Hellraiser 1

You would think publishers would learn by now. Every so often they get the bright idea of commissioning a well-known author to write a comic, under the misapprehension that the ability to write a novel automatically results in the ability to write a good comic. You can count the numerous casualties who have attempted this in the past, and you’ll find their efforts lying in many a book store bargain bin. Will Clive Barker’s Hellraiser change that trend?

That’s assuming that Barker wrote this in the first place. “Witness Barker’s long-awaited return to tell a new chapter in the series’ official continuity” reads the blurb, but when you have two writers claiming credit, the suspicion is that Barker provided the outline, while Monfette did the rest. Maybe I’m doing him, or Monfette, a disservice here.

People familiar with the films and the novella on which it was based will find themselves back in a familiar world of puzzle boxes and dismemberment and pierced and skewered Cenobites. One of the Cenobites, Pinhead, has wearied of decadence and is on a quest to become human again.

As plotlines go, it’s reasonably intelligent. There’s a sense of purpose, little gratuitous splatter and, by the end, the suggestion the storyline might take us down into typically Barkerian perverse territory of emotional and physical sadomasochism.

Along the way there are some striking sequences: the sudden pulling back to reveal a crop circle in a field shaped like the design on the Cenobites’ puzzle box; the revelation that one of the central characters is heavily medicated and has been institutionalised, this information brought to us (if rather unsubtly) by incidental details.

Leonardo Manco’s art is scratchy and atmospheric, but relies over-heavily on photo references. It can also be dreadfully uneven, especially when you look at some of the anatomical details. A hand is drawn like a gathering of limp sausages. In one panel the character suddenly seems to develop astigmatism.

What kills this comic though is the dialogue. It’s beyond awful. I can almost accept overripe dialogue from the heavenly/hellish characters of the Cenobites, but when you have exchanges like the following from what are supposed to be everyday people, you know you’re dealing with someone whose ear for dialogue doesn’t even reach the level of tin:

“My history is littered with loss; I’m fucked. I’ve been there before and it didn’t end well. I don’t want that for us.”

“A ring is the one scar you can remove. The zipper to an old skin. Shed it.”

“I will, I promise. But slowly. I love you too much. And for now, as long as you’re my future, you can never be my past”

That’s the point which tips the good points of this comic far in favour of the bad, and also the point at which any sense of unease is replaced by the need to laugh out loud. Not that a good laugh would go amiss: it’s all so terribly sincere and humourless and ponderous. Rabid Barker fans will probably want to investigate this, out of curiosity if nothing else. Whether they’ll pick up a second issue is debatable. For the rest of us, there are good points but the end result’s hardly essential, sometimes  risible, and there are better comics out there worthy of your time and money.