Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Twelve - Army of Darkness vs Hack/Slash

Down to my last three items this month and I'm finally getting to the nitty gritty, edging closer to that TV series I've been looking forward to for over a year now.

Today it's Tim Seeley's Army of Darkness vs Hack/Slash, and it's pretty darn good.  The story picks up a few months after the end of Hack/Slash the story begins with Cassie living a relatively stable life, when in walks Ashly J. Williams, hero of the Evil Dead franchise and everything goes to hell.

As crossovers are a key part of the horror genre, going as far back as Frankenstein meets the Wolfman (and if you want to get all literate, Enkidu and Grendel), so mixing these two destroyers of evil is a lot of fun.  Both characters normally work as lone wolves, so to see them together is a kind of fun game of one-upmanship which is both charming and fun.

Yes the story can get quite graphic and gruesome, but it keeps the flavour of both series, and works well as a kind of capstone to Hack/Slash.

A lot of fun!

Bookmonkey vs The Hoard: Post Three - Revival

I've been a fan of Tim Seeley's work since i first checked out his horror movie-themed series Hack/Slash in 2011 and after spending a month in 2013 reading my way through that entire title, I began collecting his latest series, a Rural Noir called Revival, written by Seeley, and illustrated by Mike Norton. As often happens with collections, I ended up with five of these before I got around to reading any past the first volume, and that brings us up-to-date.

This week, I went through the first five collections and this series is pretty darn great. Having been a long-time fan of Robert Kirkman's The Walking Dead (whether in original comic, adapted television show, or even video game form), I wasn't exactly sure if I wanted to start another comic about the dead rising, but Revival is something entirely different.

Taking place in a fictionalized version of Seeley's hometown of Wausau Wisconsin, the story focuses on police officer Dana Cypress and the events set after "Revival Day", when the dead rose in the area surrounding the town, not as zombies, but apparently as themselves, and (mostly) wanting to get on with the business of living. The series works as a mystery, both on the large scale, as no one know why this specific geographical area has been effected, and on the small scale, involving murders, kidnappings and the types of crimes than can happen in a small town cut off from the rest of the world (Wausau is quickly put under quarantine by the United States Government).

Although the series does have a large number of truly gruesome scenes, much of the story is driven by family drama, Dana works with her father (the town's Sheriff), has a younger sister in college, and an eight-year-old son, each of which has their own secrets and story lines.

A really great series, and one I'm quite happy to have finally gotten around to reading!

Book Review: Revival #1: You're Among Friends

Last fall in Library School I took a course on Comic Books and Graphic Novels in public and school libraries, and during that course I wrote a paper on the current stuff at Image Comics.

It's funny because going into the course I knew Image for three titles; Spawn, Savage Dragon, and The Walking Dead (of which I'm a pretty huge fan).  Little did I know that the publishing company had a number of other titles I should have been reading.

Number one of them was Hack/Slash - which I spent all of last October focusing on, but after finishing my paper I ended with a large number of titles to check out.

First up was Hack/Slash author Tim Seeley's series Revival.  In many ways you can think of it as Images other zombie book.

In the story a small town changes dramatically over the couse of an afternoon when all of the towns dead apparently come back to life.  Unlike in Kirkman's The Walking Dead, they aren't mindless killing creatures, but are instead the same people they were before, only a little different.

I really don't want to spoil this series (also it would be hard for me as I've just started it myself), but it does a great job of mixing Gothic Horror with Zombie themes.  An awful lot of fun and really compelling stories.

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Twenty Seven

The Geography of Hack/Slash


Geography can play an interesting role in comics books.  While the DC Universe has made a number of false cities in their world for their heroes to inhabit (i.e. Superman - Metropolis, Batman - Gotham City, Green Lantern - Coast City), Marvel Comics has decided to go almost the other way entirely and have their heroes inhabit a world virtually identical to ours, which a New York, Chicago, Lost Angeles, etc. (not to say they mirror the real world perfectly, as they include the dinosaur infested Savage Lands and Doctor Doom's beloved homeland of Latveria).

In Tim Seeley's Hack/Slash virtually every issue begins with a descriptor of where in the world Cassie and Vlad are for the issue.  Even the crossovers which travel into the worlds of other comic book characters like Images Bomb Queen or the Webcomic Halloween Man, ensure that Cassie and Vlad have a start point in a recognizable location (Manhattan, New York and San Antonio, Texas respectively).

