Morbid Drive: A Comprehensive Study of Pure Evil, Dieting, and the Undead

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Summary: Very clever, sharp humor
Review: A book for all comic strip fans. This book was recomended to me by a friend and I am glad I picked it up. The art is top notch and the characters are very interesting. It's a book full of comic strips but it's built around a story that reads like a spoof handbook for vamipes. This one is going into my collection right next to Calvin and Hobbes.

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Summary: A great addition for comic book collectors!
Review: I don't read comic books. I hadn't read a comic book until now. However, I promised the author that I'd give it a whirl. This is a very entertaining paranormal comic. The graphics are top notch (although I have no previous reference), the story is fun and kept me, a novice comic reader, interested from beginning to end. This would make a great addition to a comic book enthusiast's collection, which is why I'm sending it to my fifteen-year-old nephew. I'm sure he'll give Morbid Drive the word of mouth it deserves.

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Summary: The Prince of Darkness introduces the "Morbid Drive" cast
Review: Ron Cremeans' "Morbid Drive: A Comprehensive Study of Pure Evil, Dieting, and the Undead" is not exactly a graphic novel. True, it is the size of a graphic novel, but if you pick it up and think that you are going to 90+ page story, that is not the case. You actually have to get to page 20 before you discover that "Morbid Drive" is a comic strip. By that point you have been introduced to the Prince of Darkness, a six-hundred year old vampire who was turned into one of the undead at the age of one-and-a-half, which explains why he is rather short and completely bald (the black stuff that looks like his body is really his "darkness"). After going on about his sorry life, the Prince introduces us to the first of the characters who lives in Witchgrowe Manor on Morbid Drive, Professor Hal Geigercoutner, a well-funded evil genius. We are then treated to 20 strips in which we get to find out about Geigercounter and his somewhat successful attempt to revive the dead (the creature lives, but is running around in the rain carrying a blender).

At this point in becomes clear that this volume is an introduction to the world and characters of "Morbid Drive." After meeting Professor Geigercounter we meet Earlie L. Shatterbone, the professor's hunchback assistant, whose life is complicated by any and all encounters, although squirrels are particularly problematic. Next is the creature created by the Professor, who answers to the nickname Buttercup and is really too strong to be hugging anyone. Then there is Uncle Ian, who has apparently refused Death's invitation too often, because the Grim Reaper is starting to lose his composure, and Stickpin, who was created by a voodoo high priest. The last set of strips are devoted to the Prince of Darkness, who has his own problems with a hope chest, department store Santa, and the whole Halloween scene.

The "Morbid Drive" cast of characters manages to touch on the traditions of the horror genre but with Cremeans providing some twists. The Prince of Darkness will remind you of Cartman more than Dracula while Professor Geigercounter is certainly more away of his failures than most mad scientists and Earlie is the active and vocal hunchback assistant we have ever encountered. Buttercup is the least original of the bunch, but you are not going to go wrong with a cute version of the Frankenstein monster. At this point my favorite is Stickpin, mainly because he has more brains than the rest of them put together (including whatever Geigercounter has in jars on the shelf), while I also have a soft spot for Ian and his encounters with Death.

As a comic strip "Morbid Drive" has potential, although I suppose the territory Cremeans has staked out is beyond the realm of national syndication on a daily basis, which means he is going to have to stick to the self-publishing route, which he is clearly capable of doing. The characters and their relationships are established, although ironically the outsider in the group at this point is clearly the Prince of Darkness. While he serves as the book's narrator and gets to go of on all sorts of colorful and comical rants, he is the character who shows up the least in the actual comic strips. I liked the comic strips a lot more than the other material, mainly because there is such a big contrast between the tried and true format of the four-panel comic strips and the more expansive narrative Creamans provides. The best laughs in this first effort come from the comic strips.

Not that we have been introduced to the cast of "Morbid Drive" we can look forward to what Cremeans does next with his creations. The artwork is has a distinctiveness that is well suited to the characters and the comical twists on the genre. The next around there will be no reason to divide up the strips by the characters, so we will be better able to judge how good "Morbid Drive" can be as a comic strip when Cremeans establishes an ebb and flow to his work. The introduction has gone well. Now we need to get to the serious relationship.

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Summary: Macabre humor at its very best
Review: Ron Cremeans, the writer and creator of Morbid Drive, is a fiendishly clever fellow who has looked into the Darkness and seen just how funny evil can be. Those who delight in macabre humor will find their trip down Morbid Drive a rewarding and enjoyable jaunt. Waiting for the reader, up at the old gloomy manor on the hill in Witchgrowe, is none other than the Prince of Darkness himself (no, not that Prince of Darkness - the other one), just waiting to welcome you into the vampire lifestyle, introduce you to the denizens of his abode, and espouse his own evil philosophies, most of which make a lot of sense to me. Just because he's a six hundred year old vampire stuck in the body of an 18-month-old child doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about. Some people call him a monster, just because he likes to eat people every so often, but our host knows what a monster really is. His brief explanation of man's relationship with his environment is spot-on brilliant, and it is hard to disagree with his assertion that man is the true monster in the world. Granted, centuries of being treated like an 18-month-old child by humans may play a part in his thinking.

Morbid Drive features a nice mix of text and comic strips. In between our diminutive host's dark philosophical ruminations and instructions for vampire newbies, he describes his fellow residents of the manor: Professor Hal Geigercounter, a diabolical mad scientist; Earlie L. Shatterbone, the Professor's hunchbacked assistant (often mistaken for Mandy Patinkin) whose desire to do evil is surpassed only by his incompetence at same; Amos Denning, better known as Buttercup, the mad Frankenstein's monster-like creation of the Professor's who is best known for walking around without his pants; Uncle Ian, Death's most uncooperative customer; and Stickpin, caretaker of the estate, voodoo creation, and unfailing do-gooder who tends to ruin many an evil plan. These characters come to life (or, as the case may be, unlife) in the various comic strips following each character's introduction, each one of them doing his part to make Morbid Drive "the scariest comic strip on earth."

Many may be surprised to learn that becoming a vampire doesn't necessarily make you evil. Sure, waking up in the middle of the night to find some fiendish creature gnawing on your neck will make you mad, it might even tickle a little bit, but it won't make you evil. It's up to you not to waste your newly-acquired undead status. This is just one of many vampire truths you will learn on your Morbid Drive excursion. The spooky manor on the hill in Witchgrowe beckons all horror fans, particularly those with a macabre sense of humor (which is just about all of us, I think), to its open doors - well, actually, the doors are probably shut, but I'm sure one of the manor's unusual residents will let you in if you ask nicely. Just don't be surprised if he's not wearing any pants.