Sunday, January 24, 2010

Recently published in...



Comics Buyer's Guide #1663, which includes my review of:

I Sell the Dead
Image Comics
$4.99, color, 44 pgs.
Writer: Glenn McQuaid
Artist: Brahm Revel
Grade: 3 Stars (out of 4)

I Sell the Dead tells the tale of two grave robbers, one of whom begins as an apprentice and learns to accept and even enjoy his unseemly profession. As with most grave robbers in any number of horror movies, the duo begins by digging up graves and then, losing their inhibitions over such grizzly goings on, starts finding other ways to obtain fresher, more readily accessible corpses.

For a story of its type, I Sell the Dead is fairly elaborate, incorporating a ruthless gang of rivals, a hard-as-nails hooker, and a priest eager to hear the confession of a condemned man. More importantly, it puts a fun, yet dramatic spin on the well-trod ground by having the grave robbers unearth the unexpected. Visually, the issue is sketchy, but expressive and atmospheric.

This is the graphic-novel form of the 2008 film (starring Dominic Monaghan and Ron Perlman), written and directed by Glenn McQuaid. With its British speech patterns, cleavage-enhanced femme fatale, and ample dialogue, this comic-book format for I Sell the Dead also successfully evokes a 1960s Hammer or Amicus horror picture.



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