Tentacles have always been omnipresent in comics, but there’s been a true explosion of tentacular material in recent years. Sadly, the quantity is inversely proportional to the quality, and the comics market seems to be flooded with covers so aesthetically unappealing that I can’t bring myself to feature them. Still, I’ve been accumulating covers from 21st century – here are a few that I can get behind, albeit half-heartedly.
As any story loosely based on an H. P. Lovecraft character (in this case Herbert West) and featuring a crossover as the main point of interest (in this case, West is fighting Ash Williams from the Evil Dead series), this is, not to put too fine a point to it, crap.
Great Pacific has been lauded as an interesting comic with a powerful message of environmental preservation, but this is the only cover I kind of like, the others being distinctly on the ugly side (albeit abounding with tentacles). I see comics as a great merging of words and images, so when the pictorial side leaves so much to be desired, my interest in reading the story is nil — I’ll go read a book instead.
I had low expectations for Professor Dario Bava, but this was surprisingly a rather fun read, despite its extremely derivative nature, abounding, as publicity promised, naked women, monsters, exorcisms and lesbian scenes involving a nun in lingerie.
The art is not great but quite serviceable, involving a murky but non-offensive palette with some colour pops.
I can actually say that I like Brereton’s painted and colourful style (co-admin RG demurs on that point), and as he seems to quite enjoy painting tentacles, his art will surely crop up again in one of my posts.
~ ds
Who's Out There? 