With only about two months until Halloween, what better way to get prepared than reading a collection of bone chilling stories? Oliver Boiscommun and Denis-Pierre Filippi are bringing three mysterious tales to life in this Halloween Tales collection. Plus if you’re not only into the scary and sneaky, there are even some life lessons to be learned. Take a chance and see what lies inside Halloween Tales, which Humanoids is releasing this September.
Boiscommun has done a great job connecting the storylines and they’re really interesting to read. To be honest, when I started to read this set I wasn’t really looking for much emotion. I was hoping for some great scary stories and maybe a twist or two. One of the great things you find is that he’s really trying to work some serious topics into the underlying suspense.
You’ve got three stories to read here: "Halloween," "The Book of Jack," and "The Story of Joe." Out of the three, "Halloween" is definitely a favorite. It’s not the spookiest or the best story, but it gave me a bad case of the feels. You start reading and you don’t expect the extent of emotions that will take you over. The visuals are spectacular with this one. The main character is a little girl who’s in her Halloween costume, which becomes a part of her story and really showcases her torment. As you probably expect, there’s a lot of dark and light contrast throughout the book but there’s an amazing amount of detail in even the most basic shadows.
The next story — all in black and white — is "The Story of Joe." I honestly got lost with this one and had to read it a few times to get the idea of what was going on. The first read made me think he was just imagining what was happening — it’s more of a mysterious puzzle than the other two sections. The art worked really well with the story idea, though. It’s a nice change into a darker area.
"The Book of Jack" is a pretty intense read. The premise behind the story is pretty disturbing but allows the imagination to go wild. It’s got a nice Hocus Pocus feel to it.
What’s really nice is that you have the same characters from Halloween throughout the other stories, they just branch off and make their own path. Just be aware if you’re looking for intense, gory ghosts and ghouls you won’t find it here. There are some creepy creatures and spooky sections but nothing really over the top.
If anything, some of the stories could be a little better organized. I lost a few key points in some places with a bit of an overstimulated page here and there. I would have liked to see some more definition in some of the characters’ appearances. It looks like they kept the blurry edges to help with the feeling of the stories but it could have been done a bit better.
I absolutely love the meaningful undertones of each story. I would definitely suggest this to the avid spooky reader but be wary that it’s not as scary as one may expect. The stories flow wonderfully together and all three stand alone very well too. This is a great addition to the Humanoids collection of works.
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