Checker Publishing – Tapping the Vein

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Tapping the Vein

Welcome to the largest, most expensive book that anybody ever sent me for free! That being said, you probably think I’m going to be biased towards it, right? Well, as this is my dime and I get to ramble, let me tell you a little about me and Clive Barker. I discovered his writings when I was probably about 15 or so, loved it and got as many books as I could. I devoured all of them, then went off to college and forgot about them. I read all the Hellraiser comics again recently and thought them mostly silly, although there were quite a few that were great. That being said, I’ve brought his books with me through a few moves, meaning to pick them up again and see what my opinion is now, but never seem to get around it. So, there you are, that leads up to when I got this book a week ago. I thought I’d go into it with an open mind and see what happened, and what do you know, I liked it. All the stories seem to end brutally and you can start to see the ending coming after reading the first few, but they were still incredibly imaginative (In the Hills, The Cities being one that springs immediately to mind with its giants composed of living humans). I couldn’t find fault with the art on any of the stories either, and John Bolton has long been one of my favorite comic painters. For those who are curious about which stories are adapted here, they’re all from his Books of Blood series, his earliest collections of short stories. If you’re a fan of horror comics, get this collection. If you’re squeamish or not a fan of Clive Barker, you’ll probably hate it. If you just don’t know, give it a chance, there’s plenty to convince skeptics in here.