Hellraiser: Collected Best III

Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Collected Best #3

by John Bolton

Clive Barker's Collected Best Hellraiser, Vol " To Prepare a Face" & "Later"
Jan Strnad, CJ Henderson, Vincent Cecolini
Art by Mark Charello, Colleen Doran

"Why did it always have to be this way? Why did I always have to endure this torment? Why must I be the one to shoulder the burden of obsession?" A character actor goes to the ultimate lengths to make his monstrous characters perfect for the big screen. (1990)

And What he did not understand was that the negotiating the LeMarchand configuration was the the solution he sought, but only a piece of the puzzle.(1991)

A perfect cacophony of tales exploring the age old lure of sin, the siren song of desire and the quest for "order" amidst chaos. Like the Lament configuration calls to us all. From the second anthology of comics short stories set in the horror film milieu, collected in full color, from an all-star lineup of comics writers and illustrators.

© Checker Book Publishing Group 2003. Authorized collection of works © Clive Barker 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994. This collection is published and sold by permission of Clive Barker, the owner of all rights to publish and sell same. All characters herein and likenesses thereof are copyrights and trademarks of Clive Barker. All rights reserved.

Purchase Checker Books has three collected volumes of Hellraiser stories in addition to Clive Barker's "Tapping the Vein". Also available on three collected volumes of the X-Files.

Genres: Graphic Novels, Comics, Horror, Graphic Novels Comics

333 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 1, 2004

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Again, I was only pretty lukewarm on the big story arc, liking the concept of order vs chaos more than it's less-than-scary execution.

BUT, there were a couple of interesting additions to this volume worth note: Lana Wachowski (of much later Matrix fame) wrote an issue that was pretty interesting, and Neil Gaiman (with Dave McKean, and Mike Mignola (Hellboy).

It's easy to forget that Hellraiser influenced a HELL of a lot of folks. No more cheesy teen flicks for our horror viewing pleasure, please. :)

[TAP · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone else excited for the Hellraiser reboot?

[Orrin Grey · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with the stories in the previous volumes I've been reading, the comics collected here all tread pretty familiar ground, though they do so with occasionally brilliant ideas or striking art. This volume has "To Prepare a Face," one of the stories I originally started digging back into these in search of, but I had already found it elsewhere, too. The Bernie Wrightson story is in here, too, as is "The Tontine" by Scott Hampton, one of the best stories to come out of my re-reading of these old Hellraiser comics so far. The best part about this volume, though, may be that it also contains pages and pages of pin-up work, which is often more fun than the stories themselves.

[Rob · Rating 3 out of 5]

As I was reading the stories which on their own were good stories and some had amazing art, I could not help getting to the point that I was being told knock knock jokes in reverse order, like every story ends the same way, knock knock. Maybe I am the only one that feels that way and I hope it is the case, but if all of Stephen kings books ended the same way I think he would have a few best sellers and then people would kind of lose interest. I can still say this is a good read but I would not recommend this to kids before high school, much adult content, which by the way is a personal pet peeve I have about comics, but that I will save as a rant for another day.

[Hillingdon Libraries]

Find this book at Hillingdon Libraries