Hellraiser: Collected Best (Clive Barker’s…)

    (Checker, 2002-2004)
™ and ©2004 Clive Barker

Pinhead and Co. return, and this time not in yet another straight-to-video horror film. This collection of illustrated horror stories first appeared in print between 1989 and 1994, published by Marvel’s Epic imprint.

There are such flashes of near–genius as “The Canons of Pain” by Erik Saltzgaber and John Bolton. “Songs of Metal and Flesh” has truly spooky art by Dave Dorman and Lurene Haines. J.M. Lofficier spins a taut story of the macabre in “The Blood of a Poet.”

However, a pre–Matrix Larry Wachowski wrote “Razing Hell,” one of the weaker points in the anthology. Comprising three parts and nearly 50 pages, it’s simply too long. The story’s art by Mark Pacella looks carefully detailed at points but rushed in others, as do the letters.

Fans of horror-story maestro Clive Barker will enjoy these 10 stories as addenda to the Hellraiser mythos, but, for those without a particular yen for Barker’s universe or tales (or at least the gory and macabre—which tend to go together in horror writing), this collection’s best left alone.

— Ray Sidman
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  • 1
    #1
    Jan 2002
    Cover: $21.95
    W: Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Frank Lovece, Del Stone Jr., Bunny Hampton-Mack, Mark A. Nelson, D.G. Chischester, Sholly Fisch, Malcolm Smith, Doug Murray, Dwayne McDuffie  ·  A: Alex Ross, Tristan Shane, Bill Koeb, Dave McKean, Marc Hempel, Scott Hampton, Mark A. Nelson, Mike Mignola, Colleen Doran, Paul Johnson, Gray Morrow, Dan Spiegle
    Forward by Mark Thompson; Published by Checker
    1 copy for $34.00