Pigeons from — What the Hell?! Part 2
Posted by Official Editor Bill "Indy" Cavalier on July 1st, 2008
Well, it’s not gonna get any better, this abomination of a comic book re-telling of a Robert E. Howard story. Uh, sorry, did I say “re-telling”? I meant to say re-tarding.
Props to Brian Leno for keeping us up to date with a short review of the third installment of Dark Horse’s PIGEONS FROM HELL four-issue run of Joe Lansdale’s meatgrinding of Howard’s classic horror story. Hard-core Howardist that Mr. Leno is, he reports being “actually stunned” at how far from Howard’s story this comic adaptation has gotten under the heavy handedness of Mr. Lansdale.
I’m told that Mr. Lansdale is a big-time horror writer himself. Having no direct experience with reading anything he’s written (except his really REALLY bad stint on the Dark Horse CONAN comic), I’ll have to let that slide. All I know is that he’s totally butchered Howard’s story for this comic, and states it’s his homage to Ol’ Two-Gun. Sheesh. The Dark Horse gang has been pretty good about the props they’ve given Robert E. Howard over the last few years, but they have totally screwed the pooch on this one.
But hey, on a lighter note, I had the opportunity to chat with Pigeons from What the Hell’s artist Nathan Fox at the Wizard World Chicago ComicCon this past Saturday. He even sketched the above doodle (a giant monster eating pigeons???) in the copy I decided to pick up, and I do like stuff like that. I gave him some of my Howard credentials and told him, ‘Y’know this story is nothing like Howard’s Pigeons from Hell’. I should’ve asked him if he’d ever read REH’s original, but instead I complimented him on the good job I think he did with what he was presented – except for the “ghosts”. He said those weren’t ghosts, but transparent entities of some sort, and said he had some trouble making those work. I told him he’d be great at a straight up adapatation of Howard’s original story, where there were no “ghosts”. Duh.
Like so many of us, I’m a lot meaner through a faceless medium like a blog or message board than I am in person. Just as long as I never meet Joe Lansdale.
Posted in REH in Comics |
