Zombos Says: Fair
The cover of Asylum Press' Eeek!, Volume 1, is the most exciting page in this largely vacuous collection of the first 4 issues of Jason Paulos' retro-stylized horror comic book series. Luckily, for those of us who grew up on the gaudy and gnarly visuals and storylines of 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s horror comics and magazines, this volume is neither a representative homage or attentive aping of those delightfully unsavory and sardonically witty nightmares delivered each month to the local drugstore and luncheonette: a blessing to every kid and a bane to every parent.
Out of 16 stories drawn, and mostly written, by Jason Paulos, with additional scripting by Daren White and Bodine Amerikah, Just Desserts, Colour Me Evil, Head Trip, Thrill Killer, and Six Digit Disaster (Daren White), read as complete stories. What do I mean by a complete story? That's simple: it's a story with a beginning, middle, and ending that ties it all together, for the better or worse of its characters. Incomplete stories peter out like a dud firecracker that fizzles instead of blowing up, or muddles the flow of actions and reactions into a tangle, like sloppy editing in a movie creates confusion. This volume has too many duds with tangles.
The remaining tangled 11 stories are either too long, with a lackluster or incoherent payoff: Easy Prey; Witness to Evil; Deadline of Death; Like Mother, Like Son; Death Wears Hotpants; or too short and whimper to an ending hardly worth the effort: Stuffed; Lights, Camera, Murder!; What's Down In the Basement Horace Greeley? Typos here and there pour additional salt into this bleeding mess.
Paulos' artwork is clever and much better than his writing, although he seems to have a limited bag of panel tricks at his disposal to vary his style across stories. Just Desserts comes closest to that delicious sense of moldy candy and grisly surprise often found in retro-horror fare, both in story and especially how he handles its buildup, panel by panel. Head Trip provides an unsettling one for us as well as its main victim with its stylish acid trip funky bordering around scenes and its record-playing Music of Erich Zann dynamic. The Undertaker and Cryptoe: Death Can be Fatal is a zany romp of Bernie Wrightsonesque mayhem until the unimaginative punchline ending kills the fun.
In these types of stories, Paulos' male and female characters look similar, but he still manages to add enough characterization to faces and bodily motions to provide that off-kilter, sourly whimsical look of 1950s and 1970s horror. (Bernie Wrightson excels at it.)
Thirteen pages of Asylum adverts, an unnecessary gallery of hodgepodge art, and a welcome full-color set of Eeek! covers pad out the remaining pages. The numerous glowing promotional quotes on the back of the book fooled me into picking this one up without paging through it first. My first new year's resolution is to ignore them from now on. You should, too. There is a glimmer of wonderful here, but only a glimmer.
Good to know. I’d probably look at the cover and buy it without any further research. Another bullet dodged.
Of course, the people with their blurbs on the cover don’t agree with me. Which is why, of course, they’re on the cover. I wonder how many of them actually read the stories, though. Paulos’ art is very good. The stories needed more work, something I find necessary in a lot of independent comics.