Whereas its predecessor focused solely on Daimon Hellstrom, Son of Satan, ESSENTIAL MARVEL HORROR: VOL. 2 opens its berth wide to showcase a full six monsters — or those who deal with them — in all their short-lived glory. For me, this is what the ESSENTIAL line should be about: collecting obscure titles that otherwise would never be collected.
It begins with The Living Mummy, who’s practically the star of this anthology with 10 stories, despite the cover image of Brother Voodoo (although he has nine). It begins promisingly, with this mummy a reawakened slave. Even after thousands of years, he wants revenge for his own torture and murder. It’s great, until the story sends him into those quasi-DOCTOR STRANGE fantasy worlds that sucks the horror angle out of it completely.
We’ve gotten a glimpse of Brother Voodoo in ESSENTIAL TALES OF THE ZOMBIE, but here we get his whole story, starting with his origin as a U.S. medical doctor who becomes a supernatural force to be reckoned with when he visits his home in Haiti, and his brother is killed by an evil serpent god. This character held little appeal for me going in, but these issues are among the strongest in the collection.
And so are those the five of Gabriel the Devil-Hunter. It’s safe to say this mysterious man of the cloth wouldn’t have existed if THE EXORCIST hadn’t forced Marvel to think him up as a way to cash in on that then-phenomenon. But I’m glad they did. As repetitive as you might think his stories would be, they contain some disturbing images and ideas that take full advantage of the Comics Code-free magazines in which they appeared. They’re the most horror-oriented of all the pieces in this HORROR book; it’s a shame there weren’t more.
The Golem is like the Jewish legend: a silent, proto-Frankenstein’s monster made of rock. And that’s a terrible idea to center a comic around (“The Thing That Walks Like a Man!”), which perhaps is why he had a scant four adventures. Again, Marvel doesn’t know quite what to do with him, which is why they quickly squander any potential by pulling the ol’ go-to-another-dimension trick.
Our next feature, Modred the Mystic, was rooted solely in magic and fantasy, but couldn’t conjure up much beyond wordy scripts and uninteresting plots. His three appearances are the least memorable of the lot. Finally, there’s The Scarecrow. He also is represented by three stories, but they’re good. For one thing, the whole idea of the character is absolutely bizarre: a scarecrow who lives in a painting, from which he jumps to wrestle with monsters when needed.
These issues are culled from such titles as SUPERNATURAL THRILLERS, STRANGE TALES, HAUNT OF HORROR and MARVEL CHILLERS. And, hey, was MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE the chosen book where series go to die? Because in half of the cases here, the characters complete their run in the Marvel Universe by starring alongside The Thing. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS SERIES:
• ESSENTIAL DEFENDERS: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL GHOST RIDER: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL GODZILLA: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL IRON FIST: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL KILLRAVEN: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL MAN-THING: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL MAN-THING: VOL. 2
• ESSENTIAL MARVEL HORROR: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL MARVEL SAGA: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL MARVEL TWO-IN-ONE: VOL. 2
• ESSENTIAL MOON KNIGHT: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL NOVA: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL RAMPAGING HULK: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL SAVAGE SHE-HULK: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL SUPER VILLAIN TEAM-UP: VOL. 1
• ESSENTIAL TALES OF THE ZOMBIE: VOL. 1
