I don't know which device you are using to peruse my site, but I can promise that regardless of its modernity, it doesn't capture the sacerdotal beauty of...this, this graceful thing. It does have a name. This is the fourteenth issue of The Witching Hour, a DC title. I have become something of a sweaty, blanched addict as it relates to horror anthology comic books, specifically books from way back when. They speak directly to the socially inept monster kid in me. When I saw the cover of this dazzler, I pounced on the "Buy It Now" option. Can you blame me??? The menacing witches, the broomsticks, the decrepit house, the very concept of witches flying around in outer fucking space...fiffleby shit-dang, it seemed too gonzo to be real.
My expectations were aerial. I should have adjusted my prognosis, but again, witches in space. How could it go south? Well, I still don't know, but this cackling cartoon strip is nowhere near as marvelous as it should be. It's undone by anemic storytelling. Three stories are relayed to us by three witches. Why are these oracles of the occult hanging out in the cosmos? Boredom, I have inferred. The first story - if you can categorize it as such without chuckling - is pitiably short. An official synopsis tells us that "a space battle has left Elliot Scott's ship badly crippled." Yeah. That's what happens. I recall laser guns sounding their authoritative whizzes and blangs (oh, those are definitely words; trust me). Next!
Dave Kaler is credited as writer on the second yarn. I'll give him this much; as a story, it displays knowledge of progress. There is a discernible sequence to these events, but they are scarcely horror by design. Sci-fi is a stretch. An astronaut meets a Martian vixen at a space speakeasy. He is absolutely smitten, so enamored that he doesn't realize he is being bewitched. Okey-dokey, but the meridian is tragically anticlimactic. Our witch bitch doesn't kill him. No, the dumbass gets into a fistfight with his astro-partner, and after tumbling into important doodads, finds himself being sucked into the vast nothingness of space.
The vixen was an alien, so I guess it was science fiction by cosmetic proxy. Scared yet? I was holding out hope for the main event, the cover story. A haunted house! In space! The third time is a charm, but even here, a successful at-bat is a ground rule double where it needed to be a home run. Our astronauts are criminals scouting for a hideout (in space...yes, it's that silly). They are murdered one by one, their souls conjoining with the room of their fears. That might sound like something, but it doesn't really make sense. The artwork is a little off, as scale and proportion garble the reader's view. We are never presented with a clean look at the witch. That's right; this story's villain is a witch. I don't know.
It's kinda-sorta cool. Now that I think about it, the whole of the fourteenth issue of The Witching Hour is kinda-sorta cool. Bah. Man, this should have been a drop-dead stunner. With that zany cover? Fuck. It hurts to award a mediocre rating, but I must publish the truth. This column is protected by the U.S. Constitution! Freedom of the press! Sir, your constituents deserve to know--sir? Sir? Why am I still typing?
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