Haunt #24 – Review

By: Joe Casey (writer), Nathan Fox (art), Ivan Plascencia (colors), Comicraft (letters)

The Story: The Kilgore brothers finish their fight in the Saint Matthew Church.

A few things: 1). What just happened? – I know that delays are part of comics, but it does harm the story if you’re a single issue reader and there are such gaps between issues.  As I sat down to write this review, I realized that much of what happened in this issue was a blur from a “story” standpoint.  Then I checked to see when I’d reviewed Haunt #23 and saw that it was back in mid-April.  That’s almost 3 months on a story arc (that was a big departure from the Kirkman/Capullo Haunt)…..probably not a great idea.  At this point, it’s just down to seeing events and reacting to them and any deeper meaning has been lost.  The Kilgore brothers fought some flame demon in the church where Daniel used to work.  I think that Daniel always assumed that this was the Catholic church, but it was actually something much more sinister.  And they have a new hippie/samurai buddy named Tubman.  And….they beat the flame demon, but the Haunt got somehow mixed up with the demon (?).

Haunt #23 – Review

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

The Story: You thought that the guy in Haunt was a Catholic priest???

Review [with SPOILERS]:  How funny was that?  When this comic debuted, everyone made fun of how the protagonist in Haunt was a cigarette-smoking, prostitute-visiting Catholic priest.  It just seemed a little too cliche, ya know?  Daniel Kilgore’s priestly ways ended up not having much to do with the story of Haunt as that story element was rapidly dropped, but that story element had some effect on this title having a hard time finding it’s feet as there was a lot of message board chatter about how “dumb” the priest angle was.

Flash forward a couple of years and we see a creative change on Haunt, with Joe Kelly and Nathan Fox coming aboard.  They immediately introduced this weird church we saw this weird church storyline introduced.  The weird church seemingly had nothing to do with the previous story as Kirkman and Capullo had mostly used Haunt as a “secret agent”.  Thus, it was a hard to reconcile the mystical aspects of the weird church with the bad guys of the first ~20 issues who were more drug-kingpin/gun-runner types.

Well, now is all makes sense.  The creators never said that Daniel Kilgore was a Catholic priest.  We just kinda assumed “Catholic” when we saw the clerical collar.  But, with a neat twist, we’ve now learned that Danny perhaps thought he was a priest in the Catholic church, but was really working for the weird-church!  Ha!  It makes pre-Haunt Daniel Kilgore even more pathetic: Not only was he screwing hookers, he didn’t even know that HIS church was doing all this secret, apocalyptic stuff.  Clearly, this weird church is going to have something to do with Haunt and the connection with the afterlife.  Perhaps they knew that Daniel was a likely medium for a Haunt-construct and kept him around for that reason?

Haunt #17 – Review

By: Robert Kirkman (writer), Greg Capullo & Mr. Sheldon (pencils), Jonathan Glapion, Todd McFarlane & LeBeau Underwood (inks), FCO Plascencia & Ivan Plascencia, Comicraft (letters) & Jen Cassidy (managing editor)

The Story: A final duel with the Apparition comes to an ending with help from an unlikely source.

The Review: As you can tell from the expanding list of credits, this is a bit of a transitional issue for Haunt.  Greg Capullo is departing to work on Batman where many more eyeballs will fall on his glorious work.  Robert Kirkman is also departing because he’s kinda busy writing comics, writing a Walking Dead novel and doubtless consulting heavily on Walking Dead TV shows, board games, video games, etc.  Todd McFarlane is also a really busy dude.  But, the new creative team of Joe Casey and Nathan Fox (who should be great) aren’t quite in place this issue as we wrap up this arc having this demonic Apparition trying to drag Kurt Kilgore (the dead half of the Haunt brothers) into the afterlife.

Things had looked very bleak for our heroes because this Apparition was like getting chased by the Terminator.  It seemed like the Apparition would just keep chasing and chasing and chasing.  It didn’t mind if it didn’t get you this time.  It didn’t have to stop to use the bathroom.  It just kept coming.  Against that kind of foe, you can’t win. As a reader, you feel for the main characters because if Kurt gets dragged off to the netherworld, then there is no Haunt. However, help comes from an unexpected source.  Here’s where I’ll give the SPOILER WARNING…

I forget the name of the lady who helps the Kilgores out, but she’s been around as this kinda quasi-mystical character since the beginning of the series, but she’s hardly been a major character.  She was one of the folks that was rescued from the evil doctor’s lab in the early issues of Haunt and she was the one who recognized that the Kilgores are a “haunt” (as she called them).  I love when a minor character pops back up like that and it raises all sorts of interesting things for future stories:  As she sacrificed herself, she said she had done all she could in our world and needed to move on.  Hmmmm… Something tells me this theme will be revisited and we haven’t seen the last of her.