 Hokum & Hex: Not the Brightest Idea From the "Master" of Horror
These days, with the resurgance of popularity in the comic book industry and then being referred to a "legitimate art form" (Which if you ask me is fucking laughable, but I digress) it's pretty easy for some big name people to be writing for one of the "big two", or maybe some of the more financially stable independents.
At this time, J. Michael Straczynski has just finished a stint writing Amazing Spider-Man and currently writer a number of Marvel titles. Stephen King's very own Dark Tower series translated into a comic book series. And it seems like you can't open a DC book without finding a story that's written by somebody involved with Lost or has their name attached to a recently released Hollywood movie.
However, such was not always the case, and getting "high profile" writers to do comic books in the past had mostly been limited to former cast members of Star Trek and other obscure celebrities that you wouldn't know unless you're social life began and stopped in your parents basement.
However, there was one high profile guy (of sorts) that was having comic books with his name stamped on them back in the early 90's, and that guy was "master of horror" (I say this in quotations because the phrase has been bandied around and applied to so many people from Stephen King to Wes Craven) Clive Barker.
Clive Barker, for those of you who don't know, is a writer. In spite of the fact that he writes many many different genres, probably what has made him most famous is his horror stories. He got his start by publishing his Books of Blood a collection of short stories that the aforementioned Stephen King gave him great acclaims for his work. But he's probably more well known for his story The Hellbound Heart which was translated into the popular horror film (and the birth of yet another horror franchise) Hellraiser.
Right after his sequel to Hellraiser, Hellbound: Hellraiser 2 came out, Epic Comics (an imprint of Marvel Comics that printed comics for mature readers) began publishing a series of comics titled Clive Barker's Hellraiser featuring stories based on the film.
By 1993, the pile of shit they called Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth had just come out, and no matter how shitty that movie was (the worst in the series if you ask me) Clive Baker was at some form of hype, at least in the comic book industry, and his name was tacked onto a number of other projects over at Marvel.
Most of which were centered around his Hellraiser characters, and all were printed through Marvel's Epic imprint. On top of all that, Marvel decided to launch a line of super-hero books based on ideas created by Clive Barker himself. He'd come up with the concepts, and then let some other writer bring it to life form him. Marvel even created a new imprint, Marvel Razorline (Whatever the fuck that means) to publish all these titles.
Among the many titles were Hokum & Hex, Ectokid, Hyperkind and Saint-Sinner, all of which only lasted about nine issues each, until lack of interest caused all the title (And subsequently the Razorline imprint) to be canceled, much to Barker's dismay.
Today we're going to look at the first issue of Hokum & Hex, and once I'm finished reviewing this comics, I'm sure you'll have an idea as to why this series might have been canned after nine issues (other than the fact that during the 90's Marvel -- for whatever flawed reasons -- thought printing a billion titles that nobody wanted to read, would be a good business move.)
Today we're looking at the premiere issue of Hokum & Hex, which admittedly isn't that bad a comic, but it's my victim because it's one of those weird obscurities that maybe three people actually own. Okay Mr. Barker, show us what you got...
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