CRYPT OF SHADOWS No. 1, December 2023 |
Furthermore, the sheer ickiness of this six-page shocker is also down to Paul Azaceta’s deeply disturbing layouts, which impressively capture all the terror a living building might cause when it decides to impale its occupants with numerous nails and the odd flying piece of masonry. Indeed, the facial injuries suffered by the students inside the Hudsonview Hostel is only bettered by the artist’s disturbing drawings of the Bricklayer himself – complete with mutilated torso and fast-balding bonce; “I can’t be cleansed, girl. Can’t be killed. I’m in the walls…”
Much more tongue-in-cheek, as an audience would probably expect from a yarn featuring the ‘Merc with a Mouth’, is “The Living And The Dead” by Cavan Scott. Initially appearing to be a titanic tussle between N'Kantu and an overzealous Egyptian magic-user, this battle inside the Buckler Museum of Human History becomes a thoroughly bemusing melee once Deadpool literally crashes the party, and inadvertently prevents the Living Mummy from defeating his foe before she can raise some of the building's other heavily-bandaged relics back to life.
Well sketched by Devmalya Pramanik, there's a genuine pulse-pounding pace to this tale as the Indian illustrator provides all the ancient wrappings with a swirling animation that bewitches the eye and only occasionally provides a glimpse of the rotting flesh beneath them. In fact, many a bibliophile will doubtless be disappointed that this ‘devilish delight’ isn’t any longer in length than half a dozen pages, due to the unlikely anti-heroic duo looking pretty good together, fending off the three-thousand-year-old cadavers of Zeeta with a mixture of wit, sorcery, throwing knives and bullets.
Writers: Steve Orlando & Cavan Scott, and Artists: Paul Azaceta & Devmalya Pramanik |
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