Writers: Mike Carey & Acky Bright
Artists & Colorists: Mark Torres & Acky Bright
Letterer: Pat Brosseau
Cover Artists: Martín Morazzo & Chris O’Halloran; Mark
Torres; Steve Beach
Editor: Ben Abernathy
Designer: Jillian Crab
Production: Richard Mercado
Masters Of Horror: Greg Nicotero & Brian Witten
Additional Creep Art: Michael Broom
Publisher: Image Comics
Price: $3.99
Release Date: December 25, 2024
Sergeant Thomas Campion is a British Redcoat. Abigail loses
her boyfriend to a prettier woman. What can these two people, separated by over
a century, have in common? And how do they relate to us today? Let’s leap into
Creepshow Vol 3 #4 and find out!
Story: Flesh Wounds
As Mike Carey's story opens, Sergeant Campion has enjoyed an
impressive career beneath the Union Jack. Like Emil Blonsky in Louis
Leterrier's film The Incredible Hulk, Campion doesn't care about advancing in
rank. Each venture into the fray is a chance to prove himself the ultimate
fighter. Yet after a dozen or more years on battlefields around the world, a
Bedouin nearly kills him. This assault on his invincibility rattles him more
than he wants to admit.
While tending Campion's wounds, the medic mentions hearing
of a devil in the desert. British-born Campion has fought against Catholics
often enough that any remark approaching religion from a Papist infuriates him.
Notions like fiendish genies who grant wishes to supplicants sound too much
like the mysticism the reformers worked hard to expunge from the Church Of
England. But O’Riordan insists another soldier has profited from bargaining
with this evil creature. So, Sergeant Thomas Campion rides into the desert to
make a deal that sounds too good to be true in Creepshow Vol 3 #4.
Art: Flesh Wounds
Sergeant Campion cuts a striking figure adorned in red,
white, and black. Mark Torres' muted colors lessen the battlefield carnage. Yet
bright and florescent colors lend a heightened reality to Campion's lust for
conquest. Campion and his fellow Redcoats evoke the toy soldiers beloved by
generations of British children and treasured by modern wargaming enthusiasts.
Yet Torres often paints the soldiers' skin gray, suggesting the British Empire
thrived by sucking the lifeblood from its subjects.
Campion’s deal with the devil occurs beneath a light blue
and pink sky, while green coats the ground and an ancient temple. After
receiving what he most desired, Thomas' skin looks hale as he charges into
battle renewed. Yet orange, pink, purple, and green dominate panels when the
devil pays Thomas a return visit in Creepshow Vol 3 #4. Hyper-real colors
invade Flesh Wounds thereafter.
Story: Face
Abigail has a problem. Her boyfriend left her for another
woman. The scorned lover vacillates between revulsion and admiration as she
stares at a photo of her boyfriend with his new paramour. Yet his choice is
irrefutable. So, in Acky Bright’s story, Abigail visits a clinic promising to
give her a new face.
At first, this second story in Creepshow Vol 3 #4 seems
innocuous compared with the first. Yet Abigail wields her new beauty like a
weapon. Like the Roman god the clinic is known for, Abigail becomes two-faced.
Her cosmetic surgery was supposed to unleash the person inside her. Instead,
Abigail's actions suggest that her boyfriend dropped her because of her
"inner beauty."
Art: Face
Acky Bright portrays Abigail as a schoolgirl who prefers
comfort to elegance. As Abigail stares at her phone, the brightly colored ad
for Janus contrasts with the gray dominating the first page. The surgeon's
proposed makeover evokes Lady Cassandra from Doctor Who. Abigail smiles when
agreeing to the surgery. Yet, as she waits for the anesthesia to take effect,
beads of sweat form on Abigail's nose and chin.
Pink and lavender welcome Abigail to the Barbie Era. Acky
Bright adorns flashbacks of Abigail's breakup in peach and brown. The nurse at
Janus holds something that links Face with Flesh Wounds and evokes scenes in a classic
Universal Monsters movie in Creepshow Vol 3 #4.
Lettering & Additional Creep Art
Pat Brosseau orders black, uppercase words into ivory
dialogue balloons and narrative boxes. White letters haunt black cloudy
balloons. The words grow bold for intonation and swell for volume. Gunfire
fuels the rapid-fire conclusion of Flesh Wounds, while a banging door heralds
the end of Abigail’s existence in Face.
Michael Broom frames the introductory scene in Flesh Wounds
with our narrator's welcoming embrace. Then, the Creep invites us into his home
as Sergeant Thomas Campion’s story about the price of war comes to its haunting
conclusion. Our narrator climbs into the beginning of Abigail's story. But be
warned: the Creep amplifies the disturbing conclusion of this story about our definitions
of beauty and fears of the surgeon's knife. Thanks to Image Comics and Skybound
for providing a copy for review.
Final Thoughts
Two people separated by time, place, sex, interests, and any
other criteria you can think of embrace shortcuts to omnipotence in Creepshow
Vol 3 #4, only to discover no one can remain invincible forever.
Rating 9.5/10
For more cover art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.
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