Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
: Angry Christ Comix by Joseph Michael Linsner :
by William the Bloody
Angry Christ Comix is a trade paperback collection of some of the stories featured in Linsner's Cry For Dawn comic book series. These stories were more or less made in the Tales From the Crypt sort of fashion in that each tale has its own characters and run completely independent of each other. In this collection we have a total of eleven stories which vary from a man being haunted in his dreams by his ex-girlfriend, a serial killer after businessmen, and an artist finding his new voice.
The Good: I'm a big fan of Linsner's art. From his gorgeous paintings to simpler, cleaner line art, it's all good. He has this way with facial expressions that I just love. He also does this thing with his lettering and backgrounds that are just as expressive as whatever's happening in the art in the foreground. One of the shorter subjects in this book was a rendering of Edgar Allen Poe's poem, "Alone," which has always been a favourite of mine, so it was nice to see someone put images to it.
The Bad: Unfortunately, Linsner's beautiful paintings do not translate well into greyscale. If there's a lot going on in the frame, sometimes you have to really look to see what's happening because the image is so dark. The story "Rhyder" just felt like a 1980s fantasy film gone bad and in fact, most of the book felt so very "high school." There's so much gratuitous sex and violence that it loses all meaning and impact. There was quite the theme of women being whiners, witches, bitches and whores that it would have been nice to have had had ONE positive female thrown in there, you know, to mix it up or something.
Overall, I didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I might. This is the sort of thing that if I were a pent up, angst ridden 15 year old of ten years ago I would have stashed it some place and thought it was the coolest thing ever, but as a mature adult I find it to be angry and breast-filled for no reason other than pretentiousness. The only story I enjoyed thoroughly was the last "One or Eleven," which had crisp black and white line art and was about an artist (it had some sexuality WITHOUT the gratuitous nude breasts). The rest was rather take it or leave it immature sluttiness.
C+
