Eeek! Halloween Special #1

 A couple of days ago, I praised Asylum Press for their 2021 Vampires Halloween Special that was devoted to pre-code horror stories about bloodsuckers. Pumped by the quality of that special, last night I dove into the Eeek! Halloween Special from Asylum. Unfortunately, I didn't have the same level of satisfaction with this 2021 special.

Eeek! is designed to look like black and white horror magazines of the 1970s like Creepy and Vampirella. Written and illustrated primarily by Jason Paulos (Hairbutt the Hippo), there are 3 stories in this one-shot.

In 'The Green Fairy', as a painter drowns himself in a bottle of Absinthe, he reflects on the ups, downs and mistakes of his life. With 'Sick Joke', an upper crust couple go on vacation in hopes of rekindling their troubled marriage and run afoul of a horrible family of hillbillies. Lastly in 'False Alarm', a lonely man calls 911 one time too many in a twist on the boy who cried wolf legend. 

'The Green Fairy' was pretty good at least in terms of its twist ending and sexy artwork. But it rambled on a little too long. It probably could have been 3-4 pages shorter than it was.

'Sick Joke' was a complete mess. The ending was unbelievable in my opinion, the addition of a new character midway through the story was kinda implausible and it too was just way too long. 

'False Alarm' was the best story of the three. That could be because Jason Paulos doesn't write the tale. It's crafted by Jason Crawley (Bloke's Terrible Tomb of Terror) and flows much better than the previous two stories.

There's also a one-pager that looks at the differences in monster attacks between the sexes. I've never though of it before, but wrtier Dan Cox (Hitsville UK) might be on to something. Women mostly get mauled by vampires and mutant creatures while men are attacked by beasts like werewolves. But no matter who you are, nobody is safe from the vilest of creatures- the lawyer!

The reason I purchased this book last year was because this was a recommendation by my favorite LCS. Every once in a while the guys there order something I wasn't even aware of because they know that I'm all about holiday comics! It wasn't a bad offering. It just lacks the oomph that the other Asylum Press special that I read a couple of days ago. It very well could be because this is all-new stuff paying homage to horror legends and I go more for the classic stuff that came from the original source material.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.

Vampires Halloween Special #1

A Halloween special about vampires featuring lost stories from pre-code horror? Uh, yes Please! Horror from 1955-1970 might be kinda lame. And you'd have the Comics Code to blame for that. But horror comics published before 1955 can be pretty gory and gruesome. 

Leading the way were the titles from EC Comics- The Vault of Horror, The Haunt of Fear and last but not least, Tales From The Crypt. The stories selected by the editors of Asylum Press weren't of the quality of EC. Yet, this wasn't a bad collection of tales starring bloodsuckers either. 

The best story was the opening haunt. It takes place in Florida of all places. Two people are found dead. The evidence points to a vampire. Well, there's a trail of blood that points to the new lady in town's domicile. Bound to her cot in a cell, the police will wait out the night to see if the prisoner changes into a vampire. It turns out that the lady really is a vampire. Yet if she can deceive one of the guards into giving her a blood transfusion, the fiend will beat her murder rap. The real twist to this story is what happens afterwards!

Another thriller that is almost equal in quality to that prior story is set during the Nazi occupation of France. A housewife, fearful of being sent to the concentration camps, forces her husband to eagerly join the Nazis as a traitor. As the couple rise in the ranks of the gestapo, their blood lust and cruelty reach ungodly heights. 

Where's the vampire in this story you ask? Oh, it's there. So is a zombie. It's a match-up I never expected to ever see. But I think the horrors of the holocaust were more terrifying than the addition of the creatures of the night.

The next best story is set in the old country. The time period, uh I'd say 150-200 years ago. Here, an evil baron takes a village girl to be his wife. It's a marriage arrangement that will most likely end in death. Can her true love rescue her from the baron's legion of human headed bat things?

The real twist to this story is that there's no twist! I know, right? Isn't that a law? I didn't think stories in horror comics could end without some sort of Hitchcockian twist ending! 

My least favorite ghost story involves a man who runs a side show that promises to host a true vampire along with several other monsters. His wife is cheating on the man with one of his assistants. When the business man learns of the affair, he takes matters into his own deadly hands. 

The problem with the story was multiple. I didn't quite understand how he got his monsters to come alive even though their supposed to be in giant bottles of formaldehyde. The dialogue was cheesy. And whomever was the artist apparently never took a lesson in anatomy. If you take both the left and right arm of a torso and put them both on the right side of another that already has a right arm on it, you should have 2 right hands and 1 left- NOT 3 RIGHT HANDS!!!

There were also a couple of one-pagers that were supposed to be true ghost stories that involved vampires. They weren't Eisner award winners. But for fillers, they were still entertaining. 

I got to say that I'm very impressed with Asylum Press. This is only like the second or third time I've read something from them, yet they've aroused my interest in more from them every time I do! There are ads for at least one other Halloween special from them and I'd love to add it to my collection at some point. Plus, I'm now prompted to also search for other past Halloween haunts offered from the publisher in year's past.

The stories weren't all perfect. Though I think that Nazi story is gonna stick with me for quite a while. Will it be for what was intended to scare- the vampires? No. But sometimes the true horrors come from real life.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10