Comic Review: Video Nasties

I've been hearing good things about Chris Doherty's Video Nasties for some time, so when I found out there was a collected edition of the whole series available again, I had to give it a go. Mighty glad I did.

Evan is a teenager with a healthy addiction to "video nasty" horror films. I've been there. There's nothing more exciting to the average teenage lad than watching nubile young things meet their ends at the end of a psychopath's knife, axe or meat cleaver. Adolescence = sex 'n' death, how better than to combine them? (Plus, there's a kind of transference going on there as you imagine a similar fate for all your obnoxious schoolyard enemies.(

Evan's also something of a whiz with a video camera himself - that's how he gets roped into helping film a school project documentary about a group of students who went missing under mysterious circumstances many years ago (well, that and a fit girl... there's always a fit girl involved somewhere... though one of the most important lessons we learn growing up is that the fittest girls often aren't worth all that heartache).

Evan's investigation leads him to dangerous places and shock revelations regarding some of his closest friends. There will be sex. There will be violence. There will be a clown murdering people with a baseball bat! All drawn in a wonderfully cute, cartoony style that fits the teenage soap elements to a tee... and makes the horror much more shocking when it finally hits.

Video Nasties collects the complete 7 issue series and it's available in eBook and good old fashioned dead tree format from Chris's store. Well worth your time and money, this one's a cracker... I'm looking forward to the movie!

Comic Reviews: Points West / The Whale House

My old pal Andrew Cheverton is spoiling us this month with the release of not one but two outstanding new comics.

First up, Jerusalem West returns in his latest adventure, Points West - another atmospheric shot of mystery and bloodshed in the old west, this one fleshing out a small moment from a previous adventure, adding more to our understanding of the title character, yet working as a stand-alone story too. As usual, it's packed with grim humour, sudden/shock violence and pitch perfect dialogue... and it looks a million dollars, thanks to regular artist Tim Keable, a man born to draw westerns. Once again, I can't recommend it enough.

Next, we have this...



The Whale House is a new book written by Chev and drawn by Chris Doherty of Video Nasties fame (which I'll be reviewing here soon). It's an entirely different ballgame to West, but no less gripping. A mystery begins to unravel when a young man sets out on a voyage of discovery to find the parents he's never met... but winds up taking lodging with the Whales, a creepy family who believe he's someone else entirely. I happen to know that one of Chev's favourite books is Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived In The Castle, and there's shades of that here, although the characters are ploughing their own furrow and there's absolutely no way of knowing where this story is going. I'm looking forward to finding out, particularly as Chev has once again found the perfect collaborator, another artist so good you wonder why he's not working for the big boys. (Then again, I ask myself that question about many artists in the small press... just as I ask how some of the artists who are drawing for Marvel and DC ever got their jobs in the first place. But that's a discussion for another day.)

Points West and The Whale House #1 are both available to buy from the Angry Candy website in both paper and digital versions. So get on with it...