A one-dimensional dickhead living in a Charles Addams/Tim Burton-esque cartoon town literally called Terror and filled with vampires, werewolves, witches and “Franks” (Frankenstein monsters) has kids who grow up to despise him, one of whom leaves. The one who leaves then comes back because the dickhead forces him to, seemingly to help his mother who’s gotten into it with some spirits who took her away or something silly.
I know Steve Niles’ name on a book cover is the literary equivalent of a skull and crossbones label on a bottle of poison but it’s been a few years since I read something by him and I wanted to see if he’s still producing garbage. Well, experiment complete - he is indeed still the worst!
The characters are so blah. The patriarchal dad, Lloyd West, is your average rich wanker and nothing more. His son Henry (I’m guessing “West” is a nod to the HP Lovecraft story, Herbert West - Reanimator, because horror genre) is your average son-who-hates-dad character. Guess what - they don’t get along. The whole boring story is watching Henry putz about Terror doing dumbass things like fighting the horror cliche denizens for no reason until he decides to fight his dad. What about that is anyone meant to find enjoyable?
The town itself is such an unimaginative construction, relying entirely on prefabricated horror staples to entirely unimpressive effect. The subplot involving Henry’s wife hiring a private dick to track down her abducted husband was even more dull than the main story. Szymon Kudranski’s art is actually decent but completely mired by the abundance of black on the page. It’s such an unnecessarily hard comic to look at. I get it, it’s a horror comic - that doesn’t mean smear everything with black so that it’s difficult to see what’s going on in a scene!
A Town Called Terror is terrible. If your idea of a good read is staring at a classic rock album cover, then you’ll probably love this. Steve Niles does it again!
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