Reel Deal Reviews • "Hokum" (2026)

After experiencing the disappointing Longlegs (Osgood Perkins does not share his father’s talents), the “just okay” Nosferatu remake, and the nauseatingly quippy Ready or Not: Here I Come, I would say that I do not have a high regard for “modern horror.” Beyond those turkeys, I dislike the pretentiousness inherent in the phrase “elevated horror” (enough to where I go out of my way to avoid watching them) and the relentless cashing-in on new “icons” like Art the Clown and M3GAN littering Spirit Halloweens, so much so that I usually try to steer clear of anything horror post-early-nineties. Because of this, I did not have a high bar for Hokum, the 2026 Irish horror flick directed by Damian McCarthy and starring Adam Scott (you know—that Ice Clown who lost his Town Crown because of Ice Town). However, instead of “Longlegs but Mark’s Outie is Irish” like I was expecting, I was pleasantly surprised by a damn fine horror movie!

Hokum (or as I frequently mistype it, Hookum) follows Ohm Bauman (no relation to Jay), a famous author known for his Conquistador series of historical-fantasy novels. Ohm checks into a remote Irish hotel (the one his parents stayed at for their honeymoon) in order to “make peace” with his folks via ash scattering. However, a shocking reveal kicks into motion a whole Hookum of spookums that positively ruin Ohm’s European vacation! 

I really dug almost everything about this movie—it’s lean one hour and forty-one minute runtime, the way that the horror was executed, and not only Adam Scott’s acting, but the rest of the cast, too. (Specifically David Wilmot for his not-so-crazy Jerry and Austin Amelio, the only time I will ever give a Conquistador a compliment.) The ending was satisfying, which is a rarity in the horror genre—even with those older movies I like! (It’s iconic now, but if I watched the original Friday the 13th when it was in theaters, I probably would’ve been a little pissed off that it was all for nothing.) 

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TOP O’ THA SPOILERIN’:

One thing that I haven’t heard people talking about are the numerous similarities found between Hokum and The Shining. Despite the obvious fact that they’re both horror movies that take place at a haunted hotel, they both follow an alcoholic writer who is haunted by demons from his past. Jerry takes on a similar role that Doc Holloway plays—the only person who offers any sort of help and is sadly rewarded for their kindness by getting murdered towards the end of the movie. Both movies have a person dressed up in a fuzzy animal costume: the dog man in The Shining, and Hokum’s cross-eyed children’s TV show host (as well as Fiona’s Halloween costume). The Honeymoon Suite is the off-limits room of the hotel haunted by a creepy old woman, the same thing as the infamous Room 237. These aren’t listed in a negative way (I proudly wear my influences on my sleeve in my work), I just thought that it was neat to connect the dots between these two movies that I enjoy. (On a non-Kubrickian note, the reveal of the witch’s face lost all sort of suspense for me at that moment, since she looked exactly like Bub from Day of the Dead.)

And, as much as I love him, Adam Scott’s acting felt a little wooden two or three times. However, it wasn’t during any sort of important suspenseful/emotional scene, he was great during those! No, I think of the scene towards the beginning where he meets Jerry for the first time; compared to David Wilmot’s performance, Scott’s readings sound a little bit stale. 

But as I said before, he kicks ass during the horror parts and can really carry a scene on his own. The whole portion of the movie where he’s all alone in The Honeymoon Suite is fantastic, being on-the-edge-of-your-seat terrifying despite the fact that it’s just Adam for the majority of that time. It reminds me of the post-Linda, pre-Annie scenes in Evil Dead 2, where it’s just Bruce Campbell losing his mind in the cabin. The ability to carry a whole high-energy, highly entertaining sequence on your own (such as David Hyde Pierce’s segment of the “Three Valentines” episode of Frasier) is something I value in an actor. (And a director, too! Props to Damian McCarthy making this movie entertaining despite most of it taking place in one location and mostly featuring one actor on screen.)

A small thing I would change would be towards the beginning of the film when Ohm first pulls into the Bilberry Hotel. He meets a guy fixing the front of his car, and a pan towards a dead deer next to him tells us all that we need to know (despite the fact that they go on to explain why for those denser audience members). Personally, I would have changed that deer to a rabbit. Although they would have to tweak the amount of damage that occurred (I imagine a ran-over rabbit is more “annoying” to clean up than a ran-over deer is “damaging”), I think the recurring rabbit imagery would’ve benefited from some ranking up—we got the rabbit kid’s show host, we got Fiona’s rabbit costume… and that’s it. One more thing would’ve been nice to really hammer home the rabbit motif they have (for some reason). (I guess rabbits are common in Ireland or something? Or perhaps they’re meant to portray innocence—since they’re only brought up when discussing Ohm’s childhood and Fiona’s undeserving demise.) 

UPDATE: Apparently the kid’s TV show host is supposed to be a donkey. His name is “Jack,” so I assumed that it was supposed to be “Jack the Jackrabbit,” but no, it’s “Jack the Jackass.” Maybe they should’ve given him a snout or something to make it more obvious, since the only people I see referring to Jack as a donkey are NEON themselves. 

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So shove The Mummy back in its sarcophagus and wade past Deep Water, the real horror movie to see right now is Hokum! Just make sure that you don’t buy a large popcorn like I did—medium is more than plenty, and you’ll just feel bad for loudly chewing it during this pretty quiet movie.

[This review was originally posted on 5/10/2026 via my Patreon. Subscribe for just $1.50 a month and get early access to not only my book/movie/TV/album reviews, but to my artwork, comics, and creative writing, too!]

Talkin’ Tomes • EC Comics Presents: Epitaphs from the Abyss #2

 

Psst! This is a review of EC Comics: Epitaphs from the Abyss #2! If you haven’t already read my review of EFTA #1 or you need a refresher on what EC Comics was, check it out here! https://www.patreon.com/posts/talkin-tomes-ec-156493523

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ISSUE #2: 

The Cover: 

A birthday clown is caught off guard when a horde of demonic, sharp-fanged children rush towards him! I’m not sure if this is another Lee Bermejo, but it looks as well-painted as the first issue’s cover. However, as nice as it looks, I’m not really a fan of this one. I dislike children and I dislike clowns—not in a coulrophobic sense, but in a “they’re ugly and annoying” one. (Note: I use “demonic” instead of “zombie,” since the kids look more like Deadites than shamblers. Refer to their red eyes, sharp teeth, and scrunched-up faces.)

