In 1993, Dark Horse published four separate comics adapting the classic Universal films of DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN, THE MUMMY and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON. They were long out of print until Dark Horse collected the quartet in the new trade paperback UNIVERSAL MONSTERS: CAVALCADE OF HORROR.
Of the four, FRANKENSTEIN takes the cake as the best, with gorgeous painted art by Den Beauvais, who also scripts. DRACULA also utilizes art that is painted rather than hand-drawn, but suffers storywise, as Bram Stoker’s work (or the 1930s film) is too complex to be successfully boiled down a single comic book. More conventional art can be found in THE MUMMY, alive in its light-pastel color scheme, and CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON, which borders on the cartoony, but excels in the underwater scenes, in which spotting the monster is akin to playing WHERE’S WALDO?
It’s nice to see some of the more iconic frames from the films be translated into the graphic format, and all in all, the stories in CAVALCADE remain true to their source material. Whether or not you’ve seen the original films, this presentation should please fans of old-school horror. –Rod Lott
Related posts:
- UNIVERSAL MONSTERS coming back to comics
- Dark Horse resurrects Universal Monsters for novels
- Moonstone Monsters: Volume One
- The 13 Best Horror Stories of All Time
- Happy Halloween!
