Thursday, January 19, 2012

Horror-Mood: Victims (Eternity Comics, 1988)


Victims #1 is a serialized horror story that first appeared in Scream #6 in 1974. Reprinted by Eternity Comics in 1988, the Saga of the Victims chronicles the story of two young girls from the Scollard Manse School for Girls in Manhattan, where they are kidnapped by horrific creatures in the Manse and dragged deep down into the depths of the school...miles below civilization.

Written by Alan Hewetson and exquisitely drawn by Suso, the two girls were inspired by two popular actresses during this time period in the 1970's. Miss Josey Forster is a tough black woman that closely resembles Teresa Graves (Get Christie Love!), while Miss Anne Adams is a shoo-in for Britt Ekland, who was a popular Bond girl at the time.






The story starts off with a quick introduction before the action kicks in, as the girls are attacked by strange-looking mutants and taken down through the basement of the Manse and into an archaic pit that has the girls wondering if they are actually dreaming, while the soul-less eyes of the mutants gaze at them creepily...





A hooded figure ascends and charges the girls with "trespassing"...a sentence that involves torture and death and all kinds of scary stuff!




Locked inside a padded holding cell, the girls contemplate their impending doom. After Josey knocks some sense into the hysterical Anne, they begin to plan their escape...




They decide to attack the mutant that opens the door, and quickly head up the stairs in hopes of finding an exit. There, they run into the hooded figure who is actually an old lady...and overcome the witch by using her torch against her.



The girls finally find an exit and escape into the streets of Manhattan...only to find themselves surrounded by nothing but those damned mindless mutants!




They are then taken away in giant plastic bags and lifted up into a nearby building, where they find a mysterious doctor who offers medical help but will not answer many questions, only telling the girls to sit and wait for "He who is Horror"...




If you think the first issue sounds crazy enough...just wait until you see what else the series has in store for these girls: from robot vampires, nazi dwarves, zombie pirates and giant squids...you haven't seen nothin' yet! And although the window of opportunity for Teresa Graves and Britt Ekland has passed for a movie version of Victims, someone really needs to get this into the hands of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriquez, as the entire story would make one hell of a good Grindhouse feature!

Unfortunately, while Eternity Comics made a valiant effort in reprinting this series...they dropped the ball during the printing process. As you can tell from these scans, the pages appear overexposed and ink heavy with image deterioration. Because of this, I'd have to instead recommend Headpress' The Complete Saga of the Victims TPB, which reprints the story in it's entirety. Or if you can find them, seek out the original Scream issues this excellent Horror-Mood story is featured in. You won't regret it!

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