Still loving Hack / Slash

So after a huge wait and much hunting around, I finally managed to get my hands on "Hack / Slack: Reanimation Games", which is the fifth collection of the long running series and for those of you not to familar with comics and wondering what I'm going on about, Hack / Slash is basically the fantastic horror comic series created by Tim Steely, who is clearly a man in love with the horror genre, something that is quite obviously clear from the writing of each issue, as he crams manages to cram in numerous horror references, without losing the flow of the writing, something that is certainly not easy, to pull off as we have seen in the past and only proven further, with the numerous amount of films, that have attempted to emulate this style first popularised by Quentin Tarantino. You only really have to notice the similarities between Cassie Hack and Tiffany Shepis ( B movie star of "Scarecrow" and "Die, Delta, Die!") to realise that Steely is not trying to cash in on a popular market, but instead pay homage to the genre he loves, as the series walks the tightrope between Horror and Humour, in much the same vein as the Evil Dead movies.

The main plot line for the series revolves around Cassie Hack, a wise cracking slasher hunter and survivor of the attack by a vicious slasher, known as "The Lunch Lady" who ironically also turned out to be her own mother and who now with her partner Vlad, travel through America hunting down Slashers.

Still it would seem that not happy with creating his own gallery of gruesome slashers for Cassie and Vlad to deal with, which so far has included psychotic teddy bears, killer conjoined twins and a demon worshiping Elvis, Tim Steely has also in the past has even brought famous slashers into his world with the most memorable, certainly being Chucky from "Childs Play" (1988) whose storyline bridged the gap between the end of "Seed of Chucky" (2004) and his own stand alone comic strip, which "Devils Due Publishing" the same company which publishes Hack / Slash would later publish continuing the story from the end of his Hack / Slash appearance and it's continued within in the pages of this fifth collection of the series, which gathers together issues 11, 14 - 17 aswell as the sellout annual, which revolves around a slasher killing off members of the "Suicide Girls", in a story which would also bizarrely enough lead to Cassie being featured in her own set of Suicide girl photos, which Steely would go on record to admit, that one of the main reasons for doing this, was because of the high volume of letters he received from people wanting to see Cassie naked.

The main selling point of this fifth volume though is, a storyline involving Cassie's dead mother being resurrected, by Dr. Herbert West from Stuart Gordon's"Re-animator" (1985) in a classic storyline, which bridges the gap from the last re animator movie "Beyond Re-animator" (2003) and the forth coming "House of Re-animator" which at the time of writing, is currently set for a 2010 release, which see's Dr. West being called to the White House, to bring back to life the corpse of the President. These Dr West issues are proof once more, of Steely's love for the genre, as he seamlessly fits the world of Re-animator into the world of Hack / Slash, especially when it comes to writing the character of Dr. West, while at the same time still managing to reference the films, with loving nods to the films, he is using as his reference point, which no doubt the fan boys, will have much fun in trying to spot.

Currently for myself Hack / Slash is still one of my favourite series and thankfully currently seems to show no sign, that it is running out of ideas to keep the series fresh, while I have to wait patiently for the release of volume 6, which hopfully won't take as long as the first volume of "Kick Ass" which seems to have been put on hold for the moment, while the film version takes priority. This I can only assume is after the backlash that greeted the adaptation of "Wanted" which also came from creator "Mark Miller", which the fans of the comic will rightfully point out bares no resemblence to the source comic, which was a shame really especially seeing how funny and violent "Wanted" was as a comic and I personally urge you all to hunt it down, just so you to can see how much the film pales in comparision. Still with the long mooted film adaptation of Hack / Slash still in pre production with "Rogue Pictures", I can only hope that it too doesn't fall prey to a studio taking such a liberties being taken with the source material.