Book Reviews by Stephen Studach

Fine black hair tendrils, drifting in a night ocean, floating through air, drifting, drifting.

I’m channeling a well, a well not filled with water but with hair. And bone. Bones buried under masses of the dead matter that is hair. Black water. Black hair. Strands of hair being pulled out from between a woman’s lips, more and more, thicker and thicker, till she regurgitates the hair like ropy, coarse vomit.

The tall pine tree tops; bristling, waving fingers indicating the fulgent moon. There is a distant howling; picked up again and again in a nearing chorus. The chill air is perfumed with a melded musk of human and beast. The shadows growl . . .

That’s right, you’re in the country of the changed. Skinwalker-bound volumes are about to tell you their individual tales, inscribed with spattered blood, steaming gore, gnashing, foaming fangs and sweeping claws.

Here’s a grungy little roadside pump station and redneck hellbilly museum out in the back of beyond. You pull in, switch off, listen to the isolated, isolating silence. And as your car is ticking down in the subtly insect-chirping night, this guy in filthy overalls comes out. His name is Cain he tells you, and this surely could not bode well. The overalls are stained with grease and crimson and odd-smelling lube, and he’s got a funny little smile this guy, when he does smile, and black under his fingernails and when he slips that bowser nozzle into your uncapped tank it feels like abuse.

“Worfipped”

Let me tell you about the best Graphic Novel that I've ever read. In fact at the time of reading it (June of 2001) it was the best horror work I'd read in five years.

A work of horror wherein horrible things actually happen.

How refreshing.

I had come to it late. From Hell was first, partially, serialised in the late eighties early nineties in the comic anthology Taboo.