New Comics: 'Clive Barker's Hellraiser,' Number One

Hellraiser hasn't been Hellraiser for a good long while now. We got a great film, a good film, an OK film, and then valiant efforts by Epic Comics to keep the spirit of the tale alive, but it seems like it's been ages since Pinhead and company have been their old selves.

That changes now, with the launch of Clive Barker's Hellraiser, a new ongoing series scripted by Barker and Christopher Monfette and drawn by Leonard Manco. It's not perfect, but it gives us something we've longed for since time immemorial: the old brutality that made Hellraiser great.

The Cenobite known as Pinhead and his fellows have been reduced to shells of their former selves, or so Pinhead himself believes. Now at the level of taking human sacrifices from loyal servants in the mortal world, Pinhead longs for something new, a change, a new experience beyond the hell he knows. Meanwhile, Kirsty Cotton, the girl he and his cohorts tormented to the limits of sanity in Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II, is still trying to forget, living a quiet life as an artist. Little does she know that the devil from her past is preparing to haunt her again.

The most astonishing thing about the book is how quickly it picks up on the old feel of the franchise. Manco's art sets the perfect tone, lending an atmosphere elegant viscera to the book. The characters are well-rendered, the scenes unfold dynamically; it's everything you could want. But more than that, Barker seems to have stepped seamlessly back into the world he created with a novella and a film so long ago (though he has been rumored to be revisiting Pinhead in other realms lately as well). The Cenobites almost automatically return to their former glory in his hands. His dialogue might not be among the more realistic in modern comics (mere mortals don't speak in the poetic lilt of Barker's prose, to be sure), but his storytelling and his horror savagery hasn't dimmed, and it's a joy to see these characters and this world return in such a grand fashion.

At its end, Hellraiser Number One is little more than setup, a stage put in place for bigger things to unfold in future issues, but that doesn't matter. It has promise, and it has power, and it has most of all something we've all been waiting for: a true revival of an iconic horror universe.

Want more? Here's a particularly bloody preview page from the book. 

Pick up the whole thing at your local comics shop today, and don't forget to check out my previous post for a free 8 page Hellraiser short story.