Shadows on the Grave by Richard Corben Review

I’m no stranger to horror - I’ve sat and listened to my elderly parents complain at length about how nothing about them works anymore, and, of an evening, I’ve stumbled into some takeaway after many drinks and sampled their rotating, sweaty mystery meat kebabs (with a hefty side order of regret for later) - so I know the truly terrifying from the truly terrible, and Richard Corben’s Shadows on the Grave? This is horror for the profoundly retarded - and I mean barely-able-to-dress-themselves-without-shitting-they-britches retarded!

Here’s an idea of the stories contained within: some guy steals from the dead and the corpse rises from their grave and kills him; it’s called “Don’t Steal From the Dead”. In “The Grave Flies”, some grave robbers steal some Egyptian trinket and get eaten by flies - that’s IT! In “The Clown”, a robber dressed as a clown steals from a circus and gets killed by a puppet. Some dude takes magic ‘roids in “Flex” and pops after his muscles swell to bursting.

I’m gobsmacked this kind of crap got published. It must purely be because Richard Corben’s a name in comics after the many decades he’s worked in the industry because, if some nobody came up with this, no way in hell it’d ever see the light of day.

This volume goes on for nearly 300 interminable pages of excruciatingly unimaginative, predictable and shockingly flat stories, closing on an extra-long, extra-brainless Conan the Barbarian-type story where idiots kill each other for idiotic reasons.

Corben’s not an amazing writer but he usually produces some half-decent horror comics (Rat God and his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, Spirits of the Dead, are ok) so I don’t know what happened with Shadows on the Grave but, honestly, save yourself the time/effort/braincells/anything and stay well away from this drek!