Tag Archives: caitlin r. kiernan

Richard Corben’s Tale of Backwoods Terror Rat God arrives in a Special Hardcover Edition this Fall

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Dark Horse Books presents Rat God, a new hardcover edition of Richard Corben’s Lovecraft and Appalachian horror-inspired stories. Written and illustrated by Eisner Hall of Fame inductee Corben, colored by Beth Corben Reed, and with remastered lettering by Nate Piekos, this updated edition is the next beautifully designed hardcover volume to join the Richard Corben library. It includes a foreword by Bram Stoker Award-Winning author Caitlín R. Kiernan and both the original black-and-white and color versions of the long out-of-print short comic, “The Rats in the Walls.”

Terrible things stalk the forests outside Arkham in this chilling original tale from comics master Richard Corben! An arrogant city slicker on a quest to uncover the background of a young woman from the backwoods finds horrors beyond imagining, combining Lovecraftian mutations with Native American legends.

Rat God (184 pages, hardcover, 8” x 11”) will be available in bookstores and comic shops on November 18 and 19, 2025. It is now available for pre-order at Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and your local comic shop or bookstore for $39.99.

Rat God

Review: Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #5

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Trapped in the twisted grip of the Asquith sisters, Dancy and Maisie have resigned themselves to certain fate—but even as the end approaches, Dancy uncovers a horrifying secret that could shake her entire world to its core!

Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #5 is the final issue of this strange, and at times just plain weird mini-series. For some frustrating reason, this final issue reveals why Dancy was resurrected. Oddly enough that leaves her more bitter than she already was, as the bird finds a way to save her. Downside in saving her, by turning the enemy of my enemy is my friend idea into a double crossing reality.

Like the previous issues, the art is superb even if the world seems to grow some in this issue. The story of the reason of why Dancy was resurrected is extremely well done, showcasing the strange past of the supernatural world.  While the final few pages are much more tragic in tone as Dancy’s lover dies, showcasing the true power Dancy has buried within her.

Story: Caitlin R. Kiernan Art: Daniel Warren Johnson
Story: 8 Art: 9 Overall: 8.5 Recommendation: Buy

Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Review: Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #4

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No sooner has Dancy been reunited with Maisie than she finds her lover violently wrested from her embrace! Now, as Maisie is held captive by a psychotic pair of gun-toting sisters, Dancy risks everything to save the woman she loves—even if it means dying . . . again.

Bang………..as a dog dies, but is only heard through a phone. Waking up, and realizing your all alone in your, rundown motel with a talking raven. A scribbled note on the wall next to you, revealing a pair of gun-toting sisters have kidnapped your lover. All that happens to Dancy, but she finally learns why she was brought back to life.

The strange, creepy factor is defiantly kicked up a notch in the artwork.  This issue is much more graphic, about the more occult role as things have nearly fully unfolded with only one issue remaining. Despite all the strangeness of the art, it is still superb.

Story: Caitlin R. Kiernan Art: Daniel Warren Johnson
Story: 8.5 Art: 9 Overall: 8.75 Recommendation: Buy

Dark Horse Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Review: Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #3

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Dancy Flammarion was content to spend eternity in the nothingness of hell, but when a twisted pair of incestuous bounty hunters initiates a dark ritual, she finds herself unceremoniously cast from the afterlife into the deadly waters of the bayou! Now, new dangers are stalking Dancy, some of whom wear familiar faces . . .

Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird #3 marks the midpoint of this five issue miniseries from the writer of Silk, Caitlin R. Kiernan. Why I haven’t read Silk? I have a suspicious feeling it is dark, fantastical, and down right strange. Honestly, the more I read of this series, the more I want to buy more works form Caitlin R. Kiernan. The writing is solid, complex and filled with unique characters. Of course this issue is no exception, as the past comes to life. Reuniting lovers, strangers, and a good chunk of backstory. Looking forward to the next issue.

The art by Daniel Warren Johnson continues the realism, as more occult influence begins to appear. Of course the art manage to create flashbacks of Dancy as she is brought out of the muddy waters of a swamp. The characters continue the streak of having a feeling of life, as they try to navigate the strangeness of the world.

Story: Caitlin R. Kiernan Art: Daniel Warren Johnson
Story: 8.5  Art: 9.0 Overall: 8.75 Recommendation: Buy

Dark Horse Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Review: Alabaster: The Good, The Bad, and the Bird #2

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Our deadly, psychotic, bloodthirsty hero is dead. Who will save us now?

Maisie makes a meager living conning the bereaved, even as she still mourns the loss of her friend and lover Dancy. But a pair of twisted bounty-hunting twins are planning to enact a mysterious occult ritual, and Maisie may soon find herself confronting a ghost from her own past.

