Amour/The Evil Inside #3

AMOUR/THE EVIL INSIDE #3

APPROBATION COMICS
WRITER: Bart A. Thompson
ARTIST: Ezequiel Pineda
LETTERS: Brant W. Fowler
28 pp., B&W, $3.50

Two great tastes that taste great together: that could be the way to describe Amour/The Evil Inside #3, an anthology comic that combines the respective third issues of Approbation Comics’ two anthology titles, Amour and The Evil Inside.  This jam is a ghastly delight tailor-made for the horror fan that can’t take his romance without a few droplets of blood.

Three tales of supernatural love and obsession dominate this comic book’s edgy program.  First, an imaginary friend sticks around to protect the little boy she befriended, even now that he’s all grown up in “Mirror/Mirror.”  Love is in full bloom in “Love Sprouts” when a young man discovers his neighbor’s green thumb has dried blood under the fingernail.  The ménage-à-trios gets the Creepshow treatment “One Happy Family.”

THE LOWDOWN:  The combination of Amour and The Evil Inside seems to have brought the best out of writer/Approbation Comics CEO Bart A. Thompson and frequent collaborator, artist Ezequiel Pineda.  As storytellers, they are in synch, and Pineda has cleaned up his figure drawing for a leaner visual style that makes it easier to read the characters.  Thompson’s imagination reaches grisly heights in these ingenious tales that put a hellish spin on love.

POSSIBLE AUDIENCE:  Recalling EC’s Tales from the Crypt and TV series, “The Twilight Zone” and “Tales from the Dark Side,” Amour/The Evil Inside is a sweet Halloween treat for fans of short horror fiction.

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Visit the publisher at approbationcomics.com.