Lenore #1 – Titan – $3.99
Score: 7.0
Well now all those creepy little dead girl looking things in the window at Hot Topic make a little more sense. This book was completely not what I was expecting from a character based off the Edgar Allen Poe poem, “Lenore”. This is the second volume of a series about a reanimated little dead girl who is about 100 years old and has a very twisted view on life (or afterlife). This issue actually tells the story of her reanimation from the dead for the first time.
There’s no big twist in how she was brought back either which is one of the funniest and most original parts of the story. Lenore died at ten years old from pneumonia and was brought to the mortician. After pulling out her innards, the mortician begins embalming her only for the little Lenore to just sit up and walk off the table. The incident lead the mortician to go mad and the disgusting amount of embalming fluid that Lenore spit in his mouth kept him alive for the last hundred years to exact his revenge and finish the job he started by embalming the little girl.
The humor is definitely the book’s strong point. The stories, if stripped down, are very basic but the way they are painted over with Roman Dirge’s twisted sense of reality is what makes them jump off the pages of this issue. Much like his work on the disturbing Nicktoon Invader Zim, Dirge’s work is a mix of pop culture references with disturbing imagry and near grotesque shock humor all tied together in a package illustrated in a Saturday morning cartoon style. The interaction between Lenore and her little friend Ragamuffin is also great as he often becomes an inadvertent target of her innocently twisted view. She never intends on hurting him but it still often happens that he often suffers at her hands through mental or physical trauma. Ragamuffin may also be too smart for his own good as he realizes that he is only hurting himself by staying with Lenore but does it anyway. He also somehow has access to the exosuit cargo loader from Aliens which makes a great cameo in the issue.
The books innocent style of artwork contrasted with the amount of death and gore in it further adds to the humor of the series. Even with the dismal black and white colors of the main characters, their choice of bright balloon animal accessories and parachute pants adds to the absurdity of the already insane story unfolding before the reader. Lenore is an interesting twist on the comics world. Definitely an indie feel to it, Lenore has a niche that is has carved out for itself with the Hot Topic crowd with its bleak but happy contrasting tones and its disturbing but funny way of storytelling. If you are looking for a twisted book that has lightly lost touch with reality and has dark physical humor, this should definitely be a direction for you to look.
