Let me start by addressing the elephant in the room. The Headless Horseman, who is the horror host of this anthology special, is female. I know that is not supposed to be an issue in this gender fluid generation. However, when something doesn't match syntax, tone or pre-assumed expectations, it makes my brain itch. That's not being a boomer. It's my OCD. Go figure. I want things to be written (and advertised) correctly, but could care less if my house is messy or not.
If the host is supposed to be the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, then sure, I'm justified in my confusion because that character was the ghost of a Hessian soldier. And I'm pretty sure that the soldier was male. If this is an all-new character or a character from the Hellboy universe or Eric Powell's The Goon, which most of the art of this character closely resembles, then I have no issue with the gender of the Horseman. Just don't call this character a HORSE... MAN!
Now when it comes to the host, I had no issues with them. There were those punny elements you'd get from those B-movie theater hosts. They look awesome. And They spin a good yarn. I just don't know who this Headless Horseman is...
There are 5 stories in this issue. It starts with a tale set inside a fantasy video game. Not very scary, but it's got a great moral and awesome ending. There's a weird fable about a woman with writer's block. A group of teens go trick-or-treating with the new kid and his mom. Only there's something very, very wrong with mom. There's a wolf on the prowl as a little girl, dressed as Little Red Riding Hood, gets separated from her mom during trick-or-treating. And then there was the fifth and final story.
Up to this point, other than initial confusion over just who this Headless Horseman really was, this anthology was going great. That story about the new kid and his mom freaked me out and even though I didn't really get the writer's block story, I saw merit in it. But then Dark Horse had to go and ruin everything by getting political.
The story in question is about 4 kids dressed as monsters who are visiting a haunted house on Halloween night. The exhibits in the exhibition are really lame. It seems like the real horror is in getting old. Then I start to realize that the kids aren't dressed as monsters. They are monsters! So it's a haunted house about what humans do and the idea of what constitutes the contents of a haunted house for monsters and ghouls seemed like a novel idea. And then we get to that room!
Every year the haunted house has a new room. This year's room is full of right-wingers spouting off their agenda. Did we really have to throw MAGA into the mix? The concept was doing well up to now. It didn't need to get frighteningly real with the internal strife affecting our country. When I'm not reading comics and writing reviews about them, I'm a public school teacher. It's culinary, so I don't teach tricky subjects like race, gender or religion. But I still see a diverse mix of kids that will one way or another be highly affected by the results of the 2024 election. I deal with those fears everyday and I witness countless teachers and staff bailing out in anticipation of a Red Wave. When it comes to horror right now, I need vampires, zombies and psycho killers. I don't need tales of right-wing militants or uber-Dems. Those kind of frights already keep me up at night.
This one-shot is listed as an annual. So I see potential that there might be another issue next Halloween. I would be fine with that. Editors at Dark Horse, just leave the politics for election night if you make this an annual occurrence!
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 7 out of 10 stars. (But it could have been a 9 out of 10 if not for how that final tale ended.)
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