DC Comics And Beyond: Comics Reviews
Written by Wayne Hall on October 29, 2009 – 1:00 pm -The nights are colder and longer, the leaves are blowing through the air, the pumpkins all look like a plastic surgeon’s nightmare — it must be Halloween! Here’s the latest crop of scary comics for you to enjoy this holiday weekend.
1. Arkham Reborn #1 of 3. Anyone familiar with Batman mythology (and more recently, video games) knows about Arkham Asylum, the place where the craziest of the crazy go to spend time plotting their next diabolical plan to torment Gotham City. In recent events, Arkham was destroyed and has been rebuilt to state-of-the-art specifications, which means more trouble than ever, most likely.
Instead of a dark, foreboding mansion, the new Arkham is, as Bruce Wayne puts it, “an interesting mix of classical and gothic design” by the latest in the line of Dr. Arkhams, who proclaims, “our creed is rehabilitation, not incarceration.” Yup, we’re in trouble already.
One of Dr. Arkham’s associates, Alyce, is invited to observe the Raggedy Man, one of the inmates being treated after he murdered his own mother with a can opener. To help the patient come out of his shell, Arkham gives the Raggedy Man his costume back, and he does begin to interact more.
Alyce is, of course, a fox in the henhouse. Her parents were insane themselves, the heads of the Lux Beata cult who poisoned their own followers. Alyce chose not to drink the poison, so she survived, but has a desire to punish, not coddle the prisoners. She begins with the Raggedy Man.
It’s spooky stuff with no sign of Batman needed. The only question in my mind is, will the new Arkham still be standing after the third issue? Probably not.
2. Abe Sapien: The Haunted Boy. I’ve mentioned Mike Mignola‘s work several times previouslyand that I particularly enjoy Hellboy and the B.P.R.D. (Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense), both of which have strange and wonderful characters. Mignola does have a rapid pacing and the artists he works with often use a sketchy, darker style to fit the mood. His stories often have a twist to them or bounce off in a direction I didn’t expect, which I like, so I’m intrigued by them.
Abe Sapien is p
art of the B.P.R.D. He first was Langdon Everett Caul, a Victorian scientist and businessman who became involved with the “Oannes” Society, an occult organization who believed in life and all knowledge having come from the sea. After retrieving a strange jellyfish-like deity from an underwater ruin, Caul and the other members performed an arcane ritual that inadvertently ended with the creature’s release. Caul was changed into an icthyo sapien. Believing him to be Oannes reborn, the society sealed the developing icthyo sapien‘s body in a tube of water in the hidden laboratory beneath a Washington, D.C. hospital until such time as he was fully formed. Forced to abandon the site by the outbreak of the American Civil War, the Society never found occasion to return for Caul, and there he stayed until he was found by workmen in November, 1978.
With no memory of his life before, the icthyo sapien received a new name from a piece of paper attached to the tube, dated the day of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination (April 14, 1865). Abe Sapien was taken to the B.P.R.D. for a grueling round of research by curious scientists, and was saved from dissection by an empathetic Hellboy. Thereafter Abe entered the ranks of the B.P.R.D. as a valued field agent, embarking on his first mission with Hellboy in 1981.
Sapien’s appearance has human characteristics, but he’s also got green skin, gills to breathe with and eyes with no pupils in them. He can’t blend into a crowd very easily.
This one-shot examines an early case Sapien investigated, back in 1982. When he’s told the event he is to look into is “just” a haunting, he’s very disappointed, but goes anyway.
Two boys fell through frozen ice on a large pond while skating. Only one survived, but apparently the second boy’s spirit is appearing over the pond. Being an aquatic being, Sapien is perfect to check underwater after he interviews the family.
Of course, he has quite a surprise waiting for him, something that will change him and the town the boys were from forever.
Again, a great comic to read on a Halloween weekend, I recommend it very highly.
Other seasonal stuff out this week includes Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anite Blake: The Laughing Corpse: Executioner #1 of 5 from Marvel Comics; Spin Angels #3 from Marvel/Soleil; Beautiful Creatures #2 of 2 from Red 5 Comics; and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? #5 of 24 from Boom!
As always, be sure not to miss this Sunday’s SciFiPulse Radio on blogtalkradio.com. I’ll be talking with host Ian Cullen about the three latest Blackest Night issues and other scary comics. Don’t miss it!
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Tags: Abe Sapien, Anita Blake, Arkham Asylum, Batman, Bruce Wayne, Halloween, Hellboy
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