Frank Marraffino

This was an interesting little read. It was a blend of noir detective story with horror a la Lovecraft. "Mutt" Manson is hired to find a young damsel, but it turns out there is more to her disappearance. The local mobster is involved as well as a local industrialist who controls a lot of the city. The plot at times is a bit hard to follow, but it still reels you in. I pretty much read this in one sitting. The gritty line drawing art style matches the setting and story well. While not the greatest manga I have read, I certainly liked it enough that I will look for the next one in the series. By the way, though part of the series, this volume does stand by itself.… (plus d'informations)

I enjoyed the first Marvel Zombies series when it originally came out, and I've followed it as it morphed from a one-shot story in the pages of the Ultimate Fantastic Four to a series of short titles. Most of them are entertaining and irreverent, coming across as more of a lark than an attempt to introduce a new dimension to the Marvel universe. In that respect, this new collection fits it perfectly, with the standard Marvel-characters-as-zombies concept embellished with the inclusion of alternate-dimension zombified Nazis and Norse gods. It's an amusing take (if one that David Brin employed to much better effect in his zombie-less novelette [b:Thor Meets Captain America|11928895|Thor Meets Captain America|David Brin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1354032397s/11928895.jpg|16889408]) but one that still feels tired for the recycling of the same basic storyline. Fans of the series may enjoy this, but perhaps it's time for Marvel to give up on zombies for good and move on to something fresher than the same old rotting corpses.… (plus d'informations)

There are not many Cthulhu mythos manga. I thought Arkham Woods by Christopher Rowley was the first, but The Dark Goodbye may predate it. Taimashin #1 has acupuncturists fighting Wilbur Whateley's twin in a book woeful except for the art. No Man's Land #1 and 2 by Jason DeAngelis finds a gunslinger fighting demons released by abuse of the Necronomicon. Apart from this device, No Man's Land is much less Cthulhu mythos than The Dark Goodbye.

After the ichor settles from the first book, we come to volume 2 of The Dark Goodbye, where Mutt is even further down the drain in the town of Gatemouth. Ephraim Wheatley (get it?) needs help as something is going wrong on his farm. The lovely femme fatale Sylvia Sliverstab needs to investigate her business partner. Professor Jefferson Pennruddock, an astronomer, has discovered some disturbing things about recent meteor showers, Pluto and the nature of dark matter. Which one will Mutt help first? Will it all tie together? In this book, imagery from The Colour Out of Space is mixed with a different take on the Fungi from Yuggoth (turns out they really are fungi...).

The artistic team hits its stride even better in volume 2. I enjoyed the art and the humor, and was willing to make allowances for the thread thin nature of the story. It is a comic after all. My main regret is there seems to be no hope for a third book for a very long time, maybe ever. Too bad, as there are plenty of tantalizing hints of what was to come. At least Mr. Rausch seems likely to continue with Lovecraftian themes.… (plus d'informations)