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Screamland #1

By Dan Horn
July 27, 2011 - 16:37

It's no secret that Image has an absolutely stacked repertoire of creative talent. Chew just took home an Eisner, and Marine Man and Morning Glories just barely missed out in a pretty competitive award season. The publisher seems to be making all of the right choices, picking up the most interesting creators with the most unique properties and helping them turn those ideas into the comic books we love to pick up and read every Wednesday. They've also got an excellent price point, which makes picking their books up that much easier.

Screamland is an excellent addition to Image Comics' embarrassment of riches. Co-writers Harold Sipe and Christopher Sebela imagine monsters like those from the early Universal horror pictures as literal aberrations, bestial immigrants from across the globe (and one from space) that once flocked to Hollywood to cash-in on their peculiarities, but now are washed-up convention-circuit celebrities or pornographers due to the advent of CGI effects.

When Devil Fish, a play on the idea of the Creature from the Black Lagoon, OD's at a party, the Invisible Man decides it's time to make the Golden Age monsters relevant again. He announces at a convention that he'll be screening Devil Fish's final film, Phantasmagorgya, a porno-movie that just might show Hollywood's other monstrous denizens in extremely poor form, to the convention attendees. Travis, a William Shatner-like character, and his werewolf buddy, Carl London, gather up all of the rest of the con creatures to put a stop to the screening, but when one of them winds up murdered, the question isn't just "whodunnit," but "what the hell is on that film, and where has it gone?"

Screamland presents a totally novel idea with enough heart and wit to make you sympathize and relate to its strange cast of characters. Its narrative is  sincere and humanizing, its artwork a blast to pore over. Leslie's cartooning is fun and imaginative, and Mellon's work on the Invisible Man backup story is gorgeous, ingeniously unraveling panel work like so much gauze and film. This first issue does a fine job of constructing its standout premise and giving us a taste of things to come. In Screamland, Image has another all-star on its roster.

Rating: 8.5 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12