Wytches: Bad Egg Halloween Special - Image Comics

WYTCHES: BAD EGG HALLOWEEN SPECIAL, OCTOBER 2018

Served “as both a stand-alone story in the Wytches world and a prequel to the highly anticipated Wytches Volume Two”, this sixty-six page story-line proved in October 2018 to be just as disturbingly disconcerting as its Eisner Award-winning creators’ previous six-issue mini-series, with its pulse pounding opening featuring a boy being fed to a monster housed in the back of an everyday transit van, and subsequent focus upon Sebastian’s increasingly close friendship with a neighbour who is destined to meet a similar fate down the bottom of a woodland pit. However, whereas in his previous storyline Scott Snyder seemed keen for his audience to piece together his unwholesome tale's grotesque puzzle for themselves, in this Halloween Special he seemingly prefers to tell the reader almost straightaway how the gore-fest will conclude, and then sits back as its palpable tension builds towards the comic’s frightening finale.

Interestingly though, just because the anticipated ending to this “horror-filled romp” is soon made evident doesn’t mean that it isn’t still packed full of plenty of surprises, as the relationship linking this book’s “two innocent teenagers reared on opposite sides of the eternal struggle between good and evil” continually appears to threaten the truly sickening plans of both boys’ parents; whether that be to have the teenage Seb brutally murder his schoolmate just before they attend a local slot-racing championship so as to end an “age-old blood feud”, or willingly present their “ripe” child to a mercilessly slavering forest-dwelling monster and then gleefully watch him being eaten alive… Indeed, perhaps this perturbing publication’s biggest hook is that despite Ruby and Karl’s best intentions their distressingly macabre machinations only ever partially reach fruition, making the American author’s narrative enthrallingly difficult to discern whether the cast’s various fates are already sealed or not.

Also infinitely adding to this tale’s foreboding aura of creepiness is Mark Simpson’s eerie-looking storyboards, which genuinely imbue even something as innocent as Jackson’s impressively large track layout down in his basement, or a seemingly innocuous school lesson in family trees, with an unnervingly oppressive atmosphere of dire dread and menace. Moderately masked by a gossamer veil of paint splatters and disconcerting light sources, Jock’s instantly recognisable drawings are particularly impactive when portraying the scarily-toothed monstrosity at the end of this tale, and the fiendishly fast creature’s gruesome demise at the hands of the child it was expecting to consume; “Go on, ‘Cough’ baby sister! Beg! Beg Me! Beg!”

Written by: Scott Snyder, Illustrated by: Jock, and Color by: Matt Hollingsworth

Grimm Tales Of Terror 2018 Halloween Special - Zenescope Entertainment

GRIMM TALES OF TERROR 2018 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL, September 2018

Delivering upon its promise to provide both “shocking twists on classic literature” as well as “brand new takes on modern urban legends” this thirty-six page anthology undoubtedly provided its readers in September 2018 with precisely the sort of spine-chilling shenanigans George A. Romeo so successfully encapsulated with his early Eighties American dark comedy horror movie “Creepshow”. In fact, it’s a sure thing that if the “Godfather of the Dead” was still directing the gruesome franchise, then this comic’s terrifying trilogy of blood-soaked tales and interlinking sub-plot involving Keres, the goddess of death, hosting a “Costume Party”, would surely have been just the sort of pulse-pounding parables the Bronx-born filmmaker would have wanted for his silver screen fright-fest.

Opening this comic compendium is Terry Kavanagh’s historically-based mix of Irish classroom jinks and gory murder most foul. Somewhat cleverly focusing upon the unruly behaviour of a naughty schoolgirl, Geraldine, this Nineteenth Century-based script has the potential to wrong-foot some within its audience as to the identity of Loughlea’s child-killer, and alongside its very clear message that Jack-o’-lanterns definitely do ward off evil spirits, it even manages to intriguingly plug a future edition of the publisher’s title “Ripley’s Believe It Or Not?”

However, the highlight of this book is undoubtedly Erica Heflin’s scary straw-fest entitled “Scarecrow” which follows three greedy modern-day adolescents in their unwise quest for Confederate gold and an alibi. Its artwork suitably scratched by Marcelo Basile, this ‘short’ proves a real shocker as the trio inadvertently kill a hapless “nutso whack job” whilst metal-detecting deep inside a sky-tall cornfield and then discover the dead old woman’s depilated home is inhabited by supposedly inanimate mannequins; “They’re going to come in here and see that this lady was totally off her rocker.”

Finally, before Keres unsympathetically feeds her gullible guests to a room full of sharp-toothed grotesques, knife-wielding zombies and stuffed scarecrows, Ben Meares pens a marvellously macabre yarn involving an elderly, house-bound cripple and the local children’s love of candy. Well-drawn by Eman Casallos, this final fable really should catch its readers off-guard as its plot follows all one’s expectations up until its hair-raising conclusion, which gratuitously reveals both the real cause of the young trick-or-treaters’ vividly-green vomit, as well as just why “Ol’ man Miller” has a semi-portable drip feeding some sort of luminescent fluid directly into his frail, emaciated body.

The variant cover art of "GRIMM TALES OF TERROR 2018 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL by Ceci de la Cruz