Some of the best fears find success by placing trust in a combination of history, culture and terror victory. The characters at the heart of these stories are tormented by monsters that reflect the age they are in, the groups they belong to (social, racial, economic), and their immediate reality. Black horror is particularly powerful in this respect. There has been no time in history when black people have not turned their backs on the walls due to racist powers or other forms of oppression that stem from it. As a result, they represent communities that are constantly struggling for safety and recognition, plagued by some of humanity’s most enormous agents of violence. Jordan Peel’s 2017 film Get Out is a great example of what this combination can happen when it is given the opportunity to make many contributions to the story. It changes the landscape of the entire genre.
Dark Horse’s Black Horror Anthology Shook! , Second Sight Publishing and John Jennings Studio, embracing this triple terrifying threat, adding a bit of its classic EC horror styling to round out the experience for anger, vengeance and blood. And everything is for good reason.
The book features 12 stories of some of the best black comic creators working today. Rodney Burns, John Jennings, Bradley Golden, Flavio Cortez, David Breme, Charles Gobile, David F. Walker and more can be found on the roster. Each plays like a story from the Crypt segment, with punchy endings that leave readers in either a state of shock or a state of contemplation about the fate of the character (i.e. how or why he died).
One of the biggest challenges facing anthology is to settle for an opening story that sets the tone for what comes next. Shaking! “Tasty!! Itching by Bradley Golden and Flavio Cortés!!”, a nasty apocalyptic tale of a group of survivors cleaning food in New Orleans bombed by radioactive vampires. Golden and Cortez create a living dead world that feels hostile from the first panel. It mixes with Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and what’s not different from the extract shooter led by a cast of easily rooted characters.
Thanks to clever dialogue and dynamic interaction, the character comes quickly and separates from the usual “end of the world” straggler. Cortés describes them in a very textured and grainy style, making them appear to be pumping real blood on the page. The monster gets the same treatment and looks like some kind of page corruption. It all comes together for a story about Urban Decay and how it reflects systematic neglect. If this story was meant to set the tone, consider setting it with fear.
What’s interesting about Shook! Once that tone is established, that’s what it does. Early on, we get a loving, emotional story of aspirations, death, and the cruelty of life that gets shorter when cut. It’s called “The Breaks” and features scriptwriters John Jennings and Charles Goubile on Art. The story follows a breakdancer called Patricia. She is in her death bed as she visits from a different world DJ who is beaten by AIDS and takes things into consideration. It is somewhat Dickensian, a story about the consequences of other people’s actions, and the peace that follows. However, there are no Christmas presents, past and future ghosts here. Instead, death is given a microphone and can be on stage.
Jennings and Govile find a different, more existential kind of fear in “Break.” It may be the brightest story in the book, but it is just as frightening as some of the other offerings. Here death causes fear, but it does so in a transitional way. It manifests as a monumental change in consciousness with minimal fear requirements, regardless of how exciting the outlook of an afterlife may be for followers. In a way, Jennings and Guavil want readers to know that a little fear is good for their souls.
Meanwhile, Rodney Burns and David Brem’s “The Last March” leads things into the realm of EC horror, with a story that contests the KKK with many of its current victims. This is a good ‘all revenge story where guilty people get their practices in a way that is appropriate for their crimes. The Clan is planning to lynch an old man who is too calm in the face of what is coming. reason? He can summon victims of racial violence from the grave and pay his brand of justice.
Rather than simply showing the bad people they are receiving the treatment they deserve, Burns and Bream focus on power-related coronaviruses. The KKK is fearless when they are in full control of the situation. When that changes, they realize what the fear of indiscrimination will look like. The point is to show how power determines fear and how it can be weaponized just like evil. What is a better way to do this than to give people who have been unfairly treated by groups like the KKK to hunger for the racist body?
Shaking! Change gears for each story. The combinations I mentioned at the beginning of this work interweaves each one, switching between tone, voice and intention. Some focus on history to see the real human monsters who oppressed the black community, while others focused on culture to consider what heaven would look like for black artists who suffered from the vices of society. But it’s terrifying that they all converge. It’s a common language. And it shaking! Talk well.
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