Status Updates From Shook! A Black Horror Antho...

The Monster of Blackenstyne (Not to Be Confused With Blackenstein): Fun, over the top blaxploitation inspired story. Art is great, fits the tone and story perfectly. Seems set up for Blackenstyne to be a bizarre protector of the neighborhood. Always happy to see David F. Walker's name on a comic.

The Last Night in Waverly: A witness to a hostile alien takeover holds his family hostage trying to explain the danger. This wasn't anything groundbreaking, could have been better if there weren't pages of exposition in the middle that read like old sci-fi movie plots. Art was serviceable, nothing particularly memorable.

Lady of Rage: An abused woman slips into a coma after her partner attacks her, but a dark presence inside of her gets revenge. Dug the art for this one, story was solid enough (maybe needed less panels of the abuse, and I don't think we ever find out the woman's name, which is kind of odd and annoying tbh).

Suckers Revenge: Woo this one... feels like concept art. Not very interesting.

Ezra the Hunter: Definitely one of the better ones thus far. Great artwork, very detailed and excellent line work. The use of black and white with color onomatopoeias (and text boxes) was unique, although I would have liked a little more color. Fun monster hunter noir.

The Removers: A pair of hunters goes after their prey. Nothing remarkable in terms of story. It's obviously set up to be a series, this at least feels like it hit a natural end point. The art was a bit dark and soft around the edges, like it was not quite complete, but I also kind of liked it.

The Hill: A lesson in disrespecting the gods. The art had a dreamy, washed out quality that I thought fit the vibes. Nothing remarkable, but fine.

Hell to Pay: Two scientists attempt to travel back in time to save the victims of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, but end up in hell witnessing the punishment of the Klansmen responsible. The Devil kicks them out of hell.

Kind of an interesting story, but the writing was a little clunky. The art was okay, not my favorite but it had personality.

Evil Lives Part One: Our Lady of Endor: I don't think it's effective to put one part of a longer comic in an anthology like this. The story goes nowhere and nothing here was particularly engrossing for me to find the rest of the comic to check out.

Untitled work about a Klansman: The dead rise to take revenge during an attempted lynching. Simple and cathartic, some zombie ripping action. The art was perfectly matched to the story.

The Breaks: A woman on her deathbed goes to hip hop heaven, but I don't know that I'd really call it horror, though. There are some panels about the loss of friends, and as she's dying, the medical team trying to save her are represented by creepy skeleton zombies, but it ends on a note of hope/joy. Loved the art, very stylized and full of character.

Tasty!! Itchy!!: While the art had some cool panels, most of it was dark and I couldn't make heads or tails of most details. In terms of story, it's just an average supply run in a zombie wasteland gone wrong. There was mention of radioactive cockroaches but they did not factor into the conflict. 1/5 stars.