Back in November of 2013, Joe Hill announced that a reboot of the classic TV anthology show Tales From the Darkside was being worked on with Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. As some shows do, the pilot bounced around to a few networks, and was never picked up.
Not being one who lets a good creepy tale die, Joe recruited his Locke and Key partner Gabriel Rodriguez, and created this hardcover that collects the first three scripts, and illustrates them in their typical eerie style. Let’s take a look.
Tales From The Darkside (IDW Publishing)
If you’re not a child of the 80s, allow me to clue you in on Darkside. It was an anthology type show–think The Twilight Zone–that was incredibly unsettling. Twilight Zone would at least have some good guy wins episodes, or some happy endings at times, but Darkside, and its super damn creepy opening theme, nearly always ended badly, or very bleak.
These three stories: “Sleepwalker,” “Black Box,” and “A Window Opens” are classic horror tropes, with a mix of unsympathetic protagonists, who we relish in seeing them get their just desserts, with a short nod to a Final Girl.
Is It Good?
These are bite-sized, short stories, just like the old show, but there does seem to be a light thematic connection: the “darkside” might be a significant player in these episodes, where the old series was truly just weird shit happening to shitty people most of the time.
I’ve been a huge fan of Joe’s words and Gabriel’s art all through the Locke and Key days, and this is no exception. With the announcement a few days ago of a limited series being released, we will get to see more of this dream team of creepy comics pulling no punches and trying to make our skin crawl.
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