The Intro: 

The Grave-Digger reveals that the kids are his “brood,” although I don’t see the family resemblance. A dead, bloody body is laying on the ground, which the Grave-digger explains with…

Story 1: “Pattern Recognition” • Written by Matt Kindt, Art by Klaus Janson, Colored by Michelle Madsen

Johnny, a no-good thug, runs a Clockwork Orange-esqe gang dedicated to maiming and robbing anybody unfortunate enough to cross paths with them. One of Johnny’s disciples has an unnatural obsession with him, describing “Johnny isn’t a god. But if there is one… I’d like to think this is what he looks like…” (43). One night, the disciple gets knocked down to the ground during a scuffle and lands head-first onto a rusty nail. After that, he describes everything becoming “so much clearer” (46). The disciple’s mental state, which was already in a rough place, starts to rapidly devolve as he begins to talk about Johnny’s criminalistic worldview in religious terms. He becomes set on “freeing Johnny’s ideas,” ending the story by driving a nail through the leader’s head as he sleeps. 

• The story was sub-par to me, but the colors in this one were great! They’re very pop-art-y, contrasting background and foreground pallets with juxtaposing warm tones vs. cool tones. 

• As much as I thought the story was “meh,” it did go in a place I wasn’t expecting it to. The line “If his ideas can spread… then the movement will grow. We’re effecting change, one person at a time” led me to believe that the story was going to play on Stockholm Syndrome—the disciple would kidnap people, torture them until they saw things “Johnny’s way” and joined the exponentially-growing gang. But nope, it ended on a very parallel note that fits more into the “ironic” spirit of EC.

Story 2: “Gray Green Memories” • Written and Art by Tyler Crook, Colored by Michelle Madsen

A zombie stands in an abandoned grocery store, blankly staring at a shelf with a hint of confusion on her gaunt, partially decomposed face. A second-person narration wonders, “How long have you been standing there? A day? A month? A year? It feels like you have always been here. But that’s not right, is it?” (51). With a close up of what she’s staring at—a can of baby food—we piece together that the zombie was once a mother. Several panels flash back to silently fill in the gaps of her story while the narration continues—her and a flurry of other shoppers running away from the pursuing undead, a picture of a man and a child in a tossed-out wallet, and her finally getting bit. However, the reminiscing ends when the woman hears a “nails on a chalkboard” noise and the virus takes her over once more. She finds the source of it—a mother and a daughter talking—and lunges at them, only to get blasted away with a shotgun. Her now-decapitated head is laying on the ground, staring at the baby food once more — “How long… how long have you been lying there? A day? A month? A year? It feels like you’ve always been here, but that’s not right, is it? You came here to get something… important.” (56). 

• This is easily my favorite story from this volume. Not only does it get brownie points for being about zombies, but it’s also something that fascinates me as much as it scares the hell out of me: a human conscience trapped in a zombie body. 

  • It’s something touched on in the original Dawn of the Dead:

Francine: They're still here.

Stephen: They're after us. They know we're still in here.

Peter: They're after the place. They don't know why; they just remember. Remember that they want to be in here.

Francine Parker: What are they doing? Why do they come here?

Stephen: Some kind of instinct. Memory of what they used to do. This was an important place in their lives.

• It’s also why George Romero killed off Roger later in the movie—as much fun as Left4Dead 2 is, killing zombies is supposed to be heavy, you’re killing another (almost) human being, regardless of any sort of virus that’s taken over their mind. 

  • Great reasoning for why Roger had to die narratively: https://boxd.it/1qOK6r

• “Being dismembered as an immortal being” is a completely unrealistic-yet-recurring fear of mine. It’s a worse fate than Hell—being cut up into pieces that are tossed away and forgotten about, forced to live in a “I Have No Mouth but I Must Scream” scenario forever. 

  • See me capitalize on these fears via Delores’ plan for Captain “Sawbones” Sawyer Cain in Boarding Party’s “Hell or High Water!” 

Story 3: “Sounds and Haptics” • Written by Jason Aaron, Art by Jorge Fornés, Colored by Michelle Madsen (Damn, Michelle again!)

Rex Maxwell wakes up in a hospital, groggy and unaware of how much shit he’s in. He’s chained to his bed, his phone beckoning for attention but just out of reach. Two of his fingers are missing, and a homely nurse informs him that the wounds have become infected—his operations must begin immediately. As the surgery happens off-screen, Rex tries to recall what had recently happened until that point: going out for a drive, getting a notification, and—oh, yeah—getting into a high-speed collision while distracted. He survived, but nobody in the other car did—that is, nobody but the nurse. With her whole family dead and Rex’s attention solely on his ever-important phone, the nurse knocks him out. Presently, Rex awakens from his surgery and stumbles around the hospital, drawn to the constant pinging of his phone. He tries to pick it up, but discovers that his hands have been cut into stumps. Seeking revenge, the nurse smashes his phone and informs him that they’ve still “got a lot more work to do” (65). The story ends with Rex lying on a hospital bed, covered in blood, missing several appendages (including his nose, arms, and legs), and still tortured by the constant pinging noise. 

• I really enjoyed this one, too! While I didn’t love it the same way I loved “Gray Green Memories,” I still thought that it was creepy, had a good message, and satisfied my bloodlust—all the signs of a good EC Comics story!

• Pardon my early-onset-boomerism, but I enjoyed the way this touched on cell phone addiction—particularly when it comes to social media. Even after getting rid of it all from my phone (except for Discord, which is always set to silent), I still feel like I spend a grotesque amount of time on those apps/sites, even though I know I’m relatively offline compared to most people.

  • Read Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport if you’re interested in reducing the amount of time you spend plugged in! (Of course, don’t fully unplug, since you wouldn’t be able to subscribe to this Patreon!) 

