First published back in May of 1990, the second issue of Epic Comics’ serial adaptation of Clive Barker’s ‘Nightbreed’ sported the subtitle ‘…Down Among The Dead Men’.
The first four issues of the ‘Nightbreed’ comics closely followed the storyline of the film, only slightly veering away from the film with small details. The twenty-one further issues that followed these original four continued on with the Nightbreed legacy – creating a whole new spin-off storyline that eventually brought in aspects from some of Barker’s other work.
DLS Synopsis:
There is no way that Lori Winston could accept what the police were saying about Boone. She knew him better than anybody did. She knew that Boone wouldn’t hurt a fly. Let alone kill all those people. They’d made him out to be some sort of monster through all their psychoanalysis. But that wasn’t the man she loved. That wasn’t Boone.
However, as Lori was about to leave the morgue, Boone’s psychiatrist, Doctor Philip Decker, catches up with her. And it’s whilst Decker was telling Lori where Boone was shot down by the police, an out-of-the-way location outside a vast graveyard in a town called Midian, that they hear a crashing sound coming from inside the morgue. Seconds later the sound of a window smashing can be heard. Bursting into the room they find that the morgue is now empty. Boone’s body is gone. But who would want a monster’s corpse?
Knowing that she needs to see where Boone died so that she can start to come to terms with his death, Lori decides to take a drive out to find Midian. On her way, she stops off for a drink in a bar where she makes friends with a women named Sheryl Ann. Her new happy-go-lucky friend’s not got much on and so offers to accompany Lori when she drives out to Midian.
The next morning, the two women set out for Midian. However, upon arriving they find that it’s little more than a ghost town. Nevertheless, Lori goes off to find the spot where Boone was shot down in a hail of bullets. And as she enters the vast graveyard, Lori discovers a strange animal sobbing beneath a tree. But this is no normal creature. Upon rescuing it from the sunlight and bringing it into the gloom of a mausoleum, the creature transforms into a small girl who clings to her thankful mother.
Eternally grateful for saving her child, the woman tells Lori that Boone is with them. However Lori is told that she must leave the graveyard, for Midian is home to the Nightbreed, and no one else. And absolutely no one must learn of their existence there, or it would have dire consequence for them.
Little does Lori know that it’s already too late. For her and Sheryl Ann are not the only ones to enter Midian that day…
DLS Review:
This second instalment into the Nightbreed comic book series sets off exactly from where issue one concluded. From here the story starts to crank up the tension, with Boone disappearing from the morgue and Decker keeping close to Lori as she tries to locate him.
Once again, Alan Grant and John Wagner have done an excellent job at keeping the pace going with their adaptation of Barker’s screenplay. Even with the first third of this second comic devoid of any real action, there’s enough tension and suspense injected into the flow of the storyboards to keep the momentum going strong.
And then, once Lori’s had her first sight of the Nightbreed, and she’s feeling like her heads pretty messed up, the real horror of the story starts to kick in. From here until the end of this second instalment (we’re talking a good two-thirds of the comic here) it’s pretty much a constant dominoes effect of high-adrenaline events that reveal more of the Nightbreed and see the stakes raised tenfold.
By the end of this second instalment, the comics are really in the swing of things; with pretty much everything aspect of the plot now underway, and it all heating up with some pretty menacing scenes of Nightbreed horror.
The comic runs for a total of 28 pages.
© DLS Reviews
