Review: DC House of Horror #1
An all-new, all-creepy one-shot set in the DC Universe-just in time for Halloween! Martha Kent fights for her life against a creature from a spacecraft that lands in front of her farmhouse. A young woman is possessed by the spirit of a murderous Amazon warrior. The last surviving member of the Justice League faces down a horror beyond imagining. All these and more are what happens when the most exciting new voices in contemporary horror fiction are paired with the talents of some of the greatest artists in the DC firmament!
Take classic DC characters and attempt to do an EC spin on it and you get this anthology comic timed for Halloween. While the stories themselves are written by various individuals, the plots of each story is credited to Keith Giffen.
As a whole, there’s only one or two stories that really stand out to me and generally while it’s an entertaining read, it’s hard to justify the $9.99 price point. The stories too are attempts at throwbacks including the focus on violence against women which six or seven decades ago might have been ok, but today, at times, feels cringe worthy. And that’s not in a good way. Instead the stories are a bit cookie cutter in that way and there’s just nothing really new that stands out and has me super excited about this special release. It’s all mediocre in execution and creativity.
There’s the fact that women seem to be the victims for far too many of the stories but they too seem to miss the classic twists at the end of the greats. What twists that do happen are predictable or lack a shock factor. It’s just stories without emotional reaction.
The art is numerous styles and that too is all over the place. You can see there’s an attempt to mimic classic horror tales but again it’s never quite nailed down. It never reaches the quality of the classics so its attempt to mimic that and go the homage route feels like a mistake. The art should be its own thing too.
The collection as a whole isn’t bad at all, it’s entertaining, but it’s not $9.99 entertaining. You can see what they were going for here, but it never quite reaches the point where it’s a good homage of classic horror comics and it also falls short of that quality. While striving for it, the package comes up short.
If you’re looking for some horror comics for the holiday season, there’s so much better that’s out there for the price point. If you’ve read all of those, then maybe this is worth it.
Story: Keith Giffen, Brian Keene, Weston Ochse, Edward Lee, Mary Saniovanni, Bryan Smith, Nick Cutter, Ronald Malfi, Wrath James White, Weston Ochse
Art: Rags Morales, Bilquis Evely, Howard Porter, Scott Kolins, Dale Eaglesham, Kyle Baker, Tom Raney , Howard Chaykin
Cover Art: Michael William Kaluta
Story: 7.0 Art: 7.0 Overall: 7.0 Recommendation: Read
DC Comics provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review
Wednesdays are new comic book day! Each week hundreds of comics are released, and that can be pretty daunting to go over and choose what to buy. That’s where we come in!