Victor Crowley's Hatchet Halloween Tales III #1

Victor Crowley’s Hatchet Halloween Tales III #1

American Mythology Productions 2021

Written by James Kuhoric, SA Check & Alexander Banchitta

Illustrated by Pius Calzada, EV Cantada & HOracio Domingues

Coloured by Emmanuel Ordaz Torrez

Lettered by Natalie Jane

It's back...the annual Halloween event of the year! Return to Honey Island Swamp with three new tales of All Hallows' Eve! Blood flows and bodies rot in the swamp. And the tortured spirit of Victor Crowley continues to dole out brutal violent retribution upon those that dare to enter his domain. This time of year the spirits of the dead are close and they return from Purgatory to try to take back some measure of vengeance! Join a host of horror writers and artists as we deliver a dose of glorious over-the-top horror that will get your Halloween off to a great start! Victor Crowley's Hatchet Halloween III comes with three cover editions - Main "The Dead Rise" by Roy Allan Martinez (Zorro Swords of Hell), "Jack's Back" Variant by Richard Bonk (Hatchet), and "Don't Lose Your Head" cover by Puis Calzada (Hatchet).

It’s that time of year for the hack ‘em and slash ‘em adventures of Hatchet! This one only has three stories and each of them are as bloody and interesting as they can be. It really is one of those great issues that spotlights the gore at the perfect time of the year.

I’m a fan of the way that these stories are being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented beautifully. Now I’m going to talk about all three as one here because they all do have the same kind of mood, tone and feel to them. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter. The pacing is excellent and as it takes us through the pages revealing the stories we are treated to a plethora of ways to die.

The way that this issue is structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge and grow. What I don’t get is that there are folks who don’t believe that Hatchet is real and continue to try to invade his land and prove they are right but always end up dead. By now you’d think logically speaking everyone would avoid this island like the plague or the devil himself were after you.

The interiors here are fantastic! The linework is clean, crisp and sharp and how the varying weights and techniques are being utilised to create the detail we see within the work is really well rendered. The creativity and imagination that is on display here is extremely nice to see. There is some real horror to what we see here too and it really takes some great twisted minds to come up with what we see. The backgrounds as well as how we see the composition within the panels being utilised to enhance and expand the moments as well as how they bring out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is pretty fantastic. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show some remarkable eyes for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work show a strong understanding of how colour works.

​

While it is the perfect time of year for Hatchet to rear his ugly, and I mean it really is ugly, head and yet I do believe that horror is a year round genre and I’d love to see more of his senseless bloodshed happen much more often, or any and all holidays would work well for me. Still it is because of issues like this one that makes me want to see more and it’s incredibly well put together.