Epitaphs from the Abyss Issue #2 quickly picks up steam, starting off on a “meh” story before locking in for the remainder of its pages. I didn’t care for the Grave-digger’s antics this time around nor the cover, but the actual stories were better than those found in Epitaphs #1. Next time we'll cover #3, which features one of my favorite stories in the series and one that really... SUCKS! (Note: That pun will be a lot funnier when you see what the story's about.) 

[This review was originally posted on 5/9/2026 via my Patreon. Subscribe for just $1.50 a month and get early access to not only my book/movie/TV/album reviews, but to my artwork, comics, and creative writing, too!]

Talkin’ Tomes • EC Comics Presents: Epitaphs from the Abyss #1

I was gonna open this up with a Cryptkeeper-esqe, spooky-pun-filled intro, but goddamn! Those things are really hard to write!

…Anyway, if you’re reading this blog, chances are you know what EC Comics is—or at least, the anthologies they published during their mid-century heyday: Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, The Vault of Horror, Crime SuspenStories, MAD, and Picture Stories from the Bible: New Testament Edition. Well, maybe not that last one. 

These comics quickly came and went, with no series lasting more than thirty issues thanks to witchhunts fueled by nineteen-fifties conservatism. (Oh, won’t someone PLEASE think of the children?!) MAD Magazine was the sole survivor, although it still maintained the same level of controversy through its sixty-six year long existence. (Check out the “Tales from the Crypt” episode of Wizard and the Bruiser or Chapter 2 of Dan Nadel’s Crumb: A Cartoonist's Life, “Jugular Veins,” for more information about the rise and fall of EC!) 

Despite only being “a thing” for less than ten years, Entertaining Comics’ shadow still looms large over pop culture today. Stephen King and George A. Romero honored the horror comics of their childhood through Creepshow, a two-hour love letter to EC’s horror series while still being legally distinct from it. Creepshow would have a rough go of it for a while, shitting out two turds of sequels until reaching its stride with the Shudder original series in 2019. The nineteen-nineties saw Tales from the Crypt, an HBO anthology in which every episode is based on some story from The Haunt of Fear, The Vault of Fear, and the eponymous comic. (Except for the last episode, which is “The Three Little Pigs” mixed with Frankenstein and a whole lotta gore. It sounds terrible but I liked it!) 

Although there were a couple Tales from the Crypt revivals throughout the years, there was never an attempted, large-scale comeback for EC until the mid-twenty-twenties, when Oni Press took shovel into hand and, with a background crack of thunder, dug it up for a new string of titles! Paying respect to its predecessors while still being its new thing, these series include Catacombs of Torment, Cruel Universe, Shiver SuspenStories, Blood Type, Cruel Kingdom, Tortured Hearts, and what I’ll be focusing on today: Epitaphs from the Abyss. 

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Note: There will be spoilers when discussing these individual stories, so I’ll give a general overview of Epitaphs from the Abyss #1 before going into the nitty gritty of things: I love it! Obviously there’s some duds considering that it’s an anthology, but the “good-to-great” stories heavily outweigh the lesser-sos. The series offers a wide variety of spooks and creeps, I won’t go into any specifically for the sake of spoilers, but there’s a little bit of everything for everyone. There’s also plenty of gore to quench my bloodlust—Harvey Kurtzman is cold in the ground so you won’t have to worry about any holds being barred when it comes to the good stuff. (However, if you want to see a Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive/Braindead level of carnage, this might not be it. I’d recommend the Friday the 13th comics instead—I remember Jason driving his fist into a guy’s cranium so hard, his head shot down his body and came out of his junk, it’s great!) 

The art is (mostly) fantastic—bold lineart and heavy shadows bring a pulpy feel to these while also carrying on the spirit of past artists like Johnny Craig and Wally Wood. Some styles are better than others, but there wasn’t any particular one that distracted me from its low quality. The color schemes vary from colorist-to-colorist, but my favorites are the pop-arty “Pattern Recognition” from Issue #2, the desaturated “Killer Spec” from Issue #1, and the warm tones of “A Hand in It” from Issue #3. The covers are detailed paintings I’d hang up on my wall if I had any more room. They keep the template of the original EC covers (just look up “EC comics covers” and you’ll see what I mean by “template”), but sleek it up quite nicely. My favorite of the mainline covers is Issue #3, which has a cool zombie guy (playing on my biases) and a beautiful crimson/bluish-grey color scheme that reminds me of the original Dawn of the Dead’s ghouls. (Don't worry, I'll cover the following issues in the near future!)

A small detail I appreciate: The fonts! I’m a big fan of how they kept the same typeface as the original fifties comics—they could’ve changed it to be something more industry standard, but I like the simplistic, rounded sans-serif of it all. My thanks go out to letterists Richard Starkings and Tyler Smith! 

Instead of dragging out the hosts of old (like The Vaultkeeper or The Old Witch), a new brood (designed by Dustin Weaver) shambles in, consisting of The Grave-digger, The Tormenter, and The Grave Inquisitor.  The Grave-digger is the main host of Epitaphs, a guy that kinda looks like a mix of The Hatbox Ghost, Lon Chaney in London After Midnight, and Riffraff from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. The titular “Epitaphs from the Abyss” come from the graves he digs, telling the grisly fates that occur to the characters of each story. It kinda reminds me of John Carpenter’s Body Bags, which you should totally watch if you haven’t already! The Tormenter looks like Pippi Longstocking if she was one of the psychopaths in The Outlast Trials, a British-coded lady who likes to—get this—torment people. The Grim Inquisitor didn’t make an appearance in this volume, but he looks pretty cool! An evil monk is a neat idea for a horror host, and he looks pretty spooky—imagine one of those black-hooded executioners mixed with a bloated, latter-day Jesse Ventura. Would love to have little figurines of all these guys—get on it NECA! If you can’t give us an HBO Cryptkeeper, then you can at least get us a Grave-digger! 

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Get EC’s Epitaphs from the Abyss Vol. 1 here!

Watch The Cryptkeeper’s rap music video here! (It’s not really important for this review, I just want as many people to know about its existence.)

