By: Robert Bloch (original story), Joe R. Lansdale & John L. Lansdale (comic adaptation), Dave Wachter (art), Alfredo Rodriguez (colors), Neil Uyetake (letters) & Bobby Curnow (edits)
The Story: A young orphan makes an Faustian bargain.
What’s Good: The art is great! In fact, it was the promise of sequential art from Dave Wachter that caused me to buy the comic since I generally don’t read many comic adaptations or licensed properties. If you aren’t familiar with Wachter’s art, you should really check out The Guns of Shadow Valley web comic. For those unfamiliar with Wachter’s style, his style reminds me of a looser Bernie Wrightson (at least to my untrained eye) and I love artists who use brushes because I think the art (generally) looks more alive. Wachter’s story telling aspect of the art is very spot on, each scene opens with great establishing panels. Those establishing panels are so important because they’re what make it clear that a the boy and his father are walking in a trainyard at night and not in some other random location. Another thing helping this issue is that the color art is also very well done and is in a quasi-flat style that works with Wachter’s inking and there are none of those offensive highlights that you find in mainstream superhero comics.
As for the story itself, I wasn’t previous familiar with the subject material, but it tells the story of a boy being raised by his single father who is a railyard worker until the father dies. The boy becomes an orphan (and has typically lousy experiences) until meeting the titular Hellbound Train and making an interesting Faustian deal with the conductor. It sure seems like the boy has made the clever deal that will outsmart old Scratch, but everyone thinks that right? As I said, I’m not familiar with the original Bloch subject matter, but this adaptation reads very well and is nicely paced.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing really. The art is great, the story flows nicely, etc. so there is nothing wrong with this first issue. My only complaint is that it felt a little quick such that I actually counted the pages to confirm that this wasn’t a sneaky short comic. In fact, it’s a full-length 22 pager (actually, 22 pages is LONG now that Marvel/DC are cutting to 20 pages). Maybe it was just that the storytelling was so effortless that it felt short?
Conclusion: A really nice first issue if you’re into period comics or the supernatural or Faustian bargains. You can’t beat the art and the scripting is smooth as well. Definitely recommended.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion