion of Joe Hill’s 2014 E-book set “in a dog-eat-dog world” probably never lived up to its pre-publication hype. True, the New York Times bestselling author’s narrative most definitely contains plenty of gratuitous violence and body horror thanks to a pack of hungry werewolves chomping their way through a number of hapless commuters and leaving their dinner scraps all over the place. But besides these momentary gore-fests, this “special presentation” overall is arguably far from convincing; “Americans don’t smell like cheeseburgers. We smell like winners.”

To begin with the sole reason for crooked businessman Saunders to even climb aboard a terrifying train to Wolverton Station is because there’s apparently no limousine drivers available in England to drive him to Buckinghamshire. This rather implausible national strike will surely test the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief straight from the start, and seems to have been crowbarred into the plot solely to ensure that the rich entrepreneur “obsessed with classic Horror memorabilia” uses a particular form of public transport.

Furthermore, the lead character appears unaware that the majority of passengers around him are actually hulking great werewolves, even when they’re ferociously feasting upon the innards of their partially disembowelled victims, or noisily chasing him through the carriages towards First Class. Such a lack of recognition really is quite bemusing, and appears especially strange once the fellow becomes both noticeably sickened and petrified by the numerous mass-murders occurring throughout his train ride. In fact, even after a close call with three ravenous lycanthropes near the toilet, the American still just returns to his seat beside a well-dressed man-wolf and continues with their earlier conversation.

Much more impressive is arguably Michael Walsh’s artwork, with the illustrator’s somewhat roughly-hewn sketches adding plenty of raw energy to the skin-shredding shenanigans occurring aboard the blood-soaked InterCity. Of particular note is how the penciller depicts Saunders becoming increasingly dishevelled physically as his nerve-jangling trip plays out, and he resultantly transforms from the arrogant, all-powerful tycoon into nothing more than a truly desperate taxi-fare who has unwittingly fallen into Sol’s grisly plan for revenge…

The regular cover art of "CREEPSHOW: JOE HILL'S WOLVERTON STATION" #1 by Michael Walsh