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ISSUE #1: 

The Cover: 

A painted scene from “Us vs. Us” (Story #4), courtesy of Lee Bermejo. It’s still a striking piece of art even if you haven’t read it, depicting a couple hiding underneath a bed while two humanoid figures (one severely mutated) walk by holding a bloody chainsaw and ax. Behind them is a burning church/house, which you assume the mutants are responsible for! Well, guess what, bub? You’ve just made an ass out of “You” and “me,” great going! 

The Intro: 

The Grave-Digger, hard at work digging (now that I really look at it—undigging) a grave, introduces himself to the reader. He describes “You see, every tombstone tells a tale, and nothing passes the time quite like recalling the spectacles of splatter chronicled here on each and every slab” (8). He uses pretty macabre imagery, but the puns really start rolling when he gives his brief descriptions of the following four stories. 

Story 1: “Killer Spec” • Written by J. Holtman, Art by Jorge Fornés, Colored by Dan Jackson

Dylan, an egotistical screenwriter, vents to the reader about his bitterness towards the world and his lack of success in Hollywood. His “annoying” roommate Steve is inspired by Dyaln to write a screenplay of his own. Dylan is horrified when he discovers that Steve’s screenplay is a masterpiece and—wanting to take the credit for it—murders him. A zombie Steve rises from the grave and murders Dylan back, sending his decapitated head to the publisher or a producer or whoever the hell you send a screenplay to.  

• The plot of this one was kinda generic. If you’ve ever seen Creepshow or Tales from the Crypt (1972), you’ve most likely seen this kinda plot before—somebody does somebody else wrong, the latter dies as a result of it, and then they get their revenge on the former from beyond the grave. WHERE’S MY CAKE, BEDELIA?! 

• Dylan starts off the story with “The scariest thing a writer ever faces is the blank page staring back at them” (9). Yeah, if they suck at writing! Just start typing shit and edit what you don’t like later! 

  • In the words of Terry Pratchett, “There's no such thing as writer's block. That was invented by people in California who couldn't write.”

• The plot is very similar to Family Guy Season 11 Episode 10, “Brian’s Play.” If both of these are a reference to, like, a famous book or moment in history or something, this tells you a lot about my (lack of) cultural expertise.

Story 2: “Senator, Senator” • Written by Chris Condon, Art by Peter Krause, Colored by Michelle Madsen

A Pro-Choice politician, Laura Smoltz, goes on a Pro-Life rant during a debate—much to the confusion of reporter Marguerite De Palma. Suspicious about Smoltz’s sudden veering of policy, De Palma tracks her down to talk face-to-face about it. However, a woozy Smoltz is ushered into a cab by her domineering bodyguards. De Palma follows the cab to a mysterious building—the Constitutional Patriotic Committee—and shares an elevator with a shady guy who looks like modern-day David Byrne. David Byrne tells De Palma that the Committee “plucks out” people’s individual ideals to avoid thought taking precedence over party. The elevator doors open, revealing Smoltz strapped to a slab, the victim of a grisly brain surgery in which parts of her cerebrum are “plucked out” with tweezers. The same fate awaits De Palma, with the final panels of narration saying “Marguerite De Palma felt a sudden hollow coldness in her chest. You might call it dread. But soon, the dread gave way to a new emotion. A feeling as American as apple pie. The feeling was called Terror. But she would soon learn to understand it as something else… LOYALTY” (25-26). 

• More like Epitaphs from the Ab-MISS! This story sets aside horror to focus a “nothing” plot and—frankly—pretty hand-fisted commentary.

  • We don’t even get a good shot of the “Plucking Out,” either. It’s two panels of about an inch of exposed brain with light blood stains nearby.

• This is probably my least favorite art style within these four issues. It’s pretty rooted in reality and lacks any kind of pulp-y feeling. The color palette is pretty generic to boot, too. (Sorry, Pete and Michelle!)

Story 3: “Family Values” • Written by Stephanie Phillips, Art by Phil Hester, Inked by Travis Hymel, Colored by Marissa Louise

Funny Games ensue when a group of masked, gun-wielding men break into a family’s “suburban castle” and tie them all down—except for the father, Scott Richards. He has a little over three minutes to either kill himself or one of his family members. If he doesn’t make a choice in time, then his wife, son, and daughter will get killed by the masked men. Scott considers himself, then his son, but settles on his wife thanks to a grim part of him that, perhaps, has always been there—even before the masked men arrived. As Scott pulls the trigger, we find out that the Richards were the third family this situation has happened to, their misery livestreamed and bet on for entertainment value. “One lucky gambler” (34) wins big thanks to Scott’s choice, proudly relating his victory to his family. However, karma strikes back as the story ends with the masked men outside their home, closing in and heavily armed…

• I initially didn’t care for the plot of this one, but the ending really saved it for me.

  • However, I think they tried to have their cake and eat it too with both the “Well, this bloodlust was always within Scott” and the livestreaming twist. It’s sort of like the Trolley Problem, a “dilemma” that has a pretty clear “better option.” Maybe I’m just Vulcanpilled, but it’s one life versus three. I guess that’s why they have to add his hidden bloodlust, since it would just be “Well, obviously you spare your family, dude.” 

• People gambling over awful shit is EXTREMELY relevant now, especially with Polymarket bets on how many people will die in what war crime. (Ye best start belivin’ in cyberpunk dystopias, Miss Turner! You’re in one!)

• OH MY GOD, Family VALUES, I just got the title right now! (You don’t wanna know how long it took me to “get” Black Mirror’s title.) 

