I’m typically an easy mark for an anthology series. When you add in the EC Comics label, you especially have my interest. Unfortunately, the debut issue of Oni’s latest horror anthology is a pretty uneven affair, but it’s not without a few gruesome thrills.
Things get off to a rocky start with “What’s the Deal With Voodoo?” by John Arcudi, Patrick Piazzalunga, and Alessandro Santoro, which pits an exaggeratedly “woke” couple against an offensive standup comic who is more than he appears to be. Now, EC Comics stories have traditionally been over-the-top affairs, indulging in graphic violence and wild tonal swings to tell darkly comic morality tales. The fact that this story is incredibly silly isn’t exactly the problem. The problem here is that everyone just kind of yells their motivations out loud. The characters protesting the offensive standup shout in monologues explaining their stances and the comedian brags about none of his audiences liking him.
There’s no sense of subtlety, even by the standards of this type of heightened morality tale. It reads like a takedown of overly-woke people that has simply boiled them down to a series of buzzwords. Said buzzwords are written in larger typeface and bolded, just in case you missed that the author thinks phrases like “racist dog whistle” and “gaslighting” are worthy of ridicule. It’s barely satire, and reads more like a list of complaints, capped by an ending that comes out of nowhere. A vampire was wearing a mask that makes him look like a zombie? All right.
Oni Press
The second story, “Quintana Roo,” is a bit more entertaining, if lightweight in terms of plotting. A group of vacationers travel a bit too far into the jungle and become overrun by an ancient force. Marguerite Bennett’s script raises some interesting philosophical questions as it draws comparisons between the psychic strain of colonization and industrialization and the echoes of pain seen in a classic haunted house story. It’s a very heady concept for this type of book, and I appreciate the effort put towards giving this one a bit more thematic weight. However, the real reason for the season here is arguably the wild gore supplied by Dan McDaid and Michelle Madsen. All in all, this story has a real mean streak that I appreciated, even though it doesn’t have a ton of space to flesh out some of its concepts.
My favorite of the new stories here is Matt Kindt, David Lapham, and Nick Filardi’s “Garden Variety,” which seemingly borrows some cues from Hannibal and takes things several steps beyond the level of dark humor and violence of that show. Like many classic EC Comics stories, this one is primarily told from the first-person POV of a serial killer, only this guy gets his kicks by using humans as fertilizer for his gourmet mushrooms. The focus character is darkly amusing, as is the late twist that will ruin more than a few appetites. Again, there’s some truly gruesome gore here at the end of the story, yet it manages to make the story’s punchline hit even harder. Of all of the new tales here, this one feels like the clearest spiritual successor to the classic EC books, though it’s a bit light as well.
Capping off this first issue is a reprint of a classic Shock SuspenStories tale, “Halloween” by William M. Gaines, Al Feldstein, and Graham Engels. Originally published in 1952, this one has all the earmarks of an old school EC Comics installment: a hapless protagonist, a moral quandary, and a gruesome twist that gives our villain his comeuppance. You may be able to figure out where the story is going a few pages before the big reveal, but “Halloween” still provides some dark fun and cheese in equal measure.
Overall, Catacomb of Torment is a mixed bag. There are some fun ideas here, but aside from the first story that started things with a bad taste in my mouth, the book as a whole didn’t leave much of an impression on me. Your mileage may vary, but I’m left hoping the next issue is stronger.
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