So for my first review I gave you a classic EC story from the golden age of horror comics. This time around I thought I'd go to the other extreme, being such an extreme person myself, and give you something a little more current in order to show you how that old gruesome and gleeful spirit is still alive in hell, or rather, alive and well in the comic market of today.
For those living under a rock (or six feet of dirt) for the last three years, let me bring you up... to date. in 2009 Dark Horse Comics set out to breath new life into the cobweb covered corpse of CREEPY Magazine, which had laid long dormant since its original publisher, Warren Publishing, went out of business in 1983. Since it's triumphant return from the grave it has continued to do what any re-animated dead thing would: scare the crap out of people. With old Uncle Creepy himself once again at the helm, the new CREEPY picked things up pretty much exactly where it left off all those decades ago. So without further a-goo, let's take a look at one of its recent offerings. A piece of fresh meat called...
The Field.
The story opens with a little narration from a rather large and happily Omnipotent Uncle Creepy looming over a farm house. He says the theme of this tale is "you can't go home again" although, I think you'll see that in fact you can GROW home again. But I get ahead of myself. He hands the story over to the main character, Doug McDaniel, who will narrate the rest of this yarn first person style.
McDaniel fills us in on his back story, the fact that he has inherited his grandmother's farm right in the middle of sunflower country after she mysteriously disappeared. He says that the police who investigated found blood and hair belonging to his grandma on a shovel in her barn, but looked no further into the matter. Barney Fife never was much good at homicides. Anyway he moves into his grams place in order to work on his next book. You see, he's a well known published writer who writes a series of sci-fi/horror books staring a character named Agent Green, who seems to be a mix of Carl Kolchak and Agent Mulder rolled into one. Anyway, he came to this country murder house to get some peace and quiet while he works. Sometimes you just don't know you're in a horror story, ya know?
He begins to write, intending to base this new Agent Green story off of his grandmother's real life disappearance, but is soon caught up in nostalgia as he looks out the window at the sunflowers and begins to remember his childhood running through the fields. He also remembers the neighbors, the Weavers, who still live next door. That night he has dinner with them and finds out that they have come into a lot of money lately because of their prize winning sunflower they've named Mirabelle. Mirabelle is one of the largest sunflowers in the world and about to break all kinds of records. Doug isn't too interested in that though. He's more interested in the Weavers hot granddaughter, Sharon.
Until...
That night while writing by the window, Doug looks out to see a man digging a grave near the giant sunflower on the Weavers property. The next day he goes to tell Mr. Weaver about it and the two examine the area in question and find no sign of any grave or even disturbed ground. Sharon shows up and turns on the charm. She asks Doug out for ice cream, but he declines. He says "You can't just have ice cream with a girl like Sharon", so he goes home to try and find some of his grandma's old jewelry he can sell to take her on a real date.
But there is no jewelry. "There used to be", he says as he remembers playing pirate with all his grandma's many gold baubles. But now it's all mysteriously gone. You can see why this is such a hard case for the cops to crack. That night Doug gets chewed out by his agent for writing about nothing but country memories for four hundred pages instead of Agent Green. Doug smokes some pot and begins to feel inspired.
Inspiration
He looks out the window yet again and sees another figure near Mirabelle, digging again. He begins to type the strange event into his story, but then notices that off in the distance, the flower is beginning to glow for real. He heads out of the house and into the fields to investigate, just the way his character would. Soon he stumbles on a horrific sight.
A cult is there in the clearing, sacrificing a beautiful virgin to the great flower. Doug is horrified and turns to run but a cultist hears him and screams, "Defiler!". Doug runs into the sunflowers and pulls out a gun from his jeans (Oookay?) he shoots randomly behind him and hits two members that are pursuing him. Suddenly, a dog attacks him and begins to maul him. The last thing he sees is two robed figures standing above him who are revealed to be... Mister and Missus Weaver. Rut Roe Raggy. The two crazies start chanting "Feed the flower! Feed the flower!" as the dog rips Doug apart. The end.
The end of the Agent Green story, that is. All that cult stuff was just what he was imaging while stoned and writing about the weird digger guy out in the field. In reality, Doug is actually sitting at the weavers table telling them all this plot outline. old Mrs. Weaver finds it very entertaining and wants to hear more. Doug tells her something about some zombies from an earlier book and a magical amulet that Green has that will save him at the last minute, etc. Just then Sharon comes out of the bedroom all dressed up for their date. It seems with the advance his publishers gave him for that outline, Doug is now able to take her somewhere nice. He helps her put her coat on to leave and that's when he notices her necklace.
It's one of his grandmother's.
Sharon yells, "Grammy! Gramps! He knows!" and Doug is suddenly hit from behind with a shovel. Mister and Missus Weaver along with their granddaughter hover over his body with a syringe full of painkiller and as they inject him, so he won't suffer, they explain their plot.
It seems that the best fertilizer for Mirabelle is human corpses and Doug's grandmother helped them get their flower up to a whopping 25 feet. Now he'll join her and maybe push them over into the record books. The final image is of Doug's body being added to the massive underground grave below Mirabelle, which is about fifteen to twenty people strong.
This is certainly one of my favorite stories from the newly re-animated CREEPY. It has that definite CREEPY vibe that the old comics had back in the seventies. It also has a good setting (the country is always spooky), characters you care about but are just unlikeable enough for you to not care when they die, a double twist, and a premise that at first seems silly but totally works in the end. there's also a little bit of a Little Shop of Horrors vibe in there if you caught it.
All in all a solid effort from writer/artist David Lapham, who some of you may recognize as the creator of the comic, Stray Bullets. As long as Dark Horse keeps up this kind of quality story telling I think we'll all be enjoying CREEPY for several more decades to come.
I give this tale 8 out of 10 Werthams.
FEED THE FLOWER!
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