Story 4: “Us vs. Us” • Written by Brian Azzarello, Art by Vlad Legostaev, Colored by Brittany Peer

A man and a woman—Junior and Brandy—run away from a flaming church, as well as a pair of hulking, weapon-wielding mutants. They run to a nearby house and seek cover underneath a bed—remember the cover I was talking about earlier? Well, a melted person causes them to scream, thereby blowing their cover. The two mutants trap Junior and Brandy, revealing that they incinerated the church during a service, murdering a number of people and families trapped inside. The two non-mutants swear that they didn’t know anybody was in there, but argue that they didn’t really commit murder—they killed “Vaxxers,” not people. The Vaxxers, mutated by a vaccine necessary to live, are about to “save the life” of Junior and Brandy by mutating them before Junior has a heart attack. The story ends with the Vaxxers “comforting” Brandy… 

• At first glance, this seems anti-vax. The vaccine turning people into mutants brings to mind the “We don’t know what the side effects of these vaccines even are!” argument, even though they go through rigorous experimenting before being released to the public and most anti-vaxxers have no problem using unregulated peptides anyway. However, I can see this being anti-anti-vax with Junior and Brandy’s stupidity hurting other people being a metaphor for the unvaccinated contributing to disease mutations and therefore, no-longer-effective vaccines. I don’t really know which way the pendulum swings with this one, man! Which is it, Stephanie?! 

• “Just kidding.” “We eat you.” is as funny as it is lazy—which is to say, very! 

• I thought the male Vaxxer looked a lot like the Charger from Left4Dead 2, not just because of the swollen arm, but the skeletal, Henrietta Knowby-esqe face. The female Vaxxer looked like a monster straight out of The Real Ghostbusters, but that could be because her giant nose looked like the crazy chicken guy from that one episode. (“Chicken, He Clucked,” it’s a weird ass one that’s stuck with me ever since I watched it as a kid.) 

Issue #1 is a bit of a rocky start, but the series will quickly find its footing in the following episodes. My favorite is “Killer Spec” for it’s fun gore, use of zombies, and revolving around writers—all stuff to pander to me! My least favorite of the bunch is “Senator, Senator” for its lack of horror, boring story, and milquetoast art. 

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Well, that’s it for this post—I’m already at over two-thousand words and I’ve only covered the first issue! I’ll look over the rest of Epitaphs from the Abyss series soon, including Issues #2-4 and all the extra content towards the end in the Vol 1 TPB. Until then, unpleasant dreams…! 

Wait, shit, that’s what Elvira says! What was it…? Oh yeah! 

Until next time, boils and ghouls! 

[This review was originally posted on 4/25/2026 via my Patreon. Subscribe for just $1.50 a month and get early access to not only my book/movie/TV/album reviews, but to my artwork, comics, and creative writing, too!]

Talkin’ Tomes • "Return of the Living Dead" #1-4 (American Mythology Comics)

As a big fan of the Return of the Living Dead franchise, I’m always itching for new content like it's juicy BRAIIINS! 

It’s been over twenty years since the last movie released (a double-feature made for the Syfy channel), and it’s still unclear if the 2026 sequel, the most-likely-shelved Trash’s Revenge, or the recently announced Rebirth of the Living Dead will ever come out. While Ghostface, Michael Myers, Chucky, and even Jason have had their comeback moments, Tarman is still sitting in a corner, twiddling his goopy thumbs until gets his due! Poor guy…

In the meantime, I resorted to the 2025 sequel comic series by American Mythology simply titled “Return of the Living Dead.” And Clu Gulager above, I’d rather watch Necropolis and Rave to the Grave back-to-back than ever look at these again! 

Return of the Living Dead Issues #1-4 follow two groups of survivors: the employees of an amusement park that’s closed for the summer and a group of trespassing teens looking for a place to skateboard. They’re all stuck there when a barrel of 2-4-5 Trioxin is opened, unleashing a wave of the undead—just like in Louisville that fateful July 3rd.

The plot of “Return of the Living Dead” (2025) is just like any other long-running horror movie comic adaptation—there's a clear formula that just gets repeated over and over again with each iteration. (Other examples include the Army of Darkness comics—"What if Ash has to fight deadites in THIS setting?"—and the Friday the 13th comics—"What if THESE guys came to Camp Crystal Lake and got merked by Jason?”) Although I could see this being an actual, “Meh” at best movie made between ROTLD 1 & 2, the amusement park setting might be a bit too costly for reality. (Jason couldn’t even spend THAT much time taking Manhattan, and you want a whole zombie movie that takes place on an island amusement park?) 

Nobody in the comic—human nor zombie—made much of an impression on me. There’s a platter of beloved characters found throughout the Return franchise; I remember the dancing, redheaded Trash, the incredible melting Tarman, the secretly-Nazi mortician Ernie, the masochistic Julie from Part 3, and the four characters James Karen and Thom Mathews play in Parts 1 & 2. However, when it comes to this, I can only tell you details like “I think there was a nerd guy, a girl with blue hair, and the older dude who works at the park,” but not a single name—let alone personality or character motivation. Who dies? Who makes it out alive with their brain intact? Who knows and who cares?!

Also, I take issue with the story being set in a theme park closed for the summer. As a person who religiously watches Defunctland, I know that summers are when most of them are actually open! Besides, like Disneyland or Universal Studios, they usually close for the season to save money and perform maintenance when the weather turns spotty and the kids are back at school. (Well, maybe not that maintenance part. The Net has shown me many-a carnival ride accident for some reason…) 

The art for this series is surprisingly decent and looks very nice to look at—but it doesn’t fit Return of the Living Dead whatsoever. It'd work with something like Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but the colors are way too saturated for a movie as purposely filthy and grimey as ROTLD. Just think back on The Tarman, the graveyard the zombies rise out of, and the outfits the characters wear… it’s not fuckin’ Miami Vice! I suspect the artists or the colorists or whoever didn’t watch the movie and were just told that it was from the 80’s, prompting them to go “Oh, okay! I can do 80’s!” 

Here's an example of a comic page, and then my ten-second "correction" I made in Clip Studio Paint. While there's nothing I can do about the extra-toony style, I tried to make the color scheme more like the one in the film. (The pink blood is especially egregious to me!)

However, I’d excuse ill-fitting artwork over one created by a computer—that’s right, good ol’ Generative AI is used in this comic for whatever reason! Want proof? Just zoom in on the covers!

And it’s not just the outside, too. Every issue ends with an egregious spread of Midjourney mush, ugly as hell fodder that’s not even that funny.