If you are going with comics that qualify as “weird,” or “strange,” Alabaster: The Good, The Bad, and the Bird is defiantly a good, albeit interesting, place to start since there is only a few issues. The strange story, written by Caitlin R Kiernan, only gets stranger. Which may be an understatement since this issue has talking birds, were-wolfs, among other things. The strangeness of the story, continues as new characters are introduced, including a medium with a talking bird as a pet. Which makes me wonder what the three remaining issues have in store.

While the story may be strange, the artwork by Daniel Warren Johnson is not. It does serve the purpose in spades, of amplifying the strangeness of the story. The amount of small details put into the background, is impressive.

Story: Caitlin R Kiernan Art: Daniel Warren Johnson
Story: 8.5 Art: 9.0 Overall: 8.75 Recommendation: Buy

Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Review: Alabaster: The Good, the Bad and the Bird #1

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23973“Kiernan is the poet and the bard of the wasted and the lost.”—Neil Gaiman

A new evil haunts the sun-scorched back roads and ghost towns of the American South—murderous twins who command a legion of ghouls. Once again, Dancy Flammarion must face down demons: both those who walk the world unchallenged and those in her own shattered mind.

***Warning this comic isn’t appropriate for children***

Given the testimonial for Neil Gaiman, I expected Alabaster: The Good, the Bad and the Bird #1 would be weird. Well, I got what I expected and than some. The story, written by Cailtlin Kiernan, follows a dead monster and her trip the hell, or at least the writer’s idea of hell. Complete with odd flashbacks of her life, strange monstrous creatures, and even a very bizarre angel. In vast contrast to the seemingly never ending white space of hell, there are events that take place in the land of the living, following a “business man,” and two others.

The cover done by Greg Ruth is an oddly,captivating masterpiece that only underpins the complexity of the story that lies contained beneath it. Even the artwork contained inside done by Daniel Warren Johnson continues the odd mystery of the main character. In contrast to the extreme amount of white that is where her soul is contained, the world of living is much more colorful. That gives the world the silent breath of life, and causes it to feel almost real.

Story: Caitlin R Kiernan Art: Daniel Warren Johnson
Story: 8.5 Art: 9.5 Overall: 9 Recommendation: Buy (but wait for a few issues to be out)

Dark Horse provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

Preview: Alabaster: The Good, The Bad, and The Bird #1

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Alabaster: The Good, The Bad, and The Bird #1

Caitlín R. Kiernan (W), Daniel Warren Johnson (A), Greg Ruth (Cover)
On sale December 9, FOC November 16.

A new evil haunts the sun-scorched back roads and ghost towns of the American South—murderous twins who command a legion of ghouls. Once again, Dancy Flammarion must face down demons: both those who walk the world unchallenged and those in her own shattered mind.

Alabaster The Good, The Bad, and The Bird #1 1

SDCC 2014: Dark Horse Kicks Off the Show Announcing 12 Creator-Owned Series

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Dark Horse Comics is kicking this year’s San Diego Comic-Con off right, announcing twelve new creator-owned series from twelve creative teams that will take the world’s most popular art form to new levels through 2015!

Colder: The Bad Seed

Writer: Paul Tobin
Artist: Juan Ferreyra
On sale October 22, 2014

Life goes on for Declan Thomas after his deadly encounter with the psychotic Nimble Jack, but Declan’s strange powers continue to develop, offering him a profound connection with the nature of insanity. Little does he know that the malevolent Swivel wishes to pick up where Nimble Jack left off!

Hellboy and the B.P.R.D.

Writer: Mike Mignola with John Arcudi
Artist: Alexander Maleev
On sale December 3, 2014

A bizarre series of murders and rumors of something worse lead Professor Bruttenholm to send a young Hellboy to a Brazilian village on his first mission. Hellboy and a small group of agents uncover something terrible in the shadows of a sixteenth-century Portuguese fortress . . .

Lady Killer

Writers: Joëlle Jones, Jamie S. Rich
Artist: Joëlle Jones
On sale January 7, 2015

The Schullers are every bit the American family: father, mother, and twin girls. Daddy has a good job, and though he works in the city, he can afford a nice house for his family in the suburbs. It’s a good place for the kids to grow up, away from the crime and questionable morals of city life. But what if the crime and the violence aren’t that far away? What if Mom isn’t just a housekeeper and a cook, but she’s also a highly paid professional assassin?

Dead Vengeance

Writer: Bill Morrison
Artist: Stéphane Roux
On sale January 21, 2015

It’s 1940, and a phony body on exhibit in a carnival sideshow suddenly springs to life and shambles away. Not so phony after all, he is John Doe, radio commentator and archenemy of Detroit’s notorious Purple Gang. But why did he disappear in 1930, and why did the mayor, the mob, and the cops all want him dead?

