Broken Frontier

When Charles Wallace runs screaming from his manor house on a cold, dark, storm-laden night, only the cavalier duo of Mortimer Ridley and Alistaire Falstaff believe his wild claim that the undead have invaded his home.  Fortunately for Mr. Wallace, Ridley and Falstaff are monster hunters extraordinaire, part of a centuries-old secret society dedicated to protecting the world from just such an evil creepy crawly as Wallace purports to have living inside his manor.  Unfortunately for Mr. Wallace, Ridley and Falstaff are the only members left, and are hardly official at that.  Inept and arrogant, lazy and impulsive, and mentored by the spirit of a once-living member who hates them as much as they hate him, Wallace may have found help, but he may not have a manor to call home when they’re through with it!

Reading like a European update on Ghostbusters, Cemetery Blues is gleeful entertainment at its finest.  From its opening line to its last, the book is packed with shticks, patter, true-blue moments of eerie nightmare-inducing confrontations, and the beginnings of an epic plot a-brewin’, satisfying nearly every expectation and entertainment need.  Writer Ryan Rudio has an excellent sense of rhythm and pace, a canine-quality ear for smooth dialogue, and a morbid enough imagination to put his talents to good use in a horror book.  The story of this first CB outing, “The Curse of Wallace Manor,” capitalizes on all the concept’s strengths, offering belly-laughs, action, and plenty of sinister intrigue in three oversized issues (30 pages of story each!).

Rudio’s humor is distinctly British in flavor, which will be a definite plus for most.  The setting is present day England, though the gothic elements involved spice the story as something archaic, and so the dialogue is snappy, often obtuse, the main characters properly daft, the story regularly dipping into irreverent absurdity.  Both Rudio and artist Boatwright collaborate fluently in this, managing a humor-horror comic that is (gasp!) humorous and (eeee!) horrific.

And speaking of the wildly talented Thomas Boatwright (The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo), he handles all the gorgeous black-and-white art of CB.  Gone may be his exquisite palates as seen in EGA Poo (Cemetery Blues predates that book), but here, he wields a highly Guy Davis quality goth aesthetic to his page, and even—though the comparison will be cliché—a touch of Mignola.  Boatwright’s figures appear more along the cartoonist’s line than that of the more common comic book super-hero derivation.  Impressionistic flavors of Dylan Horrocks, Kevin Huizenga, and Doug Tenapel pervade, though the action and flow of Boatwright’s work is largely Tenapel alone: freaky, fun, and never slow, not even when it’s still.  And much like Guy Davis can often accomplish with his scrawling, unrealistic shapes, Boatwright’s moments of horror manage all the more impact for being closer to a caricatural form.

So a three issue mini, independently published, that combines dry British humor with classic EC horror standards, set within an epic, action-horror mold, and all factors used and abused with startling efficiency.  Reading this first storyarc, it’s no mystery why Jim Valentino’s  Shadowline snatched these guys up for a nationwide release.  The new Cemetery Blues series, titled “The Haunting of Hernesberg,” will be released this January, Diamond order code NOV 07 2012.  While there is an underlying, ongoing epic to the CB conceit, each mini is stand alone, an adventure complete unto itself, so whether you hunt down this past mini or pick up the new #1 from scratch, nobody should suffer any setbacks by joining in the cheeky-freaky missives of Ridley and Falstaff and their crappy mentor Lear.

If, however, you would like to give this original mini a shot, contact the creators via their website: Sequential Matinee.  Issues #1 and #2 are available at ComiXpress, though the third and final was never officially published, so drop Ryan and Thomas a line and they’ll be sure to get a copy of that out to you.  Still not convinced?  Check out the new series’ preview at Newsarama.  A new book for any fan of the BBC and Hammer Horror line of works, with a subtle spookiness that’d make Sir Edward Gorey proud (was Gorey ever knighted?  He sure should have been).