Scream Queen

by Brendan Hay

Collecting the five issues of BOOM!'s hilarious horror miniseries SCREAM QUEEN! Everyone wants to be loved. Even the shambling, macabre mockery of a man who brings terror to the town of Rumson and leaves blood in his wake. But when he sets his sights on Molly, beauty queen of Rumson High, she's going to be more than he can handle! THE DAILY SHOW and FRANK TV's Brendan Hay brings a AMERICAN PIE-meets-FRIDAY THE 13th sensibility to his horror series debut!

Genres: Horror, Graphic Novels, Comics

Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

BRENDAN HAY is a writer for TV, comic books, magazines, and more. Most recently, he was an Executive Producer and writer on Gremlins: The Wild Batch and Gremlins: Secrets of the Mogwai for WB Animation/Max. Previously, he was the showrunner of Dawn of the Croods and Harvey Girls Forever!, both for DreamWorks Animation/Netflix. Brendan has also written for several other series, including Robot Chicken (2x Emmy nominated), The Simpsons, and Star Wars Detours. Also, Hay was a (Peabody Award winning) headline producer at The Daily Show with Jon Stewart for most of the Bush administration, and a contributing writer to "America: The Book.” He has written pilots for Lucasfilm, WB Animation, Disney, ABC Family, DreamWorks Animation, Fox, and Nickelodeon. Brendan was once even called the “Best Svengali of Animation” by SF Weekly. He’s still not sure what that means, but chooses to take it as a compliment. On the print side, Hay has written comic books for DC Comics, Oni Press, and BOOM! Studios, and had his writing appear in magazines ranging from SPIN to Reader’s Digest. Brendan lives in Burbank, CA with his author/journalist wife, twins, a pair of pugs, and two cats.

Reviews

[AprilMarie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay ... this was exactly what it looked like. A campy teen slasher. It was pretty straight forward. That in and of itself isn’t bad. But there were no surprises.

The art was nice and there were some humorous moments. But, it wasn’t as fun as I’d hoped.

Oh well ...

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not good. At best it's a schlocky B-Movie. Imagine if Sloth from Goonies started murdering people in the mall instead of meeting Chunk and his friends. And it was all because he loved the girl working at the hot dog stand so he started murdering pretty much anyone she talked to. This thing is riddled with logic errors and the art is very amateur hour. Leave this one dead and buried.

[Tamara · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'd give it zero stars if I could. One of the ugliest drawn comics I've ever seen, which ironically is fine since it suits the tasteless and uninspired writing. None of this was fun or entertaining. There are so many other 'Slasher in love with Final Girl' and vice versa comics out there online that are leaps and bounds better than...whatever this was.

[Hekareadsbooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

WOW this was terrible.

It could have been a really interesting exploration into the things teens and young women experience while dating, but no. It's just... a huge mess.

I don't normally comment on the art, but the characters all looked... old. Molly was supposed to be a senior in high school and looked like she was 40.

Just very out of touch.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely NOT for the faint at heart. Full of violence, gore and other unpleasantness, the story is a whole lot of nonsense (beautiful girl next door becomes the unwitting object of affection of a completely psychotic, mentally disabled serial killer) with extremely detailed, graphic artwork. There is a slightly jarring dichotomy between the misogyny of the artwork (all the women are stick figures with giant boobs) and the feminism of the storyline (the heroine is a strong, kind, independently-minded woman who sticks to her principles, but the story wins out almost completely. A silly little book that passes the time quickly, without provoking any serious thoughts.

[Don · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this. I thought Hay had a good grasp on what makes these types of movies fun and did a good job of translating that to the comics page. In fact, I would have given this four stars, but the artwork was average, at best.

[Ben Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ehhh...

This isn't terrible, but considering it bills itself as American Pie meets Friday the 13th I expected better that "not terrible." To give credit where it's due...

One thing worth salvaging was that vapid characters' dialogue appeared intentionally weak (e.g. "your" instead of "you're"). The art wasn't bad. It's not a very long read.

Now for the rest...

Scream Queen never seems to find its footing tone-wise. It's supposed to be a horror comedy, but - apart from a few spurts of blood - it's too sanitized to be a horror comic, and too anemic to be a comedy. The premise showed a lot of promise, especially if satire had informed more of the creative direction. Instead, there are a few limp pop culture references and that's about it.

This reads like a passable third draft in need of a fourth draft focused on dialing up the camp and absurdity. It's not really a compliment or a putdown to say that I can see how good Scream Queen might have been with a little more work, but here we are.