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.
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!
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.)
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.
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!]
No comments:
Post a Comment