While I've spent the last month reading through the series, I decided to create a google map showing me where the majority of each issue's action took place and then (hopefully) be able to draw some conclusions.

NOTE: In the linked map - which you can view directly at http://goo.gl/maps/aPGUC
- I have not plotted each location as some of them take place in other worlds (Nef, an Intergalactic Women's Prison, etc), or even off of our own (the Trailers story ORBITuary, for example), also in some cases I've had to guess at the location due to its obvious connection to a horror movie/story already in existence.  Also I've linked to any crossover titles or blog posts related to the covered issue if appropriate in the descriptions for each location.

1) Cassie and Vlad never visit my homeland (Canada) at least in any issues of the series; I suppose I can take this to either mean my country is relatively Slasher-free, or perhaps we need our own home-grown Killer of Killers to take care of our Northern problems.

2) Although there are a small number of events that happen in the western United States (and in the case of the Re-Animator crossover, some very important events) Cassie and Vlad stick to the Eastern United States for the most part.  The series only travels outside of the US twice (a Trailers mini-issue in Tokyo and the four-issue Monster Baiting story arc set in Guyana)

3) If you wanted to avoid Slashers, Florida, Massachusetts, and New Jersey should be on your list of states to avoid, but Utah, Idaho and the Dakotas seem like some nice places to visit.

I've left the map open to the public, so feel free to let me know if I've got some of the spots wrong (as in all things, proof-reading can be invaluable), and for the Hack/Slash fans out there I hope that if the map shows you anything interesting you might share it in a comment on the blog.

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Twenty One

Independent and WebComic Crossovers

In addition to crossing over with popular horror characters from film (Chucky and Herbert West), the series crosses over with the real-world goth modelling website Suicide Girls (Cassie has a profile page) the Evan Dorkin characters Milk and Cheese (pictured left) begin to make appearances in Cassie’s dreams and, Cassie and Vlad end up having crossover events with the webcomic series Halloween Man where Cassie and Vlad “…go to-toe-toe with Drew Edwards's Halloween Man in a free webcomic called “Hackoween,” available for download at halloweenman.com. “Several years ago, Drew Edwards had asked about doing a web-print comic crossover. And since ‘Halloween Man’ is a pretty fun, horror humor comic, I thought it meshed perfectly,” Seeley explained. (Richards, 2008)

Crossovers in comics are nothing new, they bring different types of readers together and introduce them to characters they may otherwise be unfamiliar with. The first crossover in comics was in Marvel Mystery Comics in 1940 where Namor the Submariner fought the Human Torch. As horror comics don’t tend to have the audience size of superhero comics, crossovers can be a benefit to both titles as they increase the exposure to another audience. Being a long-time fan of the horror genre myself, I’ve found that the crossovers in Hack/Slash have exposed me to a number of titles I had either never heard of or had decided weren’t my style.

Personally, one of the most delightful crossovers in Hack/Slash is with Author Tim Seeley’s earlier creation Love Bunny & Mr. Hell. A bizarre pairing between a cute super-hero and an H.P. Lovecraft-style demon who end up as roommates and friends. The 2002 series is an obvious precursor to Hack/Slash in many ways, but as it only lasted a few episodes, I had always wondered what happened to this strange duo. Although their appareances in Hack/Slash don’t specifically answer that question, it may introduce new readers to the title.


Image Used
Image from Hack/Slash Issue 12. Retrieved online from http://www.comicmix.com/news/2008/05/15/interview-tim-seeley-on-hack-slash-and-suicide-girls-crossovers/

WORKS CITED
Richards, D. (2008, October 29). "Happy Hackoween: Seeley talks Hack/Slash" in Comic Book Resources. Retrieved online from http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=18616

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Fourteen

From One-Shots to an Ongoing Series

For the first three years of Hack/Slash the title was a series of one-shot comics, coming out a few times a year and although the stories connected with each other, previous issues were not necessary to follow the action in the series.

