Mike Kalvoda

I just noticed this randomly at the library (as I often do with things there); at a glance the art looked decent, Pied Piper is interesting, and it had an intro by Tony Todd (who I adore), so I figured it'd be worth checking it out.

Boy was I wrong! For starters, the intro seemed like my dear Tony Todd just didn't want to say no to them (after all, it's more notice for his name as well, and he's a horror genre lover, not just actor) and what he wrote really didn't say much/praise it. I actually was a bit confused reading it; it was more just about horror in general, with vague overtures towards the volume.

I did love the art, and the book was one of those nice high-quality glossy paged ones, but to be frank- the story was crap. I don't mind trying to "modernize" an old tale, but this felt a) way too trite/cliché- throwing every stereotype & token character into the mix, and b) like it was just fleshing out more pages with some over-the-top horror to "spice it up."

The main kid wears a long black coat and had brought a fake gun to school that the bullies alternated between calling him "Columbine," "Shooter," and good ol' classic: "Freak." Then you have your standard best female friend, who's of course punk-ish with short hair and gets called a "dyke." And what group of outcast kids would be complete without *drumroll please* the chubby friend. Yep. Then we have our four bullies, who are of course jocks (though track team was a new one); we have our ringleader, our skinny follower-even-though-it's-wrong, our chunky no-brain crony, and, the one more original addition to the book's motley crew- the blonde long-haired athletic girl - who ends up kicking the main kid's butt. He is, of course, pissed at being treated like dirt, and so he slides down the slippery revenge slope, finding the Piper along the way. And then the Piper makes all sorts of horrifying things happen by conjuring up (oops, I mean luring with his flute ...from out of nowhere ...because that's what the Piper does. Um, right...) batches of creepies to take out all the characters. Oh, did I mention he has some sort of random tie to water, as well as to some strange book about him? And that his sole purpose is seeking this bizarro hideous vengeance on people? The end has a slight unforeseen twist to it, I give them that, but ugh, really bad read. They really just used the Piper's "name" as a gimmick for this book, and did next to nothing related to him, just distorted him into some lame "horror" character. bleh.

Fortunately it at least had a "bonus" at the end of 1001 Arabian Nights: The Adventures of Sinbad #0 issue, which looked potentially interesting.… (mere)