My heart goes out to the actual artists who worked on this, since their art has to be put alongside these putrid displays of poor taste. I’m definitely not checking out anything else American Mythology has to offer for this reason—which is a shame, since their Three Stooges comics look pretty fun! Buncha wiseguys… 

To wrap things up: Board up your bookshelves and steer clear of American Mythology’s Return of the Living Dead series! With a crappy and forgettable plot—mixed in with less-than-ideal artwork and AI slop—you’re better off reading something like The Walking Dead or perhaps the fanmade Revenge of the Living Dead series instead. Let's just hope that somebody else gets the Return license soon—but not Living Dead Originals LLC.

Thanks to Rabid Weasels for keeping me up to date on any news related to the ROTLD franchise! Check out the podcast here.

[This review was originally posted on 4/12/2026 via my Patreon. Subscribe for just $1.50 a month and get early access to not only my book/movie/TV/album reviews, but to my artwork, comics, and creative writing, too!]

Reel Deal Reviews • "The Haunted World of El Superbeasto" (2009)

After making a surprisingly good debut movie, its “Not-for-me” sequel, a trailer in Grindhouse, and two films ruining the character of Michael Myers, Rob Zombie ventured into the world of animation with The Haunted World of El Superbeato, a 2009 X-rated cartoon based on his not-that-well-known comic series. (I gotta read his comics in the future, there’s Rob Zombie Presents and El Superbeasto. I’ve only read his House of 1000 Corpses parody from Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror #10, but I’d steer clear of that one if I were you.)  

The Haunted World of El Superbeasto follows El Superbeasto (whom I assume is named after “Superbeast” off of Hellbilly Deluxe), an adult movie star/masked wrestler who tries to save an exotic dancer from the clutches of Doctor Satan. (No, not the guy from House of 1000 Corpses that looks like Riffraff from Rocky Horror, he’s just a guy with a cartoonish devil head—think of the Twilight Zone fortune telling machine if he had the body of Professor Membrane.) The film also follows Suzi-X, Superbeasto’s adoptive sister who fights alongside her brother. Having stolen Hitler’s brain, she’s now the target of the Fourth Reich—an army of zombie Nazis seeking revenge for their lost führer.

To get it out of the way, this is a very 2000’s movie. In the shadow of South Park, wannabe Matt-and-Treys were racing each other to see who could make their cartoons as violent, offensive, and edgelord-y as possible. (See Drawn Together, Gary the Rat [“What if Frasier was an anthropomorphic rat?”], and the entire Newgrounds catalog.) While El Superbeasto doesn’t go quite as far as its conemperaries—it’s too focused on sex jokes to really poke fun at anything else—it still has its share of collar-tugging moments. There weren't as many ableist/racist/transphobic jokes as I expected, which I guess is a compliment? There was one use of the R-slur (yes, it’s a slur now, it wasn’t in the past but that’s changed, get used to it), a character says “Holy Short Bus!” in a lame Batman reference, the word “transvestite” is used (although it’s more in a Monkeycheese “LOL So Random” way), and there’s some stereotypical depictions of Hispanic people. White voice actors also portray non-white characters, such as El Superbeasto himself and John DiMaggio falling back on his deep-voiced Black guy impression (which you’re most likely familiar with if you’re a Futurama fan like I am). 

In my opinion, calling it The Haunted World of El Superbeasto is a bit of false advertising. While there were ghosts ‘n’ ghouls and plenty of gore, it wasn’t enough for my macabre tastes. This is a sex comedy first and foremost—every guy gets laid and every woman either has a rockin’ bod or is “comically” ugly. (I was pleasantly surprised to see two plus-sized ladies who were not the butt of some joke, although Superbeasto uses the term “lard-ass” later on when describing somebody else.) If there’s a gorgon and a werewolf, most of their screentime is gonna be them in human form having sex (which is the very first thing that happens in the movie!)

Speaking of the beginning, this gets some brownie points for starting out with a big ol’ James Whale Frankenstein homage—I would say “parody,” but it’s just the beginning of the 1931 film with some minor tweaks. Edward Van Sloan comes onto a stage and gives the “It may shock you, it might even horrify you” speech, which is played surprisingly straight. (I thought it was gonna lead to a switcheroo like “So if this is too much for you… TOO FUCKIN’ BAD!” or something, but nope!) The opening credits are a 1:1 of the original, except it’s Doctor Satan and Superbeasto instead of Karloff’s monster. 

There are plenty of other horror references throughout this thing—some obvious ones (El Superbeasto runs over Zombie’s Michael Myers and pervs on The Bride of Frankenstein) and some pretty deep cuts (like a Metaluna Mutant priest officiating a wedding and a specifically Lon Chaney Sr. Phantom of the Opera instead of a then-relevant Webber one). (I say “then-relevant” because Love Never Dies limped its way onto West End the next year.)

For a movie with “El Superbeasto” in its title, it felt like he wasn’t really in it all that much. Most of the screentime is focused on the villainous Dr. Satan (voiced by ma boy Paul Giamatti), his gorilla henchman Otto (voiced by Tom Kenny), and Suzi-X—who is a woman in a Rob Zombie film and thus voiced by Sheri Moon Zombie. (Although, I don’t mind it—it’s cute how much Rob loves his wife). Zombie’s cohorts show up for their little cameos, like Sid Haig and Bill Moseley reprising their House of 1000 Corpses characters, The Devil’s Rejects’ Brian Posehn as Murray (that angry-lookin’ robot from the “Dragula” video), Dee Wallace and Ken Foree from his Halloween remake, and Daniel Roebuck, who would be Grandpa Munster in his 2021 Munsters movie. (I haven’t seen it yet—and I don’t know if I ever will.) One that I can’t believe I missed was Cassandra Peterson, The Mistress of the Dark herself! Aurgh…

Comedian Tom Papa voices Superbeasto and is also credited as co-writer —and whom I blame for this movie’s faults. I say that because House of 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects have a much better track record when it comes to the comedy, and those were solely written by Zombie. Funnily enough, three years after Superbeasto, Zombie would direct a standup special of Papa’s, the ingeniously-titled Tom Papa: Live in New York City. (And yes, Sheri Moon makes an appearance in it somehow.) Papa would later be in 3 from Hell, thankfully in a small cameo. (I looked at Tom Papa’s Instagram and saw that he’s a frequent Joe Rogan guest and pretty into AI, which tells you all you need to know about him as a person.) 

