Type: Necklace
Author: Clive Barker, Chuck Wagner, Steve Niles
Drawings: John Bolton, Bo and Scott Hampton, Paul C. Russell
Publishing house: Checker book / Free Comics
Format: Paperback/color
Price: €10.40
Being a particularly versatile artist, in addition to other fields Clive Barker has also left his mark in the world of comics. After debuting and receiving considerable success as a writer, Barker also tried his hand at film and comics. But generally we can rarely see that an adaptation from one medium to another yields the desired result. This is not the case with Tapping the Vein, where writers of the caliber of Chuck Wagner, Fred Burke and Steve Niles and cartoonists such as John Bolton, Scott and Bo Hampton and Klaus Janson offer us interesting adaptations for some of the hallucinating stories Barker told us in his famous "Books of Blood."
Reading the little volumes we are holding in our hands, we can immediately realize that the scriptwriters have kept strictly to the original writings. Because of this, we can define the stories contained in "Tapping the Vein" as imagination taking shape, through the drawings that the talented artists offer us. These stories give us a glimpse of how comics have such a different potential than other art forms, making the meeting of visual art and literature lead to new levels.
The stories we are about to read were created between 1989 and 1992 by the ambitious independent label Eclipse Comics, for which Barker himself supervised the work. After winning over U.S. audiences and critics, Tapping the Vein also earned a nomination for the prestigious Eisner Awards. The edition referred to in this review, published by Free Books, is based on the reprint edited by American Checker Book Publishing in 2002, the same publisher that recently collected Epic/Marvel's best Hellraiser-dedicated stories in volumes.
From an artistic point of view, the product is impeccable. The stories can only be grand, gripping and shocking, steeped in horror and incredible imagination, reinforced by the images of the talented artists, who each with their own well-defined style offer us their vision of the story. Gruesome stories such as "Never Say Pig, On the Hill Cities, Human Remains and Midnight Mobile Butcher Shop" are depicted in all their drama, ruthlessness and fatality. Barker's sotories that you have loved and imagined with your mind can now see them depicted with your own eyes, page after page.
Unfortunately, the price is not very low, if you want to grab these small volumes, 10 euros per work will not be enough, but it is worth it all, and the connoisseur will gladly spend this amount.
Tapping the Vein is a title dedicated to all those who love Barker and his Books of Blood, but also good art horror comics.
Reviewed by Fabio Venanzini
