CREDIT: Super Genius
Rating: 4/5 – The Iconic EC Horror Title Returns!
By ComicSpectrum senior reviewer Shawn Hoklas.
If you’ve been reading our back issue reviews, you’ll see that I definitely have a love for horror comics and anthologies. Although my sweet spot is definitely the Warren publications like Creepy and Eerie, I’m also a big fan of all the bronze age horror comics and magazines from DC, Marvel and even Skywald. All of these books owe so much of their styles and formats to the EC books from the 1950s like Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and more. Although I’ve read most of the EC books through Gemstone’s reprints of the books years ago, I’ve lately started to collect some of these titles when I can find them at a reasonable price. So, I was definitely excited when it was announced that Super Genius, an imprint of Papercutz was bringing the title back, geared towards older readers and inspired by the wonderful material created over sixty years ago!
Papercutz acquired the license to Tales from the Crypt back in 2007, but the book then was geared more towards a younger reader since they’re known as the “#1 Kids Graphic Novel Publisher!”. If you were to look through their website of titles, you’ll find books like Barbie, Hardy Boys, Trolls and more. With this relaunch and this first issue, it’s clear that it isn’t for kids, hence the Super Genius imprint handling the publishing. The format will be familiar to EC readers as the Crypt-Keeper is back hosting a few stories, all with a somewhat similar theme, that being around greed, money, and wall street.
The first story titled “Die-Vestment” is written by Stefan Petrucha and drawn by Jolyon Yates. I really enjoyed the art in this story about a man who is looking to maintain his wealth, and his immortality by any means necessary. Yates’ art is really strong and the colors by JayJay Jackson add to the overall look with some deep rich tones. The second story of the three by David Anthony Kraft and Onrie Kompan is maybe the most fun and creative! It’s about a human trying to live in a world that’s overrun by zombies. He’s working at a bank where the zombies don’t have any respect for him, and it has the best twist ending of the three stories, and these twists are what the Tales from the Crypt tales are known for. Once again, the art by Miran Kim is great,and is much different from the first and third. The black pages and backgrounds add to the horror, but the large lettering detracts from the art. The third story called “The Were-Wolf of Wall Street” may be the weakest of the three, but is still an entertaining read about exactly what the title suggests.
After the 3 stories presented in this debut issue are over, the back material talks about the changes to this series and how each issue will have a different editor so that each book has a different feel. I’m glad to see this historic and important title return and I hope that enough fans find this all new series, but I for one will be back for more. Well done Super Genius and thanks from bringing this book back!
Reviewed by: Shawn Hoklas
(shawn@comicspectrum.com)
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