EI8HT

Creators: Rafael Albuquerque and Mike Johnson
Coming February 2015

Welcome to the Meld, an inhospitable dimension in time where Joshua, a chrononaut, finds himself trapped. With no memory or feedback from the team of scientists that sent him there, he can’t count on anything but his heart and a stranger’s voice to guide him to his destiny.

Neverboy

Writer: Shaun Simon
Artist: Tyler Jenkins
Colorist: Kelly Fitzpatrick
On sale March 4, 2015!

In what world do you belong?

Neverboy, an abandoned imaginary friend, wants the real world. Julian Drag, a struggling artist, wants the imaginary.
When Neverboy’s drugs wear off, the surreal hangover he’s been running from sets in. And a trip down the rabbit hole is just what Julian has been dying for. When these two meet, the real and the imaginary worlds collide in absolute chaos. Julian and Neverboy, the dreamer and the dream, will have to face who they are in order to put things right again.

The Black Hammer

Writer: Jeff Lemire
Artist: Dean Ormston
On sale March 11, 2015

They were the greatest heroes of a lost era. But the age of heroes is over, and Abraham Slam, Col. Weird, Golden Gail, Barbalien, and Madame Dragonfly have been wiped out of continuity! Following a cosmic battle known only as the Event, the heroes awoke on a farm in a small town they are unable to leave, with the massive iron hammer of a fallen teammate the only reminder of the world they came from. As their tenth anniversary on Black Hammer Farm nears, they’ve largely given up on any chance of return, until the arrival of the Black Hammer’s daughter throws their new existence into chaos! The Black Hammer is part human drama, part multiverse-spanning adventure, and part journey into the DNA of the superhero genre!

PastAways

Writer: Matt Kindt
Artist: Scott Kolins
On sale March 18, 2015

When a deep-time research mission goes awry, four future explorers find themselves stranded in our present, where a side effect of their mission grants them unexpected immortality! As further time breaches cause dinosaurs to appear in Greece and buildings from the future to crash into Toronto, the unlikely heroes find themselves humanity’s best line of defense from the onslaught of time itself! The team achieves worldwide fame, and their adventures become more and more bizarre, even as their failure to get back to their own time leads to infighting and catastrophe!

Rebels

Writer: Brian Wood
Artist: Andrea Mutti
Colorist: Jordie Bellaire
Cover Artist: Tula Lotay
Coming April 2015

From Brian Wood, the creator of DMZ, Northlanders, and The Massive, comes Rebels, a gritty, ground-level look at the men and women who fought to win independence from tyranny and those who would stand in their way.
Cocreator Andrea Mutti (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) illustrates the opening story, introducing us to the Green Mountain Boys, America’s first militia, and one young couple’s journey across the battlefields of New England. Colorist Jordie Bellaire and cover artist Tula Lotay complete the team with gorgeous palettes and striking illustrations.

Harrow County

Writer: Cullen Bunn
Artist: Tyler Crook
On sale April 8, 2015

“Her earliest memories were of the taste of freshly turned earth and the bleating of goats.”
There’s them that say you ought not get lost in Harrow County. Because once you lose your way among the pines and briar thistles and those sweet-smelling scuppernong, you won’t never find your way back. Born on the very day a hateful witch was put to violent death, seventeen-year-old Emmy has always felt a bit lost . . . but never alone. The deep, dark woods surrounding her home crawl with ghosts, goblins, and the restless dead. These haints whisper to Emmy, promising her that she has great power, warning her that the people of Harrow County want her dead.

Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird

Writer: Caitlín R. Kiernan
Artist: Joëlle Jones
On sale May 20, 2015

A year after Dancy Flammarion’s death in a burning barn, her seraph comes to collect her from a hell of her own creation. A new evil haunts the sun-scorched back roads and ghost towns of the American South: murderous twins who command a legion of ghouls. Once again, Dancy must face down demons, both those who walk the world unchallenged and those in her own shattered mind.

Fight Club 2

Writer: Chuck Palahniuk
Artist: Cameron Stewart
Cover Artist: David Mack
Coming May 2015

The first rule is you don’t talk about it.

Review: Dark Horse Presents #26

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22732As usual, Dark Horse provides tales of intrigue, terror, fear, fun, and excitement in the latest edition of the everything-and-anything anthology Dark Horse Presents #26. This series is a keystone in Dark Horse’s publishing career, as it draws together all of the elements that have made Dark Horse a fantastic company highly deserving of its spot as the third largest comic book seller in America. More so, it was Dark Horse’s main title starting in 1986, cancelled in 2000, and then revived on MySpace (of all places) between 2007 and 2010, with the current volume restarting in print in April 2011.

This month’s issue features eleven stories, some of them in on-going series that have been featured previously in DHP (e.g. the Trekker, Underground, Nexus, Alabaster), some that are debuts for new DHP series (Nosferatu Wars, Juice Squeezers), others that are one-shots, and a Buffy tie-in by television series writer Espenson. Plus, it continues the “Crime Does not Pay” series, which was the title of a famous 1950s comics series.