And of course, since this is a cartoon, Rob Paulsen, Jess Harnell, Carlos Alazraqui, Dee Bradley Baker, and Rodger Bumpass voice all the background characters. I’m shocked that they didn’t get Frank Welker or Tress MacNeille to complete the Voltron of cartoon VAs! 

For a Rob Zombie flick, there was a surprising lack of metal found in this soundtrack. There’s a smorgasbord of other genres though, including a Schoolhouse Rock parody, something that sounds like it’s from an episode of Wacky Races, and Loverboy’s “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend” to end things on. And do you remember “Mr. Roboto” by Styx? It’s back! In ringtone form!

The animation is easily the best part of this movie. It looks like a Spumco-produced Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy—much toonier than the source material but better than it had any right to be. I’m a big fan of whoever was responsible for Doctor Satan’s animation specifically, his skinny body can contort into some really funky poses!

In the end, I found The Haunted World of El Superbeasto lacking in “Monster” and focusing too much on the “Mash.” Besides that and the 2000’s pitfalls it falls into, the rest was great—I liked the animation, pretty much all of the characters (even Superbeasto himself, as obnoxious as he was), and the references to other horror media most of all. There’s just a few problems with the movie that stop it from being a cult classic—I watched it with ads on Tubi, which says a lot about its current state in pop culture.

[This review was originally posted on 4/2/2026 via my Patreon. Subscribe for just $1.50 a month and get early access to not only my book/movie/TV/album reviews, but to my artwork, comics, and creative writing, too!]

Reel Deal Reviews • "Flesheater" (1988)

I like a good slasher flick and I’m a big fan of the classic Universal Monsters, but old-school zombies are my shit! And I stress “old-school” zombies—not those 28 Days Later Olympic sprinters that are just people with contact lenses and fake blood smeared on their chins (although you can technically classify them as “old-school” since that movie came out almost twenty-five years ago). I’m talking about zombies, man! 

If you wanna see what I mean, just look up what the ghouls look like in Dawn and Day of the Dead, and then compare them to the shamblers found in Survival of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. They’re still creepy lookin’, but there’s something about those guys that are just catnip to me.

And it’s not just Romero’s work that I love—check out The Return of the Living Dead Parts I & III and Burial Ground (1981) if you haven’t already! (Avoid Return of the Living Dead Part II if you want to avoid wasting ninety minutes of your life.) 

Although I love Romero’s “Of the Dead” trilogy, I find the original Night of the Living Dead the weakest of the bunch. It’s not a bad movie, per say, but Dawn and Day are both far more entertaining and way more interesting. Night is like Universal’s Dracula (1931)—I appreciate it historically, but it’s not my favorite. (That would be The Invisible Man!) My interest in the movie peaks at the beginning—I adore the line “They’re coming to get you, Barbara!” (I used to have a Fright Rags T-shirt of it! Man, I wonder where that went…) and, of course, The Cemetery Zombie. The way he makes quick work of Johnny, how rabidly he tries to get into Barbara’s car, even just the look of him! He’s definitely up there with Bub, Flyboy, and Tarman for my favorite zombies. (NECA, where’s that Ultimate 8-Inch? You wouldn’t even need to get a license, it's public domain!) 

 

Well, almost twenty years after the release of Night, The Cemetery Zombie would rise from his grave once again to munch on a new platter of people in 1989’s Flesheater—directed, produced, written, and co-edited by him! (He also gets a ‘Story by…’ credit, but I think there’s a glaring omission from that bit—more on that later.) 

Flesheater follows a group of teens who spend Halloween night camping in the middle of the woods. Not too far away from them, the dude who owns the land they’re camping on finds a chunk of stone underneath some dead grass. Carved into it is a pentagram—Satanic Panic, baby! Underneath the stone is a plaque made out of, like, pink wax or something that reads “THIS EVIL WHICH WILL TAKE FLESH AND BLOOD FROM THEE AND TURN ALL YE UNTO EVIL,” which we saw in the film’s opening credits (alongside a nice few seconds of an animated Flesheater). Beneath that (there’s a lot of layers to this thing!) is a coffin wrapped up in chains that the guy, of course, decides to open for some reason. And wouldn’t ya know it, there’s a corpse in there! It’s a real “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” moment, if the dead dove was a zombie that wasn’t quite dead anymore. He takes a bite out of the guy’s neck and mogs at the camera for the audience to applaud. At least, I applauded, all alone in my bedroom.

The Cemetery Zombie (known in this as The Flesheater) has risen from the grave! 

Meanwhile, the teens’ party is more of an Intimate-Get-Together. I mean, they went all the way into the forest to what, sit around and drink beer? Things sorta liven up as one of them flashes her boyfriend, but man, if you’re gonna do that, then at least go all out like Trash from Return of the Living Dead!

After that, we cut back to the body of the guy who discovered the Flesheater’s grave. He suddenly rises up from the ground with a glistening neck and baggy eyes—my God, he’s now one of the undead!  

Two of the college kids sneak away to a nearby barn to make out, figuratively waving their hands around and yelling “PLEASE! PLEASE KILL US!!” The Flesheater shambles in and takes them up on their offer, giving one of them blue balls and also a pitchfork lodged into his chest, pinning him to a haybale. The Flesheater wrestles the other one to the ground, reaching into her stomach and digging out… her heart? From her stomach area? Oh well, at least it looks cool as hell. And you will not believe what The Flesheater does to that flesh! 

Things cool down as we cut back to the “party,” where the guy who drove the teens into the forest (apparently nobody in this group of, like, ten twenty-somethings has a car) arranges to pick them up that midnight. Back at his tractor, he’s attacked by the zombified-grave-guy and gets his neck bitten. (There’s a lot of neck-biting in this movie. If you looked at the poster, you could realistically mistake this for a vampire flick.) One of the teens comes across this bloody scene and runs back to her friends screaming. Yeah, that’s the smart thing to do—lead the cannibalistic monsters right to your friends! 

