FLESH AND BLOOD by Robert Tinnell and Neil Vokes (Monsterverse 2011)

If you love gothic monsters in their natural habitat--castles, crypts, desecrated monasteries, and half-timber villages--here's your next must-read!  It's a distinct take on them, much different from anything currently in vogue, inspired by vintage British horror movies produced by Hammer Films from the mid-1950s up through the early '70s.  Writer Robert Tinnell, artist Neil Vokes, and colorist Matt Webb work together to boil the look and spirit of two-dozen or so movies down into a more concentrated dose in comics form than anything Hammer could possibly have put on film.

If you've never seen a Hammer flick, don't worry--this actually wouldn't make for a bad introduction, and I'd say you're in for quite a treat.  Hammer's achievement, in a nutshell, was to take the classic monsters that Universal Studios made so iconic in an earlier spate of black-and-white movies--most notably Dracula and Frankenstein--and to hard-reboot them with color, blood, and increasingly frank eroticism. 

As Jason Henderson notes, Hammer also introduced a gorgeous, consistent period look.  They may have done so in large part out of necessity:

Part of the conceit, of course, was in re-use: Hammer knew how to stretch a pound and make it look like they wanted it that way. Like a modern television series, Hammer Studios employed the same key players and crew over and over again, until they invariably retired, having trained the younger set. Bernard Robinson, the brilliant set-designer who horror chronicler Dick Klemensen calls the "backbone and heart of the Hammer success story," created castles and marble floors and battlements out of plaster and chalk and not only made it look great, it looked right, and could look right over and over again. Cinematographer Jack Asher designed the well-contrasted and distinct color palette.

. . . but the effect of this consistency was to suggest a larger shared world--what Henderson calls the "Hammerscape":

In Horror, there's one world that holds together like that: a landscape slightly European and slightly British, slightly historical and modern, adaptable to many plots and characters and yet always recognizable. In Horror, there is the Hammerscape.

What is the Hammerscape? You have to see it to truly get it, but it is a cohesive horror universe reflected in curiously stagy and yet convincing sets, oddly lurid and sumptuous and yet stunningly classy colors (Ah, burgundy! Burgundy everywhere!), and not a single element that doesn't fit into the Hammer Ideal.

This is one thing it's a joy to see these creators get just right.  Tinnell's story riffs on major settings, binding them together with action and intrigue.  Vokes's art evocatively realizes the iconic structures and landscapes, and his panel progressions seamlessly splice them into a continuous world.  Then Webb stylishly lays in the colors from Hammer's lush palette.   

Presumably, the monsters could be said to share this Hammerscape, but they never actually shared it in any of the films.  Perhaps you've heard of Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man?  That was Universal.  So were the three multi-monster "rallies" that followed: House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein.  Hammer never brought its monsters together like that.  I'm not aware of any stated reason why they didn't, but despite the natural appeal of such encounters, it must be said that Universal almost indelibly tarnished the very idea, even as they introduced it to mass audiences, by exploiting it as a cheap, degrading, last-ditch gimmick.  They did that for four movies in a row, each more execrable than the one before, and left an enduring, widespread impression that multi-monster stories are inherently gimmicky, unserious, and weak.

I've previously tried to dispel that impression with a little historical context, but the proof of any pudding is always in the eating, and Flesh and Blood delivers in a tremendously satisfying way on the hopes and expectations a less-disillusioned audience might bring to such a story.  I'll put it this way: in the HBO series Carnivale, there's a scene where the barker lures rubes into a sideshow tent with the promise of a "man eating chicken!"  The phrase conjures horrifying images of a monstrously inverted geek-show, right?  Well, once they've all paid for the dubious privilege of beholding such a spectacle, he yanks the curtain aside to reveal . . . a man seated at a table, munching on a fried chicken drumstick.  If we think of Universal's monster rallies in terms of such hokum, Flesh and Blood throws a flapping, snapping MAN-EATING CHICKEN in your face.  It is, as Tim Lucas says in his typically informative and insightful Introduction, "nothing less than the epic Hammer horror film . . . which the venerable British company somehow never had the vision to produce."

