This cover kept jumping out at me, but I never got around to picking it up until now. There's a few of these issues looking lonely on the rack.
So this Saturday, I was moping around the comics store, lamenting my absence from the festivities down at APE. New baby = No Cons for Daddy for a while. Which is cool. Cool about the baby part, not cool about the no cons part.
So I was in a different mood than usual, and grabbed this.
Evidently F. Paul Wilson has written a couple of things. Hopefully I won't come across as a complete troglodyte when I say I haven't read any of them.
The Keep is the first book of his Repairman Jack: Adversary series, written in 1981. In it, a platoon of Nazi commandos holes up in a semi-deserted castle. And get eaten... by... something.
I wasn't aware of these facts, or else I wouldn't have been mildly miffed that this book looked like a Hellboy ripoff. I'm glad I've corrected my error rather than have suffered the embarrassment of someone doing the correction for me. Boy, would that have looked stupid.
Back to our comic.
I liked it! Nazis get eaten and killed and stuff. And like the Sphinx in Mystery Men it's all "very mysterious." The dialogue is properly sparse and militaristic. The pacing is just right, not too fast or too slow for a horror title. Just enough creepy distance between shocking panels to keep things flowing smoothly.
On the topic of panel layout, I'm really impressed. Most pages were blocked out in a fairly complicated fashion, shying away from the standard 6 panel or 9 panel grid motifs. Each page is laid out differently, with no space wasted. It's not a Jock issue of Losers, but it works.
The art is moody and well inked. There's definitely a Mike Mignola influence, but it's okay. It's three color (black, white, and blue) which does help with the spookiness. That extra color does actually add a surprising amount of depth, more than you'd think.
What didn't work?
The price tag. $4.99 for 22 pages of story. Oof. That said, I did like the heavier paper that the comic was printed on. It's not shiny; it's solid and has heft for a pamphlet, like a book you'd find in a thrift store. I liked that.
Overall, pretty good book with no superheroes in it. I really don't know where the story's going, for which I am glad. I'm genuinely looking forward to being surprised.
Am I going to go back and pick up the next issue? Yeah, I think I am.
1 comment:
The Adversary Cycle is made up of 6 Books,but the story isn't specifically a Repairman Jack story,though he does appear in 2 of the 6 novels. Repairman Jack has his own series of books,he just crosses over to these stories,he certainly doesn't appear in The Keep.
The Keep was made into a film in 1983 by Director Michael Mann. It starred Scott Glen,Ian McKellen,Jürgen Prochnow and Gabriel Byrne
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