Haunt #20 – Review

By: Joe Casey (writer), Nathan Fox (artist), FCO Plascencia (colors) & Comicraft (letters)

The Story: After the big battle that left his girlfriend dead, Daniel Kilgore finds himself in unfriendly hands.

Three Things: 

1. Very different story vibe than before. – For existing Haunt readers (all ~12,000 of us), this book has a very different look and feel than the last 15 issues.  Before it was more about the peppery dialog from Robert Kirkman and the energetic art from Greg Capullo and it felt more like a superhero story (maybe a superhero with a secret agent twist, but still a superhero-y story).  What we have now is very different.  This story is more rooted in the whacky and fertile mind of Joe Casey as he brings in this weird, church/cult that has abducted Daniel and is interested in learning what “the creature” is, so this issue becomes more of a hard-boiled, gritty, grimy torture/interrogation/escape-from-captivity tale.  I guess when I write that it doesn’t sound very different than the story was before, but trust me, it is.

2. But, maybe that’s a good thing. – While I miss the old Haunt, it surely wasn’t seeing enough eyeballs and it seems from message board chatter that a lot of people are trying this title again for the first time since issue #1.  Now, I am completely perplexed as to why comic fans with a shred of taste were ignoring a Kirkman/Capullo team-up, but it’s good to get eyeballs on this title again.  Also, it is so nice to see a creator-owned title that doesn’t just die once a creator gets plucked away.  The landscape is littered with these 5-10 issue runs that we loved that will never be revisited because Marvel/DC realized how awesome a creator is/was and hired them to write Spider-Man (or draw Batman in this case).  Just on general principal, it’s nice to see Haunt go the way of Spawn, Fathom, etc. where someone is keeping the light on.  Everyone bemoans that we “don’t have any new characters…” Well, Haunt is trying to give us a new character.  Even if every issue of Haunt/Fathom isn’t A-list material, neither is every issue of Invincible Iron Man.