By: Steve Niles (writer), Bernie Wrightson (art), Tom Smith (colors), Shawn Lee (letters) & Tom Waltz (editor)
The Story: Doc Macabre gets to the bottom of the hauntings plaguing his town.
What’s Good: What a great little 3-issue story this was. I’m not sure I’d call it horror, because it isn’t scary or gory. It’s more like a Ghostbusters with great art. Over these three issue Niles and Wrightson have worked as a solid team to develop a precocious monster hunter by the name of Doc Macabre and his personable robot assistant Lloyd (who looks like a lamp). In this issue they come to deal with an appropriately creepy bad guy who has been causing all these hauntings and zombie infestations in their town and take him down. It is just a cute and fun story that I urge you to seek out whenever IDW collects these three issues. Let’s support original material, folks!
The big lure for me in trying this series in the first place was the Wrightson name on the cover and he doesn’t disappoint. As comic fans we’ve grown accustom to seeing our favorite creators of our youth just kinda lose it. Sometimes their quality actually goes downhill and sometimes they just fail to adapt with the times, but Mr. Wrightson is still just knocking it out of the park. Based on his lifetime body of work and this series where he demonstrates that he’s still at the top of his game, we should all be buying anything with his name on it. There is nothing to find fault with in the art for this series: great layouts, incredible inks, useful panel designs, good use of background (or lack thereof). It’s all just wonderful stuff. Well executed coloring too!
What’s Not So Good: Is this over already? I’m pretty sure that Doc Macabre is part of a larger world that Niles and Wrightson are creating, so I’m sure they’ll come back to these characters sometime soon. Still, I felt like this series could have used another issue. That’s odd for me because I’m usually the one screaming at Marvel for milking 6-issues out of a 2-issue idea. This issue/series left me wanting more.
I also think that IDW needs to look at their pricing. While a LOT has been made in fanboy circles about DC cutting their prices and Marvel getting hate for sticking with their $3.99 price on many popular titles, IDW is just flying under the radar at $3.99. I think price should correlate with quality and this is a nice package with great creators that’s printed on way better paper than Marvel would ever use, but I don’t think that price structure is doing IDW any favors when it comes to sales. I know people need to get paid, but we’re in a sales environment where many fans are looking for reasons NOT to buy a book and high price is a pretty good excuse.
Conclusion: If you’re a fan of monster movies, this is a “must buy” whenever IDW collects this. I love Bernie Wrightson’s art, but credit is deserved all around in this issue/series as Niles has written a fun monster story and served up a few softball-pages for Wrightson to just crush. Check it out. Well worth the pricetag.
Grade: B+
-Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion