Horse Droppings

The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings
Edited by Scott Allie
ISBN: 1569719586
$14.95 US

Ever since Dark Horse started publishing comics, they've had the stigma of being primarily a publisher of licensed comics, continually publishing some form of Star Wars comics, along with Aliens and Predator originally, and now Buffy, the Vampire Slayer today. Now, I'm not going to tell you that any of that impression is ill-deserved or untrue, but they've always been broader than just licensed comics. On top of them, they've published all sorts of horror comics from the keystone of Hellboy to Paul Chadwick's The World Below, the European horror comics of the late 90's, and Gary Gianni's Monstermen.

In recent years, there's been a resurgence of popularity in horror, starting with films like The Sixth Sense to spark interest amongst the "common folk", and in comics primarily with Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith's 30 Days of Night. Along with that comes Dark Horse's new horror "line", of which this book, The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings is the crown jewel: a hardcover anthology collecting eight haunted tales from some of the best of the industry and an interview of séance medium, Larry Dreller, by Scott Allie.

It used to be that Dark Horse did something like this every year, although initially it was called the Dark Horse Maverick anthology -- featuring works from the creators who published books under that imprint, from Frank Miller to Stan Sakai. Last year, things changed a little bit, and instead of being the usual saddle-stitched "annual", the book grew a spine, dropped the "annual" appellation, and became the anthology, Happy Endings. Then Maverick as a line was dissolved, they put out the licensed comics showcase, plus other odds and ends in Reveal, that slightly serves as a precursor to this. Reveal has an interview with Guillermo del Toro and Mike Mignola thrown in amongst the Lone Wolf & Cub 2100 tale and Joe Casey autobiographical drug trade-off.

To me, an interview alongside prose or comics content just feels weird. It makes this seem more like a magazine than an anthology, despite the hardcover. I'm not sure if that's a bad thing or not, but there's a little twinge in the back of my head that just makes me feel like this is a bad combination for something that is essentially standalone. I appreciate the interview with Dreller, it's really quite good, but it feels too much like filler. Dreller is a great subject, elaborating on his life, work as a medium, and certain experiences that he has had, but in all honesty it feels more like a vanity piece, a lark that Allie himself wanted to go on and justified by having it printed here.

That, basically, is my only problem with the anthology, everything else included within is a great accomplishment, with only one slight blip.

Of the eight stories contained in the book, seven of them are actual comics work and the eighth is illustrated prose. The prose story is one by Perceval Landon, an author who wrote stories around the turn of the last century in a similar vein to Edgar Allan Poe or some of the work of Arthur Conan Doyle, and, for the life of me, I can't say he had a huge body of work, since all I've ever seen reprinted is the same story presented here, "Thurnley Abbey". It's your typical tale of Victorian hauntings and monstrous things that go bump in the night, and if you regularly read horror fiction and anthologies, you've no doubt come across this one before. What are new are the beautiful illustrations to accompany the story by Gary Gianni, who also provided the anthology's cover. Honestly, his work is perfect for this kind of thing, looking dated itself, like the kind of woodcut illustrations and etchings you might have seen one hundred years ago to accompany the chapbook thrillers. Given the nature of today's comics reader, though, I assume they'll more than not be likely to skip it, which is a shame, because it's a fairly decent genre piece.

With all of the prose pieces out the way, there are still 59-pages of comics, well worth the price alone. The first is a story called "Gone" by Dark Horse publisher, Mike Richardson, as adapted by P. Craig Russell. It's a ten-page story that shows all of the craft of Russell's work, with excellent pacing, layouts, and always beautiful linework, but it's essentially a story out of an episode of The Twilight Zone or Ray Bradbury Theatre, without any of the heart that Russell shows in his recent adaptations of Oscar Wilde or century-old opera. Essentially, it's very pretty window-dressing.

The next piece is what that window-dressing is for, the centrepiece of the anthology, and the reason why the book exists in the first place; the only Mike Mignola Hellboy story to be published in 2003. "Dr. Carp's Experiment" is pretty much what you'd expect from a Hellboy short-story, akin to much of what's published in the Chained Coffin and Others collection, featuring a bit of action, a bit of "history", and a bit of self-discovery. The whole thing is essentially an excursion to discover what will happen if Hellboy's blood is injected into another creature, which has very nasty results. This isn't a story that's going to give "The Corpse" a run for its money, but it's still a fun Hellboy yarn.

The third comic piece is a Devil's Footprints story, that has no relation to the mini-series, other than the fact that it features the same protagonist. If you bought this alone without having read the previous material, you'll be no worse for wear. It's a funny story, really, with an excellent twist, involving the exorcism of ghosts from a house. I'll not give it away, but it's definitely not what you'd expect. Following it is "Forever", which involves a curse over a guy who skipped the bill for a tattoo, by German artist, Uli Oesterle. It too has an interesting twist ending. Lucas Marangon and Milton Freewater, Jr. supply "The House on the Corner", four pages outlining the history of the tenants of a haunted house in an attempt to show a little boy that there are ghosts lurking everywhere. "Lies, Death, and Olfactory Delusions" from Randy Stradley and Paul Chadwick is of a similar type as Richardson and Russell's, stemming from childhood adventures. The story is a little more involved that "Gone", following the first person narration of our protagonist of what happened to his dead "friend". It's kind of a sweet little lie in order to help someone find peace, I guess.

The final story, "Stray", by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson is most likely my favourite of the entire book, but it's possibly just because I'm a sucker for furry animals. It's a story of a few dogs and a cat who have their own "haunt" interrupted by a lingering ghost. Funny, sad, and touching, it's really a great story, made all the better through a beautiful colour wash in Thompson's artwork.