Ryan B does Infected

Not long before Warren Publishing closed shop in 1983, putting CREEPY and EERIE to bed, one of their best writers, Bruce Jones, set out to start his own horror comic. The result was the gloriously ghoulish Twisted Tales published by Pacific Comics in 1982. The series only ran for ten issues, but is well remembered even today by many fans of the genre for the boundaries it pushed in its short time. 

Jones himself is the first to admit in his introduction to issue number one, that Twisted Tales is a complete throwback to the EC comics of the 1950's that he grew up reading, but with a much more mature sensibility that he no doubt picked up working on the Warren books of the seventies that were able to include more sex and adult language than the older EC ones ever were. I think you'll see what I mean by "mature sensibilities" as I review the very first story of the very first issue in this line. It's a contagious little heat rash aptly titled...

Infected

A man stands on an empty beach looking out at the waves. The narration begins by describing "firewinds" which blow through the canyons and across the plains, mixing with the ions in the air. We are told that sometimes they give people migraines and unfortunately our protagonist, the man on the beach, has one now. We are told his name is Oscar Felps and he hates his job, whatever that may be. He turns to leave the beach, noticing a little crab at his feet, which he envies because it gets to go back to the sea while he's stuck going back to work. We're informed that whatever his job is, he volunteered for it rather than sit behind a desk and according to his clipboard, he only has two stops left. He gets in his car and an hour later he pulls up to his second to last stop, the Santos family. "Wetbacks" he guesses, beginning to establish his character flaws. In the yard of this shack he sees a couple of children and a guard dog along with other bits of detritus.

He knocks on the screen door and we are told that the Santos family consists of only a mother and her five or six children. Miss Santos is on welfare and has been late with her payments to Mr. Felps' company. Presently, she comes to the door where she screams at him in broken English that you could only get away with writing pre 1990's.

Felps tries to reason with her, but the baby in her arms starts crying and its screams only add to the pain in his head, then the dog starts barking. It's all too much and he rushes away from the woman to vomit near his car. Afterwards he decides to just leave and get a drink before heading to his last case. On the road again he checks his list, Maria Delgado is the final name. Just then he sees her, a beautiful blond woman walking alone down the dirt road. He pulls over and offers the lady a ride which she quickly accepts.

As they drive, the two get acquainted. She introduces herself as Maria Delgado, the woman he's looking for.

What a coincidence, I'm sure this will end well.

He comes right out and tells her he's from a credit collection agency and that she's delinquent on her payments. She seems unconcerned and says that she's had some severe personal problems lately. He asks her if she wants to talk about it, but she says it's too personal. She asks if he can give her more time to pay and he sleazily says that they can work something out as he begins to grope her.

Unfazed, she whispers a word in his ear. It's a word that sums up all of her problems and what will soon be his as well. She says she's ashamed, but he tells her that "lots of folks have been through that". He asks her is she got rid of "them" and she says they're gone for now. Just then they get to her small seaside shack. She mentions that she has several children, but they're at the beach right now and won't be back till night time. Felps helps her inside the house and the two of them begin to get friendly over drinks. She tells him he has to leave before dark, before the children get back. Hours later Felps awakes in the dark. Night has already fallen. He sees that Marie is asleep and heads to the bathroom where he hears giggling. He reaches for the sink faucet in the dark and instead fells a searing pain in his hand. He turns on the lights to reveal...

He looks down to see a huge, clawed monster perched on the sink. He tries to run away down the hall, but it's filled with giant, mutant, giggling CRABS! She had crabs, get it? Her children swarm Felps as Maria herself enters the scene. "I told you to go... I told you...," she says, nursing one of the creatures. "I told you what I had mister, I told you..."

Much like crabs themselves, this story has grown on me. When I fist read it I thought it was too gross and bizarre while making little to no sense and didn't really care for it. Now I can appreciate it more on it's own merits than I once did. It's certainly not something you would have read in the old ECs it's based on, but it does have the feel of an episode of the HBO Tales From The Crypt which came about in the same decade. Horror comics from this time had to be crude in a way the older stuff never did in order to shock a new generation who had grown up on Jason and Michael Myers movies. The writing by Jones is of course solid. The art by Richard Corben is good, but in parts reminds me of that feature on most photo editing programs used to make photos look like cartoons. Anyway, the point is there are much better Twisted Tales in this series than this one and by Bruce Jones in general, so I'm only giving Infected...

4 out of 10 Werthams.