The town of Holy Mountain, Texas has been invaded by Trickster Demons, you see. 
Uh huh, and they maim and kill, you see. Sooo, the Marked are sent to protect the townies, even though the Holy Mountaineers are narrow-minded individuals, full of racism, prejudice, and just plain intolerance. Oh, and they hate Halloween!!
David Hine and Brian Haberlin write this “heavy-meddle” horror story, and Haberlin contributes some mighty creepy illustration work too. But first, the story: heavy, so heavy on conversations, chatter, and historical remembrances, the reading is slow. The dialogue actually gets tiresome as we joylessly trudge the sidewalk of prose, with our pillowcase dragging along, weighed down by sour grapes, verbose rules and plenty of angry finger-waving.
Brian Haberlin’s interior artwork here treads alongside such late greats as Richard Corben, perhaps borrowing from 3D figure apps and other sources of reference. The incredible lighting, the altered-but-kinda-real faces, and features, it’s all good. Colour by Geirrod Van Dyke, with flatting assists from T. J. Briar and John Ercek. Lettering by Francis Takenaga.
And the front cover of the 2D version, also credited to Haberlin, is absolutely stunning. The woman’s face, the embedded skulls, drapery and pumpkins, wow. Is it AI-assisted, or painted, or digital? Or whatever. We don’t know of its conjured up MidJourney to the front cover, but man alive, it is fabulous.
It’s a wordy, horrific entrant in the Halloween 2022 comic lineup, and available also in a 3D glasses version (not reviewed here) for a few more bucks.
The Marked: Halloween Special #1, (2D version) $5.99 for 50 pages of Mature content. 3D version: $8.99
Newsdesk