Sunday Trade: Book of Witchcraft
Oct. 31st, 2010 04:18 pm
The Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft by many and various, Edited by Scott Allie
A truly clever man would have noticed ahead of time that there would be a Sunday Trade post on Halloween. And maybe then posted about Japanese students turned corpse-related mystery solvers. Or perhaps the story of the night a certain samurai bunny fought a legion of ghosts and monsters. And what about the tale of a pair of undead lad detectives at a girl's boarding school? But mostly that, since I'd already covered the first trade I'd picked up another Nocturnals trade by Brerton...
Oh well. Luckily, my shelves are deep with books and other appropriately spooky collections are available. Like The Dark Horse Book of Witchcraft, an anthology of short comics and written word on the theme of witches...
The three stand-outs for me from this collection are "Mother of Toads", a short story by Clark Ashton Smith and illustrated by Gary Gianni. A true horror classic in all senses of the word. Then a short Hellboy story, "The Troll Witch" by Mike Mignola. Assisted on colors by Dave Stewart and letters by Clem Robins. And lastly a Beasts of Burden Hill story, "Unfamiliar" by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson. I so love those occult battling pets...