Today's book was not what I thought it was going to be: From 2018, Avengers Halloween Special #1, featuring "The Eyes Have It" Written Rob Fee, art by Eoin Marron, color art by Mike Spicer; "Whatever Happened to the Richards Family?" Written by Gerry Duggan, art by Laura Braga, color art by Arif Prianto; "The Thing From Another Time" Written by Jen and Sylvia Soska, art by Jonas Scharf, color art by Jordan Boyd; "Punisher of the Opera" Written by Jay Baruchel, art by Luca Pizzari, color art by Michael Garland; and "Haunted Mansion" Written by Robbie Thompson, art by Bob Quinn, color art by Cris Peter.
The title page is a repurposed Vicente Alcazar Satana, warning the reader the heroes are gone, and monsters are in their place. I kinda thought the whole thing was going to be reprints, but no; the rest is new. Sort of. These are mostly versions of classic horror stories, repurposed with Avengers. Or other heroes, as in the opening "The Eyes Have It," where Matt Murdock finally gets new eyes. It's strictly in horror movie territory, so I don't think it's a spoiler to tell you he's not going to like what he sees. That could be a riff on anything from Dead Man's Eyes to the Eye; it's fairly well-trod ground, but still nicely done, especially since I wasn't expecting it right off the bat.
Next, in "Whatever Happened to the Richards Family?" Doctor Doom attacks the FF, not for his usual vengeance, but because only he has realized the horrifying truth about them. There may or may not be a direct horror analog for that one (or if it's the first one that occurs to me, it'd be a spoiler) but "The Thing From Another Time" wears its influence on its sleeve: it's John Carpenter's the Thing with Iron Man versus another thing from the ice, Captain America! Guest-starring (briefly!) Colossus and Deadpool! It's an interesting homage; but I'm not sure if it needed a few more pages to play out, or if the bit would've worn too thin if pressed further.
"Punisher of the Opera" is an odd mashup spin on two stories you know, as a French Francis Castiglione avenges his wife, a murdered opera singer. I liked that one better than "Haunted Mansion," where some kids explore the spooky, abandoned Xavier's School for the Gifted, and find some literal and figurative ghosts.
DC seems to do this type of story more often (as we'll see Thursday!) so I wonder if this was Marvel testing the market. I don't know if all of DC's stories are as um, directly inspired, as this one was. I wouldn't mind if Marvel tried this again, though: you could pretty easily get a few issues out of Spider-Man horror.
1 comment:
Nice. I think Spider-Man's definitely visited the horror genre when he grew 4 extra arms in the classic ASM#100. Then there's What If?#88 (Vol.2) where he turns into a hideous man-spider, Spider-Man: The Hundred, where an old bully of his gets bitten by the same radioactive spider, turning into a hundred intelligent spiders who eats people from the inside-out, and finally the from one of those Edge of the Spider-Verse minis, a version of Peter Parker who's abused by his uncle and turns into a violent, hideous man-spider....who's promptly killed by morlun =, but not before biting and infecting his world's Mary Jane, thus passing on the curse.
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