The Dark Horse Book of Monsters

    (Dark Horse, 2006)
™ and © Dark Horse Comics, Inc.

The monsters between the attractive, hardbound covers of this collection are not always what they seem. In “I Witnessed the End of the World,” written by Kurt Busiek and drawn by Keith Giffen and Al Milgrom in their best early Silver Age style, Riff Borkum, a hero in the Cave Carson mold, battles a Himalayan snow monster. But the real monsters turn out to be the ascendant super-heroes who supercede the wonders discovered by heroes like Biff. Mike Mignola gives readers one of his pithy, pitch-perfect Hellboy shorts in which the monster is really a means to an unexpected end.

Who’s the bigger monster, the one who creates an abomination or the abomination itself? That’s what Avrid Nelson and Juan Ferreyre ask in “To Weave a Lover.” Giant worms gnaw in “The Horror Beneath,” by Leah Moore, John Reppion, and Timothy Green II, and it’s not the little blue demon in “Hidden” that’s the monster, but the priest who conceals his sins behind piety.

“A Boy and His Dog” is the highlight of the collection. Written by Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer with art by Jill Thompson, the story continues the tale of the neighborhood pack seen in other Dark Horse “Book of …” collections. Here, they discover, curled up in a doghouse, an injured boy who, amazingly, can talk their lingo. But he, too, isn’t what he seems. All in all, a highly satisfying collection of monsters.

— Timothy J. Wood
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