With the success of 2006's Hack/Slash vs. Chucky in which Cassie and Vlad fought popular horror movie character Charles Lee Ray (better known as the possessed doll "Chucky"), it was decided to move the series into an ongoing format from that point forward.  Also, the ongoing series featured penciller Emily Stone, who gave the series a more cohesive look overall, as compared to the many different pencillers and illustrators used in the earlier issues.  Different pencillers would work on specific issues of Hack/Slash as an ongoing title, but the artwork becomes much more uniform from this point forward.

In the original one-shots series Cassie fought Slashers which included a number of straight-forward "kill, but won't stay dead" types (like Halloween's (1978) Michael Meyers), a Slasher who attacked his victims through their dreams (like A Nightmare on Elm Street's (1984)Freddy Kruger) and even a Slasher who used her commands over another sleeping Slasher to kill her intended victims (not unlike the 1920 German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).

With the ongoing series, Seeley was looking forward to "...introduc[ing] more supporting characters, and have crazy little things like subplots!..and...finally hav[ing] the space to tell the story of Cassie's dad, which we've never really touched upon in the space of the one-shots." (Richards, 2007) At this point in the series Seeley also begins looking at other aspects of modern horror films, beyond the Slasher sub-genre with concepts like the rise of torture horror (like the Saw and Hostel series), and even classic concepts like the Faustian bargain (deal with the devil) and more.

It's also interesting to note that even as far back as 2007, Seeley had an overall plan for the series; "I do have an end," he said. "But the hope is that I don't have to get to it anytime soon. I can see myself doing a Garth Ennis or [Neil] Gaiman and going for 60 issues. So, ya'know, make sure ya buy it, so I can do all the cool stuff you won't get in any other book!" (ibid.)

IMAGE USED

Hack/Slash Omnibus #2 Cover.  Retrieved Online from

http://bloody-disgusting.com/photosizer/upload/HackSlaOmni2.jpg

WORKS CITED
Richards, D. (2007, February 8). "'Hack' Writer: Seeley talks Hack/Slash Ongoing" in Comic Book Resources. Retrieved online from http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=9279

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Seven

Hack/Slash begins with three stories: Euthanized, Girls Gone Dead, and Comic Book Carnage, which all work to set up the overall story of Hack/Slash. Euthanized begins with Cassie Hack accompanying a camp counselor to a remote location where he attempts to murder her, but is killed first. The two page opener immediately lets the reader know that Cassie is quite savvy in terms of horror movie tropes and conventions, as well as clarifying that in Cassie’s world there is a significant difference between Slashers and Killers. The issue goes on to give us Cassie’s backstory and then focuses on the main event, a small town plagued with undead animals and a mysterious killer.

As part of the fun of the series is seeing how a character who is quite aware of how events are “supposed to go” in a horror movie works her way through to finding and dispatching the Slasher herself, some plot elements will be discussed but much of the main storyline will be left intentionally vague. Although Cassie is given an introductory backstory in the first issue, her partner Vlad is simply a left as a friendly monster who works with Cassie, is devoted to her, and seems to be almost an innocent in the world. It isn’t until the fourth story, The Land of Lost Toys, that Vlad is given any background except for a brief mention of the butcher and Cassie initially mistaking him for a Slasher.

The interesting aspects of the three series is that at this point they were all quite episodic, aside from mentions of Slashers from previous issues they could all work as stand alone stories and as Cassie and Vlad travel from location to location for their stories, there was no crossover of any characters past the two leads, with reoccurring flashbacks of Cassie’s mother. For me the standout was Comic Book Carnage as it takes place at a comic book convention, mixes up fictional characters with real world characters (two of the victims in the story are Steve Niles, author of the comic series 30 Days of Night, and Robert Kirkman, creator of The Walking Dead). In this story an unknown Slasher is targeting the creative team of a new comic book series which is reimagining a classic (to the Hack/Slash universe) superhero called Wunderkind as he is enraged at how the new creators are adapting his favourite character. What I really loved about the story was the focus on the comic book fan community, a look at how conventions work and the tongue and cheek way in which writer Tim Seeley has killed off a number of other horror comic book writers (to be fair, the Hack/Slash version of Tim Seeley is also killed (off-screen) in an upcoming issue).

