Writer: Stefan Hutchinson
Art: Tim Seeley
(Variant covers by Tim Seeley, Bill Sienkiewicz and Crash Cunningham)
Published by DDP
Price: $3.50
Review by: Russell Hillman

In the late 1970’s, producer Irwin Yablans and financier Moustapha Akkad approached director John Carpenter with an idea for a movie about a crazed killer that stalked babysitters on Halloween night. That idea became Halloween, which launched not only a string of sequels, but a horde of imitators, effectively creating a template for the slasher genre (though one can argue a case for many other films, from Psycho through Black Christmas and The Texas Chain saw Massacre as being the first slasher movie, Halloween is often cited as the most influential upon those that followed). The movie told the story of Michael Myers, institutionalised since he was six years old for murdering his sister, and his return to the town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

Quite surprisingly for such a high-profile movie franchise, the first Halloween comic didn’t appear until 2000, long after the comics tie-ins to other slasher movie series, such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Child’s Play had come and gone. The writer of two of the later Halloween comics (Halloween: One Good Scare and Halloween: Autopsis) was also the director of the documentary Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, Stefan Hutchinson, who has teamed up with artist Tim Seeley to bring us this new series.

It is late October, 2000, in the town of Russellville, Illinois. We are introduced to a girl named Lisa, who has suffered an as-yet-unspecified trauma at some point in her past, and some of her friends. We also meet some of her friends, and witness a brutal encounter with the renowned Mr Myers. The first issue appears to be mainly an effort to establish a mood, and leaves many questions unanswered.

This is Hutchinson’s first comic for a major publisher, and he’s off to a pretty good start. The first issue is very much in the vein of the better entries in the series (the original and H20), and sets up an interesting storyline for the issues that follow. Hutchinson has stated in interviews that he wants to concentrate less on Michael Myers, and more on “The Shape” (as he was referred to in the credits of the original movie), the unstoppable, nightmarish bogeyman, and he seems to have succeeded thus far.

Tim Seeley is no stranger to the slasher genre himself, as writer and creator of the ongoing DDP series Hack/Slash. Seeley performs well here, giving The Shape the right kind of moody presence. There are no flashy panel layouts here, just good solid storytelling.

For those who may have been wondering, this series fits into the original series continuity (between H20 and Resurrection), rather than the new continuity of the recent Rob Zombie-directed remake.

On the whole, this is a good start, far better than the first issues of the recent Wildstorm series of A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th. Recommended for all fans of the original movie.