10 Surprisingly Good Licensed Comic Books

7. Hack/Slash Vs. Reanimator

Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Eight 1280 x720
Image Comics

While it doesn't happen often, it is not unheard of for indie comics to also get in on cross-media events. They may not be on quite the same scale as a Spider-Man/Transformers book but there are ways and means of making it happen, resulting in notable characters from other media appearing alongside less well-established stars.

Hack/Slash is Tim Seeley's love letter to horror movies, starting with the slasher genre but later embracing everything from alternative dimensions to giant creatures. The protagonists are "final girl" turned slasher hunter Cassie Hack and the hulking man-mountain Vlad, a good-natured and heroic Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees analogue.

Herbert West is the titular character from an H.P. Lovecraft short story about a man who uses arcane rights to resurrect the dead. In turn, Stuart Gordon made this story into a movie in the 1980s called ReAnimator, the plot being a modern retelling filled with laughs, buckets of blood, and absurd science.

As West is technically a public domain figure, he is a recurring antagonist in Hack/Slash. He is, however, drawn to look like Jeffery Combs, the actor that played West in the ReAnimator movie.

Contributor
Contributor

Kevin McHugh is a code-monkey by day and a purveyor of the unpleasant by night. Having had several comics published by Future Quake Press he is now moving into prose. An avid fan of punk rock, cheap horror movies and even cheaper fast-food Kevin can be found pontificating either on Twitter or over at WhatCulture Comics where he is a regular contributor. He lives in Edinburgh with his wife and two daughters.