It's actually, as Lucas goes on to suggest, more like the dream of such a movie.  Tinnell has fished a lot of the most memorable, trademark Hammer moments out from their original contexts in the movies.  He doesn't just plop them in here, though, or--even worse--contrive a plot that serves only the purpose of stringing them together.  His grasp of Hammer narrative structures and rhythms, and of where these moments fit in them, is solid and intuitive enough that when he tells his story, it would be stranger if these moments weren't a part of it.  What could have been little more than a highlight-reel becomes something closer to an ideal collectively projected by the movies. 

The characters aren't quite as we remember them, either.  Names and faces get a bit of a reshuffling, in some instances.  And the faces are drawn more to the characters than the actors, if that makes sense.  Vokes has told me in correspondence, "I start with actors in mind but didn't actually use anybody's likenesses beyond giving them just enough for a fan to get it," and Tinnell adds, "you think they look like the actors until you see them side-by-side."  Among the names and faces are lots of "Easter eggs" for longtime fans to delight in, but just to reiterate for newcomers, nothing that you need to understand in order to enjoy this presumes any familiarity with the movies.

The key attraction here, of course, is the monsters, and specifically their encounters with each other.  Tinnell and Vokes use the freedom of comics to subtly intensify everything that makes Hammer vampires (especially the female ones!) distinct.  Webb heightens the effect by punching up the colors to a degree that would probably call too much attention to itself in live-action film: cool blue skin, blazing red eyes, and white, white fangs.  The werewolf is a right beast.  And Frankenstein (just the Baron, so far--sorry, no Monster yet . . .but then, it's only Book One!) is the most chilling of them all.

Tinnell does as good a job as I've ever seen of telling a story that plausibly brings them all together.  It helps, of course, that he's not trying to merge existing continuities, but is rather telling a wholly original story, inspired by the movies but in no way connected to their events. 

With any kind of crossover, there's a certain natural appeal to seeing the characters encounter each other, and a natural curiosity to see how the encounter will unfold.  When it comes to monsters, I think there's a little more to it than that.  They promise the spectacle of savage bloodshed between awesome and terrifying creatures. The Grimms' fairy tale "The Glass Coffin" presents a battle between two large animals--enchanted ones, it turns out.  The way the scene is written just exudes a fascination that captures very well, I think, the compulsive desire to watch such a conflict, but also the trepidation:

Through the thin walls of the hut a fierce roaring and bellowing could be heard.  Fired with unaccustomed courage, the tailor leaped out of bed, threw his clothes on, and ran outside.  Not far away a big black bull and a beautiful stag were fighting desperately, charging each other with such fury that the ground trembled under their hoofbeats and the air resounded with their bellowing.  For a long time the outcome seemed uncertain, but in the end the stag thrust his antlers into his enemy.  The bull fell to the ground with a frightful roar, and the stag finished him off with a few more blows.

The tailor, who had been looking on with amazement, was still standing motionless. . . .

Consider this tale, too, quoted by Agnes Murgoci in her 1926 paper, "The Vampire in Roumania":

A lad who was in service with a female vampire noticed once that she was covered with blood during the day-time. He watched her closely, and saw that she anointed herself with something, and went out by the chimney. The lad also anointed himself with the ointment in the box, and went out of the chimney after his mistress. He arrived at a far off desert region, where the vampires fought. He watched them stabbing one another and fighting. The vampires go with their bodies, not their souls only. The ointment with which the vampires anoint themselves is made of the grease of serpents, hedgehogs, and badgers.

Not everyone feels it, of course, but for those of us who do, there's a dreadful allure to the idea of secretly observing carnage between monsters in the pale moonlight.  If that's you, well--here you go!  And this is only the beginning.

As for extras, I've already mentioned the Intro by Lucas.  Bruce G. Hallenback also contributes a kind of afterward--a brief survey of where these monsters came from, literarily and cinematically speaking.  And there's a b-feature, "Operation Satan," written by Tinnell, this time with art by Bob Hall that should appeal to fans of the black-and-white mags from Warren, Skywald, and Marvel back in the day.  A guest gallery and pages from Vokes's sketchbook round it out.  All in all, a very pleasing package, and a steal at 15 bucks from Monsterverse!