THE SPLASH PAGE!

This Week:

THE DARK MUSEUM

GENRE: Steampunk/Sci-Fi/Horror/Weird Tales

FOR THOSE OF YOU WHO LIKED: The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, Friday The 13^th The Series, Tales From The Crypt

FOR READERS OF AGES: 17 and up

FORMAT: Paper

ISSUE(s) covered: Issue 1

PUBLISHER: Sordid Fairy Tales Press

WRITER: Dylan Mahaffey

ARTIST: Zephyr Wilcox III (Interior) Darcy Mahaffey (Cover)

RELEASE DATE: Unspecified (Available now)

CONTACT INFO:

COVER PRICE: $3.00

THE SKINNY:  The tale focuses on what I could deduce, was an alternate turn of the century, late Victorian mansion/museum that houses a collection of various objects of mysterious, and somewhat supernatural objects with a sordid and often macabre origin.  The intro story involves the head curator interviewing a new applicant, known only to the reader as Willingsby.  As the interview courses on, The head curator, identified as Mister Crom points out a chair that is apparently haunted by the spirit of an abused wife, which segways into the main story of how said particular chair became possessed by her tortured spirit.

WHAT I LIKED: The concept is rather nice.  It marries up some traditional steampunkish Victorian concepts, with the Night Gallery/Twilight Zone/Tales from the Crypt, horror semi-anthology tale.  The cover art is a great semi-abstract piece that sums up and exemplifies the feature story quite well!

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE:  Where the concept was good, I had a couple of problems with the execution.  I assume this isn’t the London of our reality, but some pseudo advanced society that was ahead of of the real time.  But it’s not clearly, to me at least, how this steampunk world came to be.  For example, the tale of the haunted chair had a robot in Victorian England.  But the robot’s backstory is never clearly explained.  But my real problem in this book had to do with the interior art.  It is all done in pencil with no inkwork.  Now while I have no problem with this in and of itself, the art comes off as rough and unfinished, and detracts from the rest of the story.

FINAL SUMMATION:  As I said, the concept is great, but it seems rough, and uneven.  Some of my gripes, such as the lack of data on the world’s and museums backstory, may just be from the writer not wanting to reveal too much in the first issue.  There is a lot of potential with this story, world and cast of characters.  I hope that subsequent issues surmount the hump of the first issue I read.  Time will only tell

RATING: 7 out of 10