The Complete Voodoo Volume 2

The Complete Voodoo #2

by Craig Yoe (Editor), Matt Baker (Contributor), Jack Kamen (Contributor)

This new volume includes Pre-Code classics like “They Couldn’t Die!”, “Torture Travelogue”, “Vanishing Cadavers”, “Voodoo Canvas”, “Good Bye World!”, “Satan’s Plaything”, “Blood Revenge”, and “Skulls of Doom!”

Genres: Horror, Comics

184 pages, Hardcover

First published November 23, 2016

About the author

Craig Yoe is an author, editor, art director, graphic designer, cartoonist and comics historian, best known for his Yoe! Studio creations and his line of Yoe! Books. Yoe is married to Clizia Gussoni, who is also his creative partner

Reviews

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Step right up folks, we've got ridiculousness of every sort. Man-eating plants, locusts summoning devils from Mars, possessed rugs and men switching brains.

I liked this better than the first Voodoo volume. This one has far less "exotic horror" stories (thankfully), i.e. stories about jungle adventure, sacred temples, cursed idols, zombies, etc. Voodoo felt like it hit its stride with the last few issues of the first volume, and this one largely continues with that. These are all above the average pre-code horror comics I've encountered. True, these are rarely on par with the comics of EC, but they're not bad, just good kooky fun. They remind me a lot of a guilty pleasure of mine -- the horror comics of Atlas which are less well-known but which I find myself reading more than EC.

The art is good, better than many of the pre-code publishers I could name. The storylines are nonsensical to an extreme degree, but this makes for more interesting reading in my opinion than the more predictable stuff. Some of the better stories were the over-the-top Skulls of Doom from issue #12 or Beast of Baghdad from issue #9

Some of the others I liked were the less-extreme and more gothic Blood and Old Bones from issue #9 or Vanishing Cadavers from issue #10. Some really surprised me like Ohhhh, Brother! from issue #11 is essentially a retelling of the death of the Collyer brothers.



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[Fernando · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nuevo volumen de la biblioteca de terror de los años 50, en este caso dedicado a las siguientes entregas de la famosa revisa Voodoo. Es evidente que, cuando hay un buen material de base, todo viene mucho más fácil. Físicamente, el volumen sigue los enormes estándares de calidad de una edición de lujo, a lo que nos tiene esta colección de Diábolo Ediciones nos tiene acostumbrados. Por otra parte, el contenido: sencillamente fantástico porque las historietas empiezan a despegar llegando a límites verdaderamente extraños, muy originales y, en algunos casos, bastante aterradores también para el punto de vista contemporáneo. En la anterior entrega se apreciaba que partía de una base de "aventuras en la jungla" de la que se distanciaba paulatinamente para centrarse en el género de terror y macabro, pasando en el proceso por un enfoque más detectivesco sin llegar a ser sobrenatural. Ahora el macabro aterrador ofrece cuentos muy brillantes siempre en el filo de lo inconcebible, como esa "maldición de la belleza" o el "muñeco del demonio", sólo por nombrar algunos de los muchos. Me sorprende, también, esa única pieza de género bélico, que me gustó mucho como contrapunto y me hace plantearme acercarme a este tipo de cómic que nunca me había llamado en exceso la atención. Definitivamente, es un tomo que hay que tener no sólo por seguir la colección, sino porque resulta de los más brillantes de la misma.

[Bill Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This second volume of the complete, restored Ajax comic series is more settled into a groove than the first and slightly less entertaining, though it's still a lot of fun. Also missing here is the exemplary art of Matt Baker, largely replaced by the semi-anonymous Iger Shop. As the excellent introduction by Michael H. Price says, these stories are "more like a garish traveling carnival than a magazine," a quality that goes a long ways for me. A few of them are genuinely nightmarish in that what-the-heck-were-they-thinking manner of the best pre-Code horror comics. As usual with the Yoe books, presentation is excellent and restoration sharp. This material, garish or not, has never looked better.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this volume to be slightly better than most of the other volumes of the Horror Comics Library, not that the others were bad. This still isn't EC level, but most of the stories are pretty enjoyable. It's too bad more of the specific artists aren't known as the credits are almost all "The Iger Shop" which was a team of artists and I suppose it's lost to time as far as who did what.

If you enjoy Golden Age horror comics, I can't see why you wouldn't enjoy this volume.