There’s just too much to review, so I’m only going to focus on my two favorite picks from Dark Horse Presents #26, “Nosferatu Wars” and “Steggy Wilmot and Spimps,” though my rating reflects the book as a whole. And don’t let my selections deter you from thinking there’s other incredible stories in this volume, because believe me, there are.

“Nosferatu Wars” was my favorite of the stories, a tale of vampires during the Black Plague which had my mind turning to Boccaccio’s Decameron (sorry, obscure), and which has a rather limited narrative. It’s written by Steve Niles, a horror master and current writer of Dark Horse’s Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem (not a horror story), and I was surprised to find that “Nosferatu Wars” reads like a hastily put together, cheesy tale of haute societe vampires, despite its definite narrative hook.

The highly realistic art of mMnton3 reminds one of the trompe-l’oeil style popularized in comics by Neal Adams in the 1960s, and has the ring of the fantastic work by Philip S. Tan on the early Savage Hawkman New 52 books (before that run got pretty bad and waned into nonexistence). But comparisons of Menton3’s art to others don’t do Menton3 any justice, as “Nosferatu Wars” has a nature all its own, unique and complex and lively and dead all at the same time.

Just as appealing, but much weirder…significantly so, is Patrick Alexander’s “Steggy Wilmot and Spimps,” which is a pointlessly hilarious and absurd day in the life of an extremely rich billionaire with a sad pig, an ugly butler, and a desire to write a newspaper. In just four pages, Alexander manages to astound and confuse with his out-of-this-world potato-head cast. I really don’t have a clue what’s going on with this story, and I imagine it’s like a rich British man on LSD, but I certainly hope we get more of Alexander’s “Steggy Wilmot and Spimps” weirdness. It’s just gotta happen, right?

Despite being an anthology—and one might fear that some bad eggs could slip in—editor Mike Richardson has ensured a batch of high-quality comics, which run the gamut of realistic horror to funny strip to classic sci-fi. While Dark Horse Presents #26 isn’t for everyone, I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in sampling the diverse possibilities of graphic narratives, as well as those who are fans of the genres or writers/artists featured in this issue. DHP certainly delivers.

Story: Ron Randall, Steve Niles, Andrew Vachss, Mike Richardson, David Lapham, Mike Baron, Patrick Alexander, Jane Espenson, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Frank Bariere, Dara Naraghi  Art: Ron Randall, Menton3, Dominic Reardon, David Lapham, Steve Rude, Patrick Alexander, Patric Reynolds, Karl Moline, Andy Owens, Steve Lieber, Micah Kaneshiro, Tom Williams
Story: 8  Art: 8  Overall: 8  Recommendation: Read

Free Comic Book Day Offering To Include Kiernan’s Alabaster!

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DARK HORSE’S FREE COMIC BOOK DAY OFFERINGS TO INCLUDE A SPECIAL FOUR-PAGE STORY FROM CAITLÍN R. KIERNAN AND STEVE LIEBER’S ALABASTER

FEBRUARY 27, MILWAUKIE, OR—One of Dark Horse’s most-anticipated new series premiered in the company’s flagship anthology last week in Dark Horse Presents #9.

Dark Horse celebrates this event with additional news today that Caitlín R. Kiernan’s highly anticipated new series will now be included in both of Dark Horse’s Free Comic Book Day books, with two pages in each book, to expose this exciting new series to as wide an audience as possible!

Alabaster is based on Caitlín R. Kiernan’s fan-favorite Dancy Flammarion stories, a dark fantasy series centered around a teenage protagonist of striking appearance and hidden, terrible depths. For nearly as long as she can remember, seventeen-year-old Dancy Flammarion has fought monsters, cutting a bloody swath through the demons and dark things of the world, aimed like a weapon by a merciless seraph more taskmaster than guardian.

This special four-page story, told across Dark Horse’s two FCBD offerings, will give readers a compelling glimpse into Dancy’s world and the blurry line that separates her from the angels she serves—and the monsters she hunts.

Look for Alabaster: Shelter in the back of both Dark Horse’s Star Wars/Serenity and Buffy/The Guild Free Comic Book Day comics on Saturday, May 5. Remember, you have to pick up both to read the whole story!

Pick up a copy of Dark Horse Presents #9 at your local comic shop for a special sneak peek at the highly anticipated series Alabaster: Wolves!

Praise for Caitlín R. Kiernan

“One of our essential writers of dark fiction . . . a cartographer of lost worlds.”—New York Times

Praise for Steve Lieber

“Lieber’s art is stunningly refined . . . This is how a comic book should look.”—Comic Book Resources

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