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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