Previewing ‘The Best Of Tharg’s Terror Tales’ — Scary Stuff From ‘2000 AD’
by Richard Bruton
Another new 2000 AD collection – The Best of Tharg’s Terror Tales – all the scares, all together…
Tharg’s Terror Tales, like 2000 AD‘s Future Shocks and Time Twisters, are short blasts of comics, five/six pages long, all designed to fill the reader with fear, hitting you with a twist in the tale to finish with.
So, in the best of Terror Tales (so far), expect stories of ghosts, demons, mutants, and killers, all made by the finest talent in Brit comics – including Eric Bradbury, Al Ewing, Mark Millar, Mick Austin, Shaky Kane, John Smith, and Henry Flint. But that’s just a fraction of those involved in the 21 Terror Tales inside.
So you know the deal, scary stuff from 2000 AD, another chance to get newer names, and sometimes returning established names who fancy a bit of 2000 AD in their lives once more, to tell a complete tale in just a few pages. And that, as any writer will tell you, is something that is so, so difficult. So to have all these rather excellent examples of getting it just right is testament to the sheer variety and skill of all involved at 2000 AD. No one, no comic, nowhere, does it like this, and no one does it as good.
So, a few standouts for you… starting with the first one, ‘Waiting For The Night Train‘ where Alan Hale and the Brit comics legend Eric Bradbury tell a tale of a love lost and a life ruined – a businessman’s murdered love and his refusal to leave the station where he was to meet her.
Years later, two drunken revelers, two young lovers, take a shortcut through the abandoned station and… well, you can work out what’s going to happen, but it doesn’t make it any less of a damn fine tale.
For something very strange and very chilling, how about Al Ewing and Tiernen Trevallion’s ‘Man Bites God’, a black and white tale of the world’s most famous TV evangelist who needs extra security to protect him from a stalker that the police just cannot catch. It’s the end of the world, and it’s a really different, really strange, really creepy Terror Tale. Exactly like they’re meant to be.
And then there’s ‘Counts As One Choice‘, written and drawn by Chris Weston, where we’re going all meta and complex with a 2000 AD fan getting sucked into a new book club deal with a killer membership agreement. It’s playing into the sometimes strange, sometimes silly nature of this sort of short tale, with Weston really going for it, tongue firmly in cheek.
And finally for this quick selection of goodies (but by no means all the good stuff, oh no, not at all!), one that really does put a shiver down your spine with the realisation of the twist a little over halfway through.
It’s John Smith and Edmund Bagwell’s ‘Blackspot’, about a very different dangerous stretch of road about to claim its next couple of victims. Genuinely chilling, and proof that both John Smith’s writing and the sadly late Edmund Bagwell’s art are much missed from the pages of the Prog.
THE BEST OF THARG’S TERROR TALES
Published by 2000 AD on 10th October
Cover by Simon Coleby & Len O’Grady.
Writers – Alan Hale, Mark Millar, Alan McKenzie, Al Ewing, Arthur Wyatt, Chris Weston, Gary Simpson, Si Spurrier, Nigel Kitching, Alec Worley, Arthur Wyatt, John Smith, Kek-W, Laura Bailey, The Feek.
Artists – Eric Bradbury, Greg Spaples, Mick Austin, Shaky Kane, Cam Smith, Shaun Thomas, Tiernen Trevallion, Cliff Robinson, Kevin Cullen, Dom Reardon, Neil Edwards, Richard Elson, Ben Willsher, Edmind Bagwell, PJ Holden, Tom Foster, David Hitchcock, Henry Flint.
Letters – Tom Frame, Annie Parkhouse, Steve Potter, Simon Bowland, Ellie de Ville, Oz Ozbourne.
Originally serialised in 2000 AD Progs 838-840, 860, 895, 1281, 1282, 1375, 1386, 1399, 1533, 1599, 1645, 1649, 1674, 1801, 1886, 2091, 2134, and 2000 AD Free Comic Book Day 2019
Now, a preview for you. I won’t preview every single Terror Tale, there’s 21 of them! But here’s enough to give you a great idea of the terrors that await you…
