The month of popular horror continues with Image Comics’s presentation of the all-new one-shot Hack/Slash: Hot Shorts. Writer/artist Tim Seeley develops a trio of weird horror-comedy bits with the aid of artists Jim Terry and Daniel Leister. The beloved long-running indie work continues with a mixed bag of different horror-comedy elements. Some of them work better than others, but given how long Seeley’s creation has lived, it’s pretty remarkable that there’s still life in it at all. The one-shot has the feel of three jokes that almost seem to hint at some sort of a punchline while, oddly enough, tugging ever so gently at the heartstrings in places.

The opening story doesn’t mention any specific names. Johnny Cash drops by Elvis’s place on the totally unassuming day of August 16, 1977. Things there were a bit different than might have been reported in the papers. Then, Cassie and Vlad are washing blood off their bodies...a matter that becomes a bit complicated given Vlad’s neuroses. Finally, a weird construct comes to life that is a self-aware fusion of elements from Mary Shelley and H.P. Lovecraft. To save the world from oblivion at the entity’s hands, a special group of people has to make an appearance to close out the issue. 

There really isn’t very much to Seeley’s first story. It’s nice to see Elvis consumed the way he is while Cash looks on, but it’s nothing too terribly deep beyond the surface. Things DO get impressively deep as Seeley offers a peer into the personal lives of Cassie and Vlad with a garden hose and a whole lot of blood. It’s a touching moment between girl and monster that makes for one of the single best scenes in the book. Mary Shelley Lovecraft is a fun character...a monster in the form of a critic who is targeted by some of the extended ensemble that Seeley has been working with in the series. 

Jim Terry’s rendering in the first story is lovingly crude. A darkened Johnny Cash could have looked a lot cooler, but it might have compromised the intensity of the horror. Seeley’s own art is charming in the second story. The tender concerns of a couple of people washing blood off their bodies make it to the page with a subtle charm. It’s weird and disturbing in its own way, but it’s also very touching emotionally. Artwork rarely manages both with such poise. Leister’s art for the final story is pleasantly over-the-top with appealingly heavy ink that grinds its way gracefully across the page. 

Seeley’s work continues to have a coolly jagged indie feel about it. This may be a glossy offering from one of the biggest comic book companies in the US, but it still manages to feel like something that would have shown up at the comic shop in black and white on cheap newsprint somewhere in the late 1980s. It’s a stylishly indie aesthetic that feels like it might have been unearthed a few decades ago. 

Grade: B