But before she can get back to the campsite, she’s caught by The Flesheater! Ma boy—you guessed it—bites into her neck. However, he can’t enjoy his meal for long, as one of the teens wrestles him down to the ground, having been drawn by the girl’s screams of terror. The kids make a break for it, gathering at a nearby farmhouse for protection (which The Flesheater takes note of). We then see the Driver Guy rise as a zombie—shame that he died, I liked that guy! 

Two of the teens, having split off from the rest of the group, find the other two teens that had split up from the group—or what’s left of them, anyway. The corpses rise up from their temporary slumber and the two non-zombies get the hell away from there. They try to get inside the farmhouse but are told to fuck off—their “friends” have already boarded the place up, get your own hiding spot! Luckily, they forgot all about the house’s cellar doors, which gives the two castaways a place to hide.

One of the teens tries to call the cops from the farmhouse’s phone, but the dispatcher goes “Yeah, OKAY, buddy, whatever you say…” before The Flesheater pulls the cord. All hell breaks loose as the zombies begin to break through the poorly-barricaded windows and the bitten-girl comes back to life as one of them! 

One of the kids puts her down with a headshot, but The Flesheater digs an ax into his head in a fist-pumping, “Oh, hell yeah!” moment. All of the kids (except the two hiding in the cellar) are disposed of as zombie chow—then I check the Tubi progress bar and raise my eyebrows in surprise. How the heck is there still almost an hour left in this thing? 

Well, I’ll tell you how—with a lot of RINSE AND REPEAT! 

The cycle begins as we cut to a family getting ready for Halloween festivities: A mom is putting the final touches on her daughter’s angel costume, the son is making candy apples, and the older sister/babysitter/housesitter (it’s made unclear) is taking a shower for what feels like 15% of the movie’s runtime. The doorbell rings, and the daughter (thinking it’s a fellow trick-or-treater) runs to the door to pass out candy. Unfortunately he’s called The Flesheater.

After the daughter, ol’ F.E. decides to give the mom a try. The son freaks out and runs away from the scene—and right into the arms (and teeth) of the zombified-grave-guy. The only mortal left in the house is the sister/babysitter/housesitter, who gets all bloodied up thanks to The Flesheater. The dad comes home from work a little while later and reunites with his family… who are all zombies now, unfortunately.

The dispatch lady is like “Oh, yeah, I forgot that my job is to respond to emergencies,” and decides to radio someone about the “situation” down at the farmhouse. A cop agrees and checks the place out all by himself. He nails a bunch of the zombified-teens in the head, but there’s too many for one man to kill. He flees back into his patrol car, which then becomes crawling with zombies. Then, instead of—oh, I dunno—DRIVING AWAY AND COMING BACK WITH EVERYBODY ON THE FORCE AND THEIR ENTIRE ARMORY, he decides to just open a door and let himself get eaten. Mmm… bacon…!

At least it leads to my favorite scene in the movie where the two cellar-dwellers think the coast is clear and are treated to a grisly scene. The cop has been turned into ground chuck, yet as chewed-up as he is, he’s still alive! The two teens put him down with his own gun (which I’m pretty sure is illegal, I think) and flee into the night. It’s so cool, I’ll give you a bookmarked link to it!

Round 1 of the cycle is now complete. Round 2 begins as the cellar-dwellars flee to a farmhouse, the farmer and his wife get killed by the zombies, and the cellar-dwellers run away. It’s at this point in the movie where I think about how good of a filmmaker Sam Raimi is for making a better movie with a similar runtime but only five characters. 

Round 3 starts when we shift from the farmhouse to yet-another farm, where a group of kids are having a lame Halloween party with even lamer costumes. We’ve got a chicken, a guy in a blue tracksuit, and a woman in just normal clothes. The cellar-dwellers show up, explain the zombie outbreak, but are shrugged off. Then, the zombies come and kill everybody but the two original teens.

The next morning (November 1st), a group of gun-wielding guys play Duck Hunt with almost every zombie we’ve seen so far, including the now-turned partygoers. It’s like that one sequence in Dawn of the Dead where the hillbillies have a coffee-and-cannibal-killing party, except there’s no masculinity-reinforcing country needledrop.

The cellar-dwellers, having gone back to their familiar turf, have a poorly written heart-to-heart that should’ve been introduced much earlier in the film. It just feels like a last-minute attempt to make you feel for the characters before—spoiler alert!—they’re mistaken for zombies and shot by the extermination squad. 

Although Night of the Living Dead is public domain (I don’t know if I came up with this joke or not, but the only thing George Romero does better than making movies is not making any money off of them. I think that’s a RedLetterMedia zinger), “Story by S. William Hinzman” is a bit of an undeserved credit. Not only is Romero the creator of the modern zombie as we know it, but this film so heavily draws from the ending of Night of the Living Dead that I can see why Romero sent Hinzman a cease-and-desist letter. (Plus, as you can tell from this review, there isn’t a lot of a ‘story’ to begin with. To put it nicely, the movie “finds a rhythm.”) 

Anyway, the cops throw the bodies of the cellar-dwellers into a barn and torch it, also burning the remaining zombies still inside. Later on, a cop inspects the rubble, and is surprise-attacked by the still-alive Flesheater, starting the outbreak once more. The Flesheater mogs at the camera one last time, but that’s not the last time we’ll see him! Check out the dogshit “30th Anniversary Edition” of Night of the Living Dead, where The Cemetery Zombie’s backstory is filled out in bonus non-Romero-approved scenes filmed in the late 90’s. Did you ever want The Cemetery Zombie to have something in common with The Jeepers Creepers Creeper and Remake Freddy Krueger? No? Well, me neither! 

Overall, Flesheater is a perfectly fine movie. For its repetitive plot that borrows heavily from the work of George Romero, it’s got enough surprisingly-decent gore and moves at a quick enough pace to keep you… somewhat… entertained. I can imagine that this is best enjoyed as background visuals at a Halloween party, but on its own? Well, check it out if you’re like me and you’re scraping the bottom of the Tubi barrel.

[This review was originally posted on 3/28/2026 via my Patreon. Subscribe for just $1.50 a month and get early access to not only my book/movie/TV/album reviews, but to my artwork, comics, and creative writing, too!]