Comics
Michael Steven’s Haunted Caves Review
Haunted Caves is writer Sammy Montana’s first leap into graphic novels. After a couple pages of reading, the comic feels like storyboards for an almost semi familiar slasher movie. It makes sense since it was adapted from Michael Steven’s screenplay of the same name and that Montana works closely with the Halloween franchise.
The story revolves around a small group of high schoolers on Halloween. Eric, the pranking jerk unusual protagonist, his girlfriend Steph, and their gang of friends go to the ‘Haunted Caves’ haunted house. After their disappointment in the lame haunted house, they go for more dangerous thrills and chills in atypical slasher fashion into a corn maze and the real Haunted Caves. This is where the story starts kicking into overdrive and raises the body count and the teens fight for their lives.
The artwork by Ryan Browne and Scott Keating may not sit well with certain readers but the use of shadows and the ability to make storyboard-like panels really help the pacing of the comic.
Haunted Caves is a great comic for this time of year to read, with Halloween references and the corn maze. The story feels like something straight out of a slasher movie you’ve watched countless times, but Montana changes things around a bit where it feels different. Haunted Caves is a great first step for this group. This being a one shot, I’m saddened not to learn more about the story. But I feel this series is far from over.
IDW Dark and Paramount recently joined forces to launch limited comic book tales set in the worlds of Smile and A Quiet Place, and we’ve learned today that they’ll continue hanging around in those franchise universes with two brand new limited series tales.
Entertainment Weekly has exclusively revealed this afternoon that IDW Dark’s Any Given Smile debuts in September, while A Quiet Place: Rising Tides arrives in November.
First up, from writer Stephanie Williams and artist Pablo Collar, Any Given Smile puts a football-themed twist on Parker Finn’s successful Smile movie franchise.
The five-part limited series is “set in January 1995, during the American Arena League football championship game in St. Augustine, Florida. The rising superstar of the Sharks, backup quarterback Dupree, is feeling the pressure from his teammates, the fans, and also the city’s gambling underworld, to whom he owes a considerable debt. Meanwhile, a sports journalist investigates a string of suicides that may be connected to the big game. At the very least, they are connected to a sinister entity that preys on the minds of its victims.”
From writer Declan Shalvey and artist Luke Sparrow, A Quiet Place: Rising Tides will also be a five-issue limited story. The comic book tale “brings the creatures to the Florida Keys, where a father-daughter duo attempt to survive on water in a houseboat.”
EW further details, “This tense family reunion coincides with the arrival of the vicious creatures that hunt through sound. Grace and her dad find safety on the open ocean, but she’ll have to make landfall sooner or later; the father’s oxygen tank and their supplies are running low, while a hurricane swiftly approaches.”
Learn more about both comic books over on Entertainment Weekly.
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