Leroy Douresseaux on "Batman vs. The Undead"

BATMAN VS. THE UNDEAD

DC COMICS

 

WRITER: Kevin VanHook

ARTIST: Tom Mandrake
COLORS: David Baron
LETTERS: Steve Wands
ISBN: 978-1-4012-3035-7; paperback
128 Color, $14.99 U.S., $16.99 CAN

I still find comic book back issues in which the credits list the comic book artist as an illustrator. I don’t know if the term illustrator is appropriate because comic book penciller or artist does not provide illustrations for a comic book story. Rather he tells a story using graphics and drawings.

Certainly, some comic book artists employ the techniques of illustrators because they are the best way to tell a comic book story. A recent example would be Tom Mandrake whose pen and ink style art makes the new trade paperback, Batman vs. The Undead a thrilling superhero comic book, but also a throwback to weird pulp tales.

Batman vs. The Undead collects the storyline originally serialized in Batman Confidential #44-48. This story arc finds Bruce Wayne in New Orleans to contribute money for the post-Hurricane Katrina rebuilding effort. Batman, on the other hand, is in the Big Easy on the trail of madman, Professor Herbert Combs. Combs was released from Arkham Asylum and is in New Orleans seeking to further his knowledge of the dark art of voodoo.

Batman isn’t the only one tracking Combs, so is the vampire Marius Dimeter and the Polish werewolf, Janko, both victims of Combs’ dark magic. Now, Combs has joined forces with another powerful voodoo practitioner, Mama Ezili, in a plot to raise the zombie army to beat all armies. The task to stop Combs is so big that Batman will not only need the help of Dimeter and Janko, but also the help of Superman.

Ten years from now, readers may not remember Batman vs. The Undead the way they remembered Batman: The Dark Knight Returns a decade after it was first published. Hopefully, new readers will continually discover this Batman Confidential storyline and many of them will remember it as one of the better Batman horror stories. Kevin VanHook and Tom Mandrake are in near-perfect dark harmony in creating this riveting mixture of Batman detective story and weird fiction.

Only a diseased mind or an imaginative comic book scribe could use rotting corpses, plastinated bodies, and moldy mummies as seed to grow one of the Dark Knight’s most challenging cases. Which is Kevin VanHook? I’ll let you decide, dear reader. Seriously, VanHook blends pulpy Robert E. Howard/H.P. Lovecraft horror and Denny O’Neil-style Caped Crusader into a gruesome stew that simmers like a summer potboiler.

Borrowing only a tiny bit from recent Batman artists like Jim Lee and Andy Kubert, Tom Mandrake creates graphics that recall the Batman comic book art of Berni Wrightson and Jim Aparo. When Mandrake weaves ghastly pages of undead action, dank swamps, and creepy graveyards, he conjures, in a way, early 20th century pen and ink illustrators (like Joseph Clement Coll). In the zombie and voodoo pages, Mandrake does award-worthy work that is as good as the best recent horror comic book art.

Batman vs. The Undead is a delight to read, like a good scary movie is to watch. The last chapter sort of stumbles in the last act, but overall, this is fun. I hope VanHook and Mandrake plan on giving us more such dark delights.

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