Bloke's Terrible Tomb of Terror (Graphic Novel) (Horror)

By Jason Crawley, Mike Hoffman, & Various Artists

Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform (September 27, 2013)

Softcover 200 pages 

    Collecting stories from the first eight issues of the magazine, this book is a throwback to the old black-and-white horror magazines from the 1970s as put out by Warren Publishing. A homage to titles like Eerie, Creepy, Psycho, and Vampirella, themselves a restart of the EC comics Tales from the Crypt horror lineup. Each of the stories is introduced by the mag’s Crypt Keeper-esq narrator, Bloke. Based on the writer, he sports Victorian era clothes and top hat, and spouts bad horror themed puns at the beginning and end of each story. There are twenty two tales in this volume, averaging about six pages each, some standard horror, some science fiction. 

    Most of the stories are your common horror book fare with telegraphed twist endings, people returning from the dead to reap revenge, alien invasions, vampires, and werewolves. If you read any of the previous magazines then you should be familiar with them. None really stand out, except for an adaptation of Richard Matheson’s short story The Crickets. They do tend to get better as the book moves along, however. Looking back on the old stories in other magazines, there was always a greater sense of depth to them. These stories seem a bit sparse, some more padding around the edges and detail would improve them dramatically.

    The art however is amazing, rich and detailed. Each story is done in nearly a different style, but never wavers in quality or texture. Quite frankly it’s worth buying for the art alone. This book would appeal more to those who look back on the old magazine with nostalgia… and that’s the trouble. Reading this made me want to dig out my old Warren back issues and read a better class of horror story. 

           For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.