Comic Review: Crypt of Shadows (2019-) #1

Crypt of Shadows (2019-) #1

Marvel Comics

Writer: Al Ewing

Artists: Gary Brown, Stephen Green, Djibril Morisette-Pham

For their’s 80th anniversary, Marvel is bringing some of its classic books back for a series of one-shots. One of those is Crypt of Shadows, an anthology horror series from the seventies that reprinted old horror stories from the fifties. Al Ewing, the writer behind the fantastic ‘Immortal Hulk’ was the obvious choice for the book, and he enlisted the help of three different artists to breathe life into the project.

The story follows a man talking to a psychiatrist about his cynophobia – the fear of dogs. After that framing story, he proceeds to explain how his fear came to be, and they way it has ruined his relationship with his wife, who is quite fond of dogs. Of course, there is a larger picture behind those stories, as all three of them end up tying nicely into each other.

As I mentioned earlier, there are three artists on the book – Gary Brown is in control of the frame story, while Stephen Green and Djibril Morissette-Pham take care of the two accompanying stories. They all do a decent job at conveying the art style of the appropriate period, but not much more. Brown’s Mignola-esque work is probably the scariest of them all, with Morissette-Pham having the highest quality art. But honestly, the biggest star of the art is the colourist – Chris O’Halloran. His colour work highly influences the atmosphere of the book and gives it that cool, 1950es pulpy-feel. 

Al Ewing has proven many times that he is a master of the horror genre, most recently with his horror-imbued take on Hulk, so it’s no surprise he does such a good job with this book. I wouldn’t call the book scary, not by a large margin, but each story is kind of chilling. The way he ties all three stories together, while not really surprising, still ends up giving you that ‘a-ha!’ moment. It’s a cool and fun twist, well worth the build-up and the read.

Another cool feature of these one-shots is the ‘History of…’ section at the end of the book. It’s basically a quick look at the… history of each of the revived books. Things like this are always a nice addition as they offer a clear look at the development of modern pop culture.

Crypt of Shadows is a fun and interesting book. It leaves the reader hungry for more and I certainly hope Marvel will consider making this a regular, on-going series. I really enjoy anthologies and would most definitely buy something like this regularly. Especially if written by Al Ewing.