The month of Halloween is welcomed by a couple of horror stories on the comics page under a beloved title as Creepshow enters its second issue. Writer Maria Lapham and writer/artist David Lapham tell the story of nightmare vegetation in “The Gorgahmorahh Tree.” Then, writer Steve Foxe and artist Erica Henderson take a visit to a fictional comic book writer/artist who is confronted by someone looking to take his money in “Creator’s Rites.” Though the specifics of the two stories wrap them in novel settings, the heart of the issue lies in plots that have been circulating around horror for a long time.

Daphne doesn’t like playing under the old tree in her backyard. Not anymore. There’s a darkness about it that seems to feed on negativity. It’s more than just personal anxiety, though. She will find out that its roots grow very deep. Elsewhere, comic book writer/artist Sal Medina is having a horrible time of it. His home health aid seems nice enough, but there’s something about him that isn’t quite right. The hero that made him famous is about to help defend him from yet another person he thinks might be trying to take advantage of him.

The Laphams’ story is at its best when it’s focusing in on the personality of its main character. Daphne is a likable girl, but the space and time allotted to her half of the issue don’t allow a whole lot of exploration of anything outside her relationship with the tree and the chaos it seems to be causing. The main character in the second feature fares a little better, but there isn’t enough contrast between his internal reality and the world outside his mind. Sal’s journey isn’t as weird and ambiguous as it needs to be to allow the kind of shock it could have had. 

David Lapham captures the drama in Daphne’s face. She’s clearly going through a lot, but it’s not seen in the shadow of the tree for long enough to give it the kind of menace it could have had. It’s really more of a psychological drama with the tree in the background than it is the story of something deeper that the tree could have symbolized if Lapham had given it a bit more of a visual presence on the page. Henderson has some fun with the contrast between the character design of Sal and his creation. Sal’s character is a fusion between cute animals and science fiction action, which actually DOES have a grounding in the pop culture of the 1980s that is mentioned in the script. There isn’t enough of a visual distortion in Sal’s dreams to give the gritty reality around him a striking counterpoint.

Neither story may completely live up to what it’s capable of, but it’s still really, really cool to see horror anthology comics continuing into the present long after their heyday in the mid-20th century. Given the right inspiration, Creepshow could become a very influential ongoing series.

Grade: B-

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