By Bryan Menegus, Staff Writer
What happens when you cross a priest, a ghost, and Todd McFarlane? The short story is, you sell a whole lot of comics. Image Comic’s new series, “Haunt,” barely had time to spook the shelves before hungry fans excited to get in on the series snatched it up. Stores preordered an estimated 60,000 copies, an unheard of amount for a first issue, and by the next day, even local Long Island comic locale Amok Time had sold every last copy.
“Haunt” begins in a seedy motel room, where malcontent chain-smoking catholic priest Daniel Kilgore is seen re-dressing after an apparently regular meeting with a yet-to-be-named prostitute. The pencil and ink combo of Ryan Ottley and Todd McFarlane perfectly renders the hard-featured bleak metropolis that “Haunt” occurs in, its desaturated buildings mimicking the drained morals of Kilgore himself, made especially obvious in his rendezvous with his brother Kurt. As Kurt enters the confession booth to tell his brother of the sins he’s committed as a secret agent, it’s worrisome how little tolerance Daniel has for both his job and his brother. Kurt’s wrongdoings are told through a recollective flashback, revealing a sordid tale of terrorist cells, and a human testing facility run by the feeble and certifiable Doctor Shillinger. Despite being a trained killer, Daniel shows his moral mettle by killing Shillinger, the target he was supposed to save, and instead leading out the group of deformed subjects Shillinger had mutilated.
Post-confession, Daniel tells his brother that he’s dead to him, amidst strong implications that the two have a dark history together, and ironically enough, no sooner does Kurt leave that he is kidnapped, tortured, and killed for not revealing the location of Shillinger’s notebook, information which Kurt doesn’t know. In the hearse to the funeral Kurt’s ghost begins to haunt Daniel, imploring him to look after his apparent lover Amanda, who Kurt believes is in danger. Although Daniel refuses to accept Daniel’s visage as anything more than a hallucination, he begrudgingly goes to her apartment. In the middle of the night, two men come to kill her, and mere moments before one gunsel’s bullet strikes Daniel, his brother’s ghost enters his body, transforming him into Haunt, who receives the bullet without harm, and quickly decapitates the gunmen.
While the design of Haunt- who looks like the lovechild of Venom and Carnage- inspires just the right balance of fear and coolness for an anti-hero, the issue leaves something to be desired. For the most part, issue one consisted of back-story, which is an expected and sensible decision, but the choice to end the issue just as things begin to heat up is still a let-down. As well, most of Haunt’s powers are yet to be seen, nor is it resolved what sort of toll the transformation takes on Daniel himself. Most importantly, nothing is established to explain why Haunt needs to exist. No true villain has appeared, and none of the vague back-story sets up a need for vigilantism. The only real necessity so far is self-preservation, for which Haunt’s few understood powers seem more than capable of handling. Although its sales aren’t necessarily consistent with its content, “Haunt” shows enough promise to become Image’s next “Spawn.”
(Photo Courtesy of www.comicsign.com)