IMAGE CREDIT
Hack/Sash Girls Gone Dead Cover Art (2004) http://comicbookrealm.com/cover-scan/900508eab05301380223e751e51aaf6b/xl/devils-due-publishing-hack-slash-girls-gone-dead-issue-1b.jpg

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day Three

Before we begin digging into the main storyline of Hack/Slash it's probably best to ensure we have a basic understanding of the key characters and concepts used in the series.

First the Characters:

Cassandra "Cassie" Hack: A 24-year-old survivor of her first Slasher; The Lunch Lady (who also happened to be Cassie's mother), Cassie travels with her partner Vlad in her continuing hunt for Slashers, and her goal to kill them before they kill others.

Vlad: Cassie's parter, Vlad is a slightly deformed giant, who, in addition to being a formidable killer of Slashers, is almost an innocent in Cassie's world, he enjoys children's comics and cartoons, protecting his friends and making jokes.

The Nature of Slashers Described in Issue 2

Slashers: In the World of Hack/Slash Slashers are "...a type of undead I guess...sort've like a vampire or a zombie.  They're so full of anger that they don't wanna die.  They hate love, youth, sex...things they miss, from life.  All I know for sure is that they're mean and hard to kill" (Seeley, 2004)  Slashers are also clearly differentiated from Killers (who may come back from death as Slashers, but are considered different while they are human).

and Key Concepts used in or addressed by Hack/Slash

The Final Girl: described as "...intelligent, watchful, levelheaded; the first character to sense something amiss and the only one to deduce from the accumulating evidence the pattern and extent of the threat" (Clover, 1992, p. 44), the final girl is a popular horror movie trope which represents the final surviving character in Slasher films.  Traditional examples include Laurie Strode in Halloween (1978) and Nancy Thompson in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Cassie (often compared to the character of Buffy Summers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992)) is a subversive form of the Final girl, following many of the basic traits as outlined by Clover, but also moving beyond genre conventions as well.

Modality: The level of reality represented in any given text (comic book, film, television show, etc.), or 'truth claim' (Burn, 1994) where the higher the modality, the closer to reality the text is assumed to be - Hack/Slash plays with the concept modality almost from the first issue.  The main character shares a world with a number of characters known to be fictional to the reader (Chucky from the 1988 horror film Child's Play) and yet refers to the name of prominent Horror movie actress Linnea Quigley in the second issue, forcing the reader to ask the question, do Cassie and Vlad inhabit our world, or a shared world made up of all our popular horror films?  While Cassie is clearly a fictional character, she has a real-world profile on the website Suicide Girls.  The fact that the series includes a number of crossovers with film and comic book characters only add to the complexity of this question throughout the series.

WORKS CITED
Burn, A. (1994) "Potterliteracy: Cross-Media Narratives, Cultures and Grammars" in Explorations into Children's Literatures. 14(2) retrieved online from http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/4230/1/Burn_2004_Potterliteracy.pdf

Clover, C.J. (1992) Men, Women, And Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

IMAGE USED
Seeley, T. (2004) Hack/Slash: Euthanized (Issue 1), Berkeley, CA: Image Comics. Image retrieved from http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/1/15659/2773870-slashers_hack_slash_euthanized_1.jpg

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash: Day One

A Brief Definition of Slasher Films

"What's the Point?  They're all the same. Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can't act, who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door. It's Insulting." - Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) in the motion picture Scream (1996)

Cover of Issue #1

Since the early days of cinema, the horror film has always been a standard of the medium.  The first film adaption of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was released in cinemas in 1910, and from the earliest days forward horror films have become a successful staple of the medium; after all, they're often cheap to make, and kids always want to see movies about monsters.  

Beginning in the late 70s, a sub-genre of horror, the Slasher film, called "Daed Teenager Movies" by film critic Roger Ebert and defined as " Generic term for any movie primarily concerned with killing teenagers, without regard for logic, plot, performance, humor, etc. Often imitated; never worse than the "Friday the 13th" sequels," (Ebert, 1985) would largely dominate the horror genre from the late '70s to the early '90s.  Villains with names like Freddy Krueger, Michael Meyers, and Jason Vorhees gained their own infamy during this period and for the generation of kids who grew up with these films, a certain degree of celebrity as well.

