Dark Horse Comics brings you a Harry Potter inspiration book about some teenagers who enrolls in a university that involves in the occult and the supernatural which is Blackwood Library Edition on its first volume. 
Ok so whatever happens if you take Stranger Things, squeeze the juice out of Berserk and then go for a whole blend of Deadly Class from Image, you get this comic out of Satan’s glory hole. However since it’s a spooky season, I keep finding these comics just creeping into my subconscious. In the same way that other creators keep making comics that have magic and supernatural stuff, I’m cursed to keep doing comic reviews with mages and witches and stuff, and constantly mentioning some other stories that involve magic, occult, and witchcraft.
So anyway, Blackwood is written by Evan Dorkin and illustrated by Veronica and Andy Fish. Evan is an American comic artist and cartoonist who is best known for his comics “Milk and Cheese” and “Dork.” He’s been drawing comics ever since his teenage years, and he became more obsessed with comics when a comic book retailer opened a store close to his high school. His dream was to attend SVA in the animation department, but he ended up attending NYU to study there, and then he preferred to draw comics more than do animation. However, it’s very rare that Evan is actually writing this comic and having the two illustrators draw for him, which is very strange.
The front cover looks more like the front cover of Ms. Miriam’s graphic novel version of Hooky in a darker version. Why? Because the background looked very cursed to me, I don’t know why but it seemed like you’re going into deep shit after seeing some Harry Potter movies. So the cover art background has some series of spooky masks, vines, and some demon hands in a symmetric angle, while the middle part of the cover shows something more of a Castlevania game cover. And apparently, there are some strange kids looking so serious about something while the main character in the middle is holding a spellbook.
The story starts when some old man is recording his voice on his recording device claiming that he’s going to die because his nervous system is collapsing, and the source of that is some kind of psychic attack where he kept repeating himself by saying doom, even he wrote his whole calendar with doom each day. He was translating the book of despair when he stumbled upon a strange page with a text. Even though the book is cursed and he even added some chains to be never be opened. And then he suffered his fate for translating that book. And then the next scene shows a woman who wakes up from a nightmare while the conductor informs her that her destination is the last stop. Even when she got there, she already got a thing against that town because she’s “allergic to this dump,” meaning that she’s being cursed in this town because she’s having a nosebleed right under her nose. She met a Japanese student after giving her a handkerchief or tissue, whatever is it called. And then some dean welcomed both to Blackwood. When the students got into the dorm house, which most likely has a giant gargoyle fountain, some girl starts to mention an incident where a female student hung herself somewhere in the room. Even if there’s something related to the first part of the story.
Somehow, when they’re about to go to sleep, someone had a nightmare of undead trying to warn the four students who had the same dream. And clearly enough, the whole dorm is tainted with black magic. And then, the dean attacked those students right out of the blue. The most disturbing is that the dean grew out of tentacles on his back which almost reminds me of that monster from Stranger Things and the whole upside-down realm which is a strange well that was tainted with black magic. But in that well there are evil spirits around. The four students find this strange situation and the rumor about a student who was missing. The police have been involved with that incident too, even if it is an occult school then why didn’t they close it down for good? What’s the point of enrolling in an occult school where some students are getting themselves in danger? So the only thing that they’re going to do is to investigate the whole school and find out the source of the curse.
The story seems to be dark but there’s more to that. I do get to read a lot of comics about magic and curses, but never seen a comic that is seriously more disturbing than Berserk. Instead of carrying the egg of the king, here the whole campus is tainted with some evil spirits. I don’t know where to begin, but it seems that this comic is much more of a horror story, or maybe someone has experienced watching some snuff films. Take the Troma films, for example, there are so many disturbing films even viewers would find it strange that someone fell into a vat of toxic waste and became a monstrous superhero which as The Toxic Avenger. There’s no other comic that can be more terrifying than this. The art is something else because the two illustrators are more like a team for gathering some ideas of what thumbnail page is decent enough to illustrate the whole thing. This is more likely how they formed a team of illustrators to have two heads better than one. Well, I don’t what else there’s to say about the art, but it’s very clear to have the viewers follow through with the comic.
Newsdesk