After a relatively disappointing second volume, Craig Yoe’s Haunted Horror series more than gets
back on track with volume three. Gathering obscure stories from largely
forgotten horror comics, Haunted Horror:
Pre-Code Comics So Good, They’re Scary! does this both by aping the
undisputed greatest of horror comics and by hacking out its own unique path. “Fate
of Alberto” from Tales of Horror
features a bulge-eyed ringer for The Old Witch. Harvested from Horror from the Tomb, and introduced by
a host called The Graveyard Keeper, “The Bone Man” is a gruesomely ironic tale
worthy of Bill Gaines. Even more on point is the similarly ironic
thing-from-the-grave story “Flame Thrower!” from Mysterious Adventures, which features running commentary from a
Crypt Keeper clone who refers to us readers as “kiddies” and welcomes us into
“The Haunt of Horror”! Perhaps the artwork of such tales isn’t quite up to Jack
Davis or Graham Ingels standards, but the writing is good enough to keep you
from yelling “rip off!” and IDW’s organic presentation makes these pieces feel
more authentic than the digitally bastardized comics Dark Horse is currently
peddling in its E.C. Archives series.
There’s a lot of true originality in volume three too, as
Vince Napoli’s etched-in-black artwork for “Almost Human” (Beware) is quite unlike anything in E.C.’s archives. In “The
Nameless Terror of Twin Dunes”, Bill Fraccio keeps unleashing weird intruders that
have nothing to do with the plot through the pages, and it makes a story that
is already genuinely creepy even more unsettling. “Death’s Beggar” (Strange Stories from Another World) exploits
a wonderfully Halloweeny atmosphere, and “The Uninvited” (Beware) is just straight up bizarre. There’s also a refreshing
clawful of sci-fi horror stories that contrast the stock witches, ghouls, and
walking corpses nicely. Its sometimes comfortably traditional, sometimes wildly
outlandish tales may make Pre-Code Comics
So Good, They’re Scary! the best Haunted
Horror collection yet.
