That Hellbound Train #1 – Review

By: Robert Bloch (original story), Joe R. Lansdale & John L. Lansdale (comic adaptation), Dave Wachter (art), Alfredo Rodriguez (colors), Neil Uyetake (letters) & Bobby Curnow (edits)

The Story: A young orphan makes an Faustian bargain.

What’s Good: The art is great!  In fact, it was the promise of sequential art from Dave Wachter that caused me to buy the comic since I generally don’t read many comic adaptations or licensed properties.  If you aren’t familiar with Wachter’s art, you should really check out The Guns of Shadow Valley web comic.  For those unfamiliar with Wachter’s style, his style reminds me of a looser Bernie Wrightson (at least to my untrained eye) and I love artists who use brushes because I think the art (generally) looks more alive.  Wachter’s story telling aspect of the art is very spot on, each scene opens with great establishing panels.  Those establishing panels are so important because they’re what make it clear that a the boy and his father are walking in a trainyard at night and not in some other random location.  Another thing helping this issue is that the color art is also very well done and is in a quasi-flat style that works with Wachter’s inking and there are none of those offensive highlights that you find in mainstream superhero comics.