Screamland #1 – Review

By: Harold Sipe &  Christopher Sebela (writers), Lee Leslie (art), Kevin Mellon (back-up art), Buster Moody (colors) and Sebela (letters)

The Story: A bunch of real-life monster movie stars confront their older age and lack of relevance.

What’s Good: It’s a neat enough idea.  Imagine if the movie monsters from the 60’s and 70’s were real actors…..as if the Creature from the Black Lagoon wasn’t a dude in a plastic suit, but a real life fish-man who worked as an actor because he had nothing else to do (accounting?  law school?).  Now imagine these wolfmen and aliens and whatnot as they hit their 50’s are become overweight has-beens….

Well, that’s the concept for this comic.  The idea of following some aging movie star or musician as they try to regain their mojo for one last shot at the BIG TIME isn’t exactly a new premise, but I’ve never seen it done with movie monsters.  This first issue shows these guys doing all the things that has-beens do: hanging out on the convention circuit, talking about old times, getting drunk and fat, keeping a stiff upper lip when the fans rush for whatever is new and fresh…..but the central event of this first issue is the threat by one of the monsters to release the “sex tape” of some 70’s orgy that they were all involved in.  Will that give them added fame or will it make them a laughing stock?

The art works really well for this type of subject matter.  It is very much a cartoon-y style.  It isn’t what you’d want in a straight horror comic, but for a tongue-in-cheek look at a bunch of has-been movie monsters, it works great.  The coloring is nice and bright as well.

Screamland #1-2 (of 5) – Review

By Harold Sipe (story) & Héctor Casanova (art)

The comic tells the story of present day story of the Universal Monsters, except they’re real people with real problems – trying to work on whatever comes to their hands. For instance, Frankenstein earns his money working for “z class” movies. However, roles are rare because he can’t seem to manage his drinking problem.

One day, he gets a call from Andrea Silverman, his agent, telling him to meet her. Her idea is to cast all the old Universal Monsters making a film adaptation of a Japanese manga dubbed, “MonsterHunter 3000”, based around a girl who gets off on killing monsters. As expected, this sort of thing is highly popular in Japan and Silverman sees a film version as a sure fire hit. With Dracula already on board, Silverman tries to convince “Frank” to do so.

The second issue starts with Frank visiting Dracula’s shrink, something that I never thought I’d see! The rest of the story is dedicated to The Mummy, indirectly, because he’s out of the country with Homeland Security on his trail. Andrea Silverman meets with The Mummy’s business manager, but she’s told that his client won’t be in the movie. Apparently he’s had a rough past, being accused of a murder.

Screamland’s art reminds me of a more detailed version of Ben Templesmith’s work (you decide if that’s a good or bad thing). The cover for #1 is hilarious: Frankenstein posing as a model bare chested in Miami. The story is actually really interesting, too. Growing up watching the monsters movies on Saturday nights, I always wondered what they’d be up to now, even if it’s another medium. I also think it was a smart choice focusing on one monster story per issue. Hopefully, they’ll start the movie before the comic ends! (Grade: B+)

-Daniel Yanez