Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives! #4 // Review
He’s got gauze and antiseptic. Sharp needles. What he doesn’t have is anesthetic. He’s going to operate on Kate anyway. He’s going to do it without her permission. That’s his intention, anyway. He’s going to find that intentions sometimes fail to come to fruition in Creature from the Black Lagoon Lives! #4. The writing team of Ram V and Dan Watters conclude their time with the Universal monster in a final issue that is satisfyingly brought to the page by artist Matthew Roberts and colorist Trish Mulvihill. The horror finds its ending in darkness and survival deep in the bowels of some ancestral swamp.
The creature is lurking around the edges of the action. There’s a man who is seeing it for the first time in decades. He’s got the thing in his sight. Literally. Has the thing in crosshairs as he levels a rifle at it. It’s bending into the water to evidently get a drink. Pulling the trigger would be so easy. So why is it that he isn’t going to do it? Why is it that he isn’t going to pull the trigger? Elsewhere it’s going to run into the monster of a man who has captured Kate. The monster of a man and the monster that would be a man are going to meet.
Ram V. And Dan Watters balance the story somewhere between psychological horror and monster horror. The story of “human as the real monster” has been done to death. The writing team for this series hasn’t really added a whole lot to it in any significant way, but that doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been fun to read. The overall feeling is that it’s been the right kind of creepy but not enough of the right kind of creepy to really live-up to the potential of the story. In that much it follows the lead of the original 1954 movie that inspired it.
Roberts’ darkness is substantial. The murkiness has a thick depth to it that serves its subject matter well, but the creature itself continues to look a silly and awkward for the most part. The visual of the Creature has always been something that’s been difficult to nail in the right way. With the right angles, it can look fantastic from the wrong angles it just looks kinda goofy. The art team manages a few decent moments in the course of the issue. The drama is drawn to the page quite well, though and Mulvihill’s colors do wonderful things with the swamp. It’s a lot more atmospheric than many swamp comics have managed in the past.
If there had been just a bit more going on in the visual execution of the comic book, it could have been spectacular. If there had been just a bit more originality in the monster-versus-the-real-monster-of-man sort of a thing...well...maybe it could have been a bit more inspired. All of the elements are there for a truly cool horror comic, but they don’t quite get executed in the right way.
