Written By: Various
Art By: Various
Published By: IDW
The entire Haunted Horror series is such a wonderful thing. Rather than providing new content the series reprints classic cult comics from the 1950’s in all their glory and presents them to you in a neat collection. Issue #12 continues their track record of excellent taste and gives us a wide variety of comics in a giant 52 page collection.
Anytime you pick up any sort of anthology its a bit of gamble regarding whether or not the collection is going to be overall good or if there’s only going to be a few gems among a load of trash but Haunted Horror #12 excels at providing interesting content for the entire issue. While the majority of the stories within tend to stretch across multiple pages, there is the occasional extra short story that serves to help break up the momentum of all these long comics and sometimes provide the occasional bout of humor. It’s a great decision and also allows us a look at a larger variety of comics.
Haunted Horror #12 opens with what I considered to be the strongest story, “Code of the Shadowmaster”. It’s one of the longest in the issue and perfectly sets the tone for an issue that ultimately seems to have a reoccurring theme of revenge. It’s perfectly telling when an issue opens with a great story that involves a little bit of mysticism and a main character that you’re just begging gets killed and “Code of the Shadowmaster” manages to tell a whole lot of story within 7 pages or so. The story “Your Head for Mine” relies on some typical tropes but it’s delightfully over-the-top in its use of a femme fatale character to the point that you end up wishing it was longer just so the ultimate horror she experiences can be even more fantastic. The issue even closes with a story with a great twist in the form of “And then What????” that fans of stuff like Creepshow or The Twilight Zone will definitely appreciate.
One of the most important thing in an anthology to me personally is that the stories manage to be varied and sensational enough that they stand on their own and are all memorable without getting lost within each other. Haunted Horror #12 succeeds at that in ways I wish other anthologies would take note of. I mentioned that there was a somewhat recurring theme throughout the series but its presented in such a wide variety of ways that each work stands on its own remarkably well and is easily identifiable as its own piece of work.
The art has a ton of great details, as was common in cult magazines, and its really nice to see collections of authentic cult comics that don’t shy away from some of the more gruesome depictions. The art is bright, there’s a great attention to facial expressions, and the most macabre panels are usually the ones receiving the most amount of detail. “Murderers’ Row” was probably my favorite story artistically as the creepy museum is a host to a wide variety of horrors and has some final panels that are particularly gruesome in the best way possible.
Altogether, Haunted Horror #12 is sure to please both horror fans and people who just really enjoy the hidden gems of the cult period of comics. Each story includes any known writers and/or artists as well as the initial publication it appeared in as well as the date it was released. And with information regarding how people can send in their own scans of old comics, its really easy to see that Haunted Horror itself is a series that’s really aimed at people with a love of horror who want to share that love with others. I was tremendously entertained throughout the whole issue and know that this is something I’ll find myself reading time and time again when I want a nice dose of cult horror to keep me up at night.