This year I'll be spending my October looking at the comic book series Hack/Slash,  written by Tim Seeley and currently published by Image Comics.  The series focuses on a young woman named Cassie Hack, who having survived her own personal slasher story, decides to travel the world hunting down these slashers before they can do too much harm.  As a series it crosses over with horror film characters, comic book characters (both print and web-based), and works to turn many of the tropes of the Slasher genre sideways as Cassie works to make the world a safer place for those the Slashers would target.

A quick note: the series is definitely aimed at adults, with significant violence and many suggested scenes of sexuality throughout.  Although the series often works to satirize the Slasher sub-genre of Horror, it also works as a Slasher story itself.

WORKS CITED
Ebert, R. (1985) "Dead Teenager Movie" in Ebert's Guide to Practical Filmgoing: A Glossary of Terms for the Cinema of the '80s.  Retrieved online from http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/eberts-guide-to-practical-filmgoing-a-glossary-of-terms-for-the-cinema-of-the-80s

IMAGES USED
Hack/Slash Issue #1 Cover, retrieved online from http://www.newkadia.com/?HackSlash_The_Series_Comic-Book-Covers=1111127128

Bookmonkey vs Hack/Slash this October!

After spending the last few months deciding on what I wanted to focus my October posts on, I've finally come to a conclusion - HACK/SLASH by Tim Seeley.

Back in 2011 I wrote a post on the first HACK/SLASH Omnibus, and since then I've collected each omnibus (there are five in total) that make up the entire series without reading any of the others.  So now added to my giant pile (metaphorically - I've actually got them all on shelves) of books I mean to get around to are these five large omnibus volumes of a horror series which plays with the concept of the Final Girl, and does some really interesting crossovers with other Horror films, comics, and webcomics.

So you've been warned - I'm going to be spending my fourteen posts next month looking at a pretty interesting series that focuses on my favourite genre and will allow me to revisit (and visit) a number of other aspects of the world of horror fiction.

Book Review: Hack/Slash Omnibus volume 1

Have you ever had a book that you always seem to be passing in the book stores and never get around to checking out? Month after month you keep passing by the same shelf and keep thinking, “That book looks kind of cool, If only I had more time and cash I might pick it up.”

For me, that title was Tim Seeley’s Hack / Slash Omnibus Vol. 1. Looking at the cover (Pictured Right), and the book itself, here was everything I knew; our main character was a girl, the comic promised a significant amount of violence (Although the beheaded clown on the cover is a bit of a bait and switch) and, according to the back cover it was optioned as a movie, had The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman as a fan (and doing a cameo), and seemed to be based on the slasher movies I grew up with (Halloween, Friday the 13^th, Nightmare on Elm Street, etc.).

It actually wasn’t until my BFF Mike let me borrow his copy of Lovebunny & Mr. Hell (an excellent, if uneven comic book itself), that I decided to give this book a try. Lovebunny & Mr. Hell is a basic super-hero buddy story, between a sidekick who wants to go out on her own (after she was dumped by her boyfriend/super hero partner) and a horrible Cthulhu-inspired demon as they fight crime, create a reputation for themselves and quickly become best friends. Although the art was sometimes a little too exploitive for me (you see a lot of underwear), the sense of humour was a lot of fun and led me to see what else the author had in store for me.

The Hack/Slash Omnibus volume 1, introduces you a world wherein slasher killers run rampant have their own mythology and also have two Dexter-esque slasher-slashers hunting them down one by one. Cassandra Hack and Vlad are the daughter of a slasher and a deformed Sloth (from The Goonies)-like giant who travel across the country trapping slasher killers and stopping them, for good. The series works sort of like an ongoing series of the film Scream, wherein the characters are aware of the rules and are also trapped in a slasher-style story. Broke most of the time, Cassie and Vlad travel all over the place and get the job done in fight sequences that are both action-packed and gruesome (or sometimes funny). The artwork is a little up and down in places and the pacing definitely gets better as you go along. My personal favourite two stories?

Trailers – a series of movie-trailers involving potential adventures for Cassie and Vlad (I love the one set in space), and

Hack/Slash vs. Chucky – wherein Cassie is forced to partner up with the killer from theChild’s Play franchise to save Vlad. The artwork is great, they did an amazing job of getting the right “voice” for Chucky and the story definitely left me wanting more.

This series will definitely end up in my collection.