The scream of someone in anguished pain.” Eventually Belial does get around to launching his evil scheme to take over London and then the world despite already bleeding from two wounds previously dealt by legendary magic sword Cortana. The angular figures posing stiffly in Curte’s randomly scattered tableaux do little to either raise or turn down the heat of a narrative that runs to lines like: “He was about to crush his lips to Alastair’s…when a scream split the air. With 11 ensemble characters (not counting the odd Greater Demon) to juggle, Clare uses up most of her chunky page count untangling the romantic snarls of the first two volumes-plus chucking in occasional attacks by lesser demons or raving maniac Tatiana Blackthorn to give her demon-slaying Edwardian-era Nephilim something to do besides steamily tonguing one another, lengthily weltering in secret longing and self-loathing, or (at last!) explicitly consummating their ardor. Brilliant.īelial, Prince of Hell, makes his move on London in this trilogy closer. Writhing tentacles bursting from suddenly inhuman mouths? Check!Ī sure winner for any reader with a yen to become permanently terrified. Spectral figures with blood-red innards? Check. Lonely houses, dark woods and wolves? Check. The collection is capped by a true screamer in which a teenager’s memories of her mother’s tales of a cellar-dwelling monster with a “sweet, wet voice” segue into a horrific revelation about her pretty new sister-in-law. Two cases of supernatural possession (“His Face All Red” and “My Friend Janna”) follow. In the next, a bride discovers that “A Lady’s Hands Are Cold”-as are the other pieces (seen in close, icky detail) of her husband’s dismembered but not entirely dead former wife. In “Our Neighbor’s House,” a trio of sisters are taken one by one by a never-seen smiling man. Making expert use of silent sequences, sudden close-ups and other cinematic techniques to crank up the terror, the author opens and closes in a dimly lit bedroom (much like yours), bookending the five primary stories. Well-placed lines of terse, hand-lettered commentary and dialogue reinforce narrative connections but are also as much visual elements as are the impenetrable shadows, grim figures, and stark, crimson highlights in Carroll’s inky pictures. A print and Web comics artist offers five creep-out chillers (four new) with folk-tale motifs and thoroughly disquieting art.
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