Posted in: Recent Updates | Tagged:


Review: Haunt #1 by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottely and Todd McFarlane

There's a lot riding on this comic. A brand new comic character, a new creative team made up of comics industry stars, in an industry that rewards the latter but punishes the former. How is it going to do?

For start off, I want to talk about the costume, if you can call it that. It's really hard to find a new twist on the look of the superspandex costume, but this is one, just as Spawn was in its day. Just like Spawn there is a touch of the Spider-Man about it, but this has two unique visual twists. One is the way it emerges from the mouth, then covering the face and body. This gives the whole effect a kind of tautness and even pain, just to look at it. Secondly is the chest emblem, a line curling like a doodle, from the white top of the costume into the black bottom half. It looks more like the kind of thing you might see on a Rick Veitch dream character than a mainstream iconic character, giving it a touch of the familiar, but remaining very separate. I think it's a fantastic design.

And the book itself? While having the ephemeral feel of a superhero book, this is a supernatural horror book, with the lead's dead brother revisiting him as a ghost and providing an ecoplasmic defence system and suit against people who wish the family harm. There's church, army, genetic experiments on the living, guns 'n' ammo and the supernatural facing the bullet.

Ryan Ottely is drawing a very different book here. Todd McFarlane's Spawn #1 was famously a series of pages in no real order that Lance Gueck helped make a story out of. Haunt #1 is a very different comic with a strong narrative drive and purpose. This does seem to lead to scenes I just haven't seen Todd's work on before, multiple small panel kitchen sink scenes, more minimal without a desire to cover every square centimetre in tiny lines. It's Todd but not as we know him. Maybe it will catch on – kind of how Mark Buckingham always seems to carry Chris Bachalo with him.

haunt1Sometimes I wonder how things would look if Todd had gone down more of a Will Eisner route. Maybe Ryan can push him. Anyway, Ryan gives plenty of places for the Todd that we do know to stretch out and provide the necessary pizazz to enliven our humdrum days.

haunt2

The action-adventure army scenes seem a little off putting, a bit too Arnie/Bruce/Sylvester, but its a scene being retold, it's excusable as narrative exaggeration, but that isn't made clear. And it does jar with the scenes at home, the two don't sit as easily together as, say the above action scene does. It does delineate the two brothers distinctly however, a necessary narrative trick if, indeed, this book continues as the buddy movie with one central character.

Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased) meets Venom. It's a good pitch. And it's a fun comic. This deserves to stay around for a while…

Haunt #1 is published today from Image Comics.


Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!

Rich JohnstonAbout Rich Johnston

Founder of Bleeding Cool. The longest-serving digital news reporter in the world, since 1992. Author of The Flying Friar, Holed Up, The Avengefuls, Doctor Who: Room With A Deja Vu, The Many Murders Of Miss Cranbourne, Chase Variant. Lives in South-West London, works from Blacks on Dean Street, shops at Piranha Comics. Father of two. Political cartoonist.
twitterfacebookinstagramwebsite
Comments will load 20 seconds after page. Click here to load them now.