Broken Frontier

A brand new horror anthology celebrates stories filled with cerebral horrors and ghastly predicaments.

The creative team of Guild Works Productions (in association with the Comic Book Artists Guild) has put together a horror anthology with a cerebral bent to it. All the stories run about eight pages in length and there are about five different tales in total that make up the concept of Psychosis.

The strongest story in the anthology is actually the opening tale which explores one man’s guilt ridden conscience. The second tale revolves around a couple who stumbles upon a small island and gets more than they bargain for once they find out who’s inhabiting it. The third story (told in prose) details the exploits of an immortal vampire and the fourth story exposes the touchy subject of a pedophile on the hunt, but he gets the tables turned on him. Now the last story is actually the most bizarre and one that I thought would make a perfect Twilight Zone episode, as a myriad of naked people try to make sense of being trapped inside a sealed container.

Now the majority of these stories may be a mixed bag of terrors, but not all of them worked well enough in the format provided. I had a hard time following the narrative in the story called "Whiteout" (first story) and found it to be a bit choppy in parts. The dialogue shared between the couple in "Wastrel Isle" was spot on for the majority of it, and writer Robert Sodaro’s script for "Never Judge a Book" showed the most promise. I enjoyed the malevolent overtones used in his story and it built up to this sickening conclusion that left me very satisfied with his effort.

The art in the majority of the stories in this anthology were all done in a professional manner. More often than not, the art used in black and white anthologies never seems to gel well overall and the work in Psychosis actually fared greatly for my tastes. The strongest of the lot was Ed Flynn’s work on "Whiteout" which I thought showed the most skill. Matt Ryan’s art on "Never Judge a Book" was quirky looking, but it complimented the strong script that spawned the story. The pencils provided by Keith Murphey for "Wastrel Isle" flowed well from page to page and the weaker stories in "Meth" and "Desperate Skins" were a bit of letdown.

Overall though, I think Psychosis shows a lot of promise. I have always been partial to stories with a more favorable bent to them, and all five segments in this anthology all share this one common trait. I wish them the best of luck with this project given how anthologies are a tough sell, so let’s see how Psychosis fares.