Chaos Hour

London Horror Comic #5 Review

A Compilation Of Fun And Horrifying Tales...

Writer: John-Paul Kamath

Pencils & Inks: Drew Moss, Dean Kotz

Letters & Book Design: Matty Ryan

Colours: Hi-Fi Design

Cover: Matt Dixon

Genre: Horror, Comedy, Anthology

www.londonhorrorcomic.com

We begin with 'The Game', a cute horror tale of a vampire looking for love. Surrounded by happy couples from werewolves to zombies, our hero is struggling to find love when most monstrous women he dates end up wanting to sacrifice him, kill him or eat him. The panelling structure is varied and exciting, opting for a mixture of white a black gutters and even some borderless, stand out panels. The characters are well designed and consistently pencilled with a well realized style and dynamic angles and tilts. The colouring is complimentary to the inks and while using some simplistic cell shading for the figures, plays with textures and backgrounds very well. Some of the pencilling choices, such as the smoke which our vampire transforms into, may have benefited from escaping the panels every now and again to add to the flow of the piece, but overall the action is exciting and well paced. As first impressions go, this story shows the reader what they have come to expect from London Horror Comics, a wonderful slice of 'everyday' life in the world of monsters.

The second story, 'Dead Love' is far more horrific and morbid, but still with the overlying theme of relationships that seems to be developing in this issue. It tells the tale of a coroner who is having a hard time looking for love and has managed to fall for her a corpse. While the story is an interesting character study of a necrophilic psychopath, the middle panels dealing with a conversation she has with herself/the corpse at the dinner table are tediously laid out in equal sized close ups. While this shows a range of different emotions on the faces, many of them remain too similar to hold much interest beyond showing her yearning for normality. The pencilling and inking are nicely textured with great details in musculature and backgrounds while the angles of the climactic scene are evocative and dynamic. The final reveal of the story is shocking and horrific and definitely leaves you with a lasting impression.

We return to the everyday reality in the life of monsters of the third story He Said, She Said' where Eddie Zombie and his werewolf friend are hiding from a Medusa, Amy, who Eddie ditched on their last date. Amy and her sister Hannah are shopping for wine when an armed robbery takes place and Eddie and the werewolf try to help. The artwork to this story is stunning with some beautifully realised character with a great hybrid style of human and monster. The emotions are exagerated wonderfully for comic effect and there is a wide range of close ups, tilts and angles. Unfortunately this ends with a 'copy-paste' couple of panels at the end of the story while two characters have a conversation. While it is understandable they'd be in the same position whilst continuing dialogue, the lack of change in facial expression or body language is lazy. The dialogue is brilliant with a comedic edge to this very natural situation. The characters are sweet and likeable and John-Paul Kamath does a stellar job of making classic monsters real and relatable.

We end London Horror Comic Issue #5 with another dark tale of Ed, a depressed man stuck in a job he has no passion for, yearning for the fun and enjoyment of his youth. Once again we are dealing with the theme of relationships as he bumps into his childhood friend Dan who, despite being out of work and living with his parents, has got a beautiful and intelligent new girlfriend. Once again we are given a glimpse into the mind of a person who deals with everyday situations that we can relate to such as jealousy, boredom and being stuck in a rut, with harmful or psychotic rationale. Kamath manages to show us how serial killers and murderers logicise their actions in both 'Friends' and 'Dead Love', a skill he has developed well since the debut issue.

The use of an overlying theme in the issue creates unity between these largely varied stories and the artists are chosen well for their stories, with the gritty, dark art of 'Friends' and 'Dead Love' contrasting with the more characterful, colourful work of 'He Said, She Said' and 'The Game'. London Horror Comic continues to be one of the most promising independent comic anthologies in the UK market at the moment. It's ever developing team of talent is a testimony to 'practice makes perfect', while the comics themselves have gone from strength to strength in printing quality and artistic content.