There’s a ritual going on, Six people and one guitar rest in seven coffins. The ceremony involving the six people is going to be strange enough. The guitar, though? THAT’S going to be more than a little odd as The Marked #6 explores new edges in a world emerging in the shadows of the original series by writer David Hine and writer/artist Brian Haberlin. The new ground being explored in this latest issue has an amusing appeal to it that suggests a fusion between modern horror and something altogether more gothic, but a more profound blending of art and story seems just out of reach for the latest issue of a series that continues to show promise.

They’re drawing energy from six people in seven coffins. There’s energy coming from the guitar of a guy named Pope as well. It rests there like the rest of them. There’s something in it that recalls a particular journey to Berlin in 1979. There was a party there. Iggy Pop and David Bowie were there (among others.) Pope had gotten ahold of a tape there by a guy named Zann. It sounded like little more than the same 30 seconds of music on a loop, but there was something sinister in it that would find them visiting a violin-playing Lovecraft in a strangely spectral underworld. 

Hine launches into an exciting horror story featuring cameo appearances by various celebrities. It’s fun stuff, but the heavyweight of the story isn’t quite approached with the visual intensity that could animate it. Maybe he’s trying to cover too much story in too short a span of time. Perhaps the introduction of the tape isn’t entered into with the right sense of rhythm and pacing. Maybe Hine’s dealing with a kind of story that doesn’t lend itself to visuals without audio. Or perhaps it’s a mix of all of this an more. Whatever it is, the potential of the story of magical audio doesn’t quite hit its potential in the seventh issue of the series. 

Haberlin is clearly having fun with a story set in Berlin in 1979. The cameos by iconic celebrities like Iggy and Bowie and Lovecraft hit the page with all of the impact one might expect from a story set in shadows and magic. The visual intensity of the story doesn’t quite find the right groove, though. It’s very, very difficult to show the dramatic power of music in an exclusively visual medium. Haberlin does a pretty good job by evoking a specific mood with a few very distinct faces, but more would need to be conjured in and around the panels in order to really tap into the unique power of a story like the one Hine is delivering.

The sixth issue of The Marked forges a refreshing new direction for an art-based world of magic. Hine and Haberlin don’t do themselves any favors by casting the series in the course of an artistic medium that’s notoriously difficult to bring tot he comics page. Theoretically, things could move ahead in an exciting direction, given the ingenious fusion between Lovecraftian horror and pop music in the issues to come.

Grade: B-