2000 AD online

$A review of Tharg’s Terror Tales Presents… at the Graphics Novel Reporter: While the majority of 2000AD titles targeting American readers have focused upon highly recognizable talents who have worked for Marvel and DC such as Moore, Andy Diggle and Jock, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Brian Bolland, and Dave Gibbons to name but a few, Tharg’s Terror Tales signals the second publication spotlighting artist Frazer Irving, an honor not afforded any other 2000AD writer or illustrator (Storming Heaven: The Frazer Irving Collection was published in 2007). Not only does Tharg’s Terror Tales collect Irving’s first full-length black and white strip for 2000AD—Necronauts—but also his first professional color work with A Love Like Blood. Rounding out the volume are shorter five-page strips of Irving’s early efforts alongside Sunday newspaper-format comics originally published in Metal Hammer magazine. Although Irving had worked before with a colorist, A Love Like Blood signifies his first solo coloring efforts employing digital tools in Photoshop. While the narrative of pretty vampires versus werewolves has become commonplace with film franchises such as Underworld and Twilight, this 2000-2001 work predates them as writer John Smith weaves a romantic tale of horror between a male vampire and female werewolf. Visually, Irving’s color work is rough and somewhat distracting in places as he wrestles with a diverse palette of hues to correspond with his utilization of fractured and angled panel layouts. Signature magentas and turquoises appear and are much better conveyed when Irving dials it back with the Reefer Madness and Mars Needs Mates strips. Both strips represented a shift in his artistic process and approach, and the results are apparent on the page. … as a supplement to the Storming Heaven Collection (which also includes A Love Like Blood), this volume is a welcome chronicle of Irving’s award-winning 2000AD years that built his reputation in the industry and led to collaborations with authors such as Morrison, Joe Casey, David Hine, Kieron Gillen, Matt Fraction, Ray Fawkes, Phil Hester, and a variety of others. Engaging tales with a glimpse at rare Irving art, Tharg’s Terror Tales is a significant move into the American graphic novel market. More.$

A review of Tharg’s Terror Tales Presents… at the Graphics Novel Reporter:

While the majority of 2000AD titles targeting American readers have focused upon highly recognizable talents who have worked for Marvel and DC such as Moore, Andy Diggle and Jock, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Brian Bolland, and Dave Gibbons to name but a few, Tharg’s Terror Tales signals the second publication spotlighting artist Frazer Irving, an honor not afforded any other 2000AD writer or illustrator (Storming Heaven: The Frazer Irving Collection was published in 2007). Not only does Tharg’s Terror Tales collect Irving’s first full-length black and white strip for 2000AD—Necronauts—but also his first professional color work with A Love Like Blood. Rounding out the volume are shorter five-page strips of Irving’s early efforts alongside Sunday newspaper-format comics originally published in Metal Hammer magazine.

Although Irving had worked before with a colorist, A Love Like Blood signifies his first solo coloring efforts employing digital tools in Photoshop. While the narrative of pretty vampires versus werewolves has become commonplace with film franchises such as Underworld and Twilight, this 2000-2001 work predates them as writer John Smith weaves a romantic tale of horror between a male vampire and female werewolf. Visually, Irving’s color work is rough and somewhat distracting in places as he wrestles with a diverse palette of hues to correspond with his utilization of fractured and angled panel layouts. Signature magentas and turquoises appear and are much better conveyed when Irving dials it back with the Reefer Madness and Mars Needs Mates strips. Both strips represented a shift in his artistic process and approach, and the results are apparent on the page.

…

as a supplement to the Storming Heaven Collection (which also includes A Love Like Blood), this volume is a welcome chronicle of Irving’s award-winning 2000AD years that built his reputation in the industry and led to collaborations with authors such as Morrison, Joe Casey, David Hine, Kieron Gillen, Matt Fraction, Ray Fawkes, Phil Hester, and a variety of others. Engaging tales with a glimpse at rare Irving art, Tharg’s Terror Tales is a significant move into the American graphic novel market.

More.

A review of Tharg’s Terror Tales Presents… at Comics Bulletin:

Tharg’s Terror Tales is essentially British publisher 2000 AD’s version of the classic anthology horror comics like Creepy and Eerie. 2000 AD is best known for post-apocalyptic comics like Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog. Because of that, and because of the quasi-si-fisscene on the cover, I was expecting some sort of futuristic comedy horror set in roughly the same universe. I was wrong.

The eponymous Tharg the Mighty is only the alien horror host, and the stories inside are pure weird fiction joy. There is a little tongue-in-cheekiness, but that is all in the true-to-style asides by the horror host. The comic is split into two stories; Necronauts and A Love Like Blood, and a few bonus backup stories.

Necronauts teams up Houdini, Doyle, Lovecraft, and Fort. While that seems like pure genre fan fiction, Houdini actually did personally know both Doyle and Lovecraft. Only the Charles Fort connection is tenuous. And instead of some hokey team-up, writer Gordon Rennie plays it straight and fits the encounter into their real lives to make it plausible. Houdini stays too long in one of his escapes and bridges the gap to the world of death, where he finds something horrible. Doyle, in one of his séances, learns of the threat to Houdini, and together they gather Fort and Lovecraft to do battle with the monsters. Houdini plans to go again into the void, and Lovecraft will serve as his guide through the Dreaming realms he knows so well.

The story is just insanely cool. As a fan of Doyle and Lovecraft and a former subscriber to Fortean Times, this story was just a treat.

A Love Like Blood is such a clichéd story I didn’t think anyone could write it again and keep me interested. But John Smith managed to spin the Romeo and Juliet as Vampire/Werewolf loves trope with enough new twists that I was fascinated. The young couple on the run was my favorite park of the story, as hatred of their love was enough to unite the thousand-year feud between the vampire and werewolf clans. I have to say the ending was a bit weak, but otherwise this was a real solid yarn.

As a bonus, there are a few short stories at the end that are riffs on old ’50s cautionary tales like Reefer Madness, or the terrors of the hippie and metal sub-cultures. But now the reefer madness causes cannibalism, and Woodstock is loud enough to wake the dead — literally. These stories ranged from a few pages to a few panels, but all of them were clever and good for a laugh.

More.