{"id":9745,"date":"2019-10-09T11:50:36","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T15:50:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/?p=9745"},"modified":"2019-10-09T12:30:26","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T16:30:26","slug":"review-secrets-of-sinister-house-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/review-secrets-of-sinister-house-1\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Secrets of Sinister House #1"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Written by Eric Cahill<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Timed for that sweet, sweet holiday-themed release, \u2018Secrets Of Sinister House\u2019 is an anthology of all new stories featuring lots of fun work by very talented people. Some are names you see often and others don\u2019t get a lot of spotlight. Whether it\u2019s worth it depends on your appetite for this type of thing. As expected, most of the stories are one off adventures featuring the characters dealing with some kind of Halloween angled threat. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Considering the parameters of the DC universe and just how many assorted supernatural and costumed horrors populate the place, it seems like it can be a struggle to differentiate what\u2019s a \u2018Halloween\u2019 story versus just another night in Gotham. And the creative purpose to these is muddled (the monetary one obvious). They do introduce larger audiences to certain characters they\u2019re not necessarily familiar with but they typically either involve too much knowledge of continuity to count as a true introduction (like Red Rain Batman here) and also lack any real character depth (like the extremely rote Harley Quinn Adventure). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You do get a few stories effectively using the horror context, the better ones probably being the Deadman and Constantine adventures. But then again I\u2019m a bit of a sucker for Red Rain Batman and I don\u2019t really get my Deadman fix anywhere else so what you\u2019d like in these is all about the context. But if you go into it expecting pretty slight stories, with one or two clever bits and generally fantastic art, you won\u2019t be disappointed with the purchase. You have to expect at this point some throwaway crap about superheroes fighting evil pumpkins around this time of year anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Luckily for us, there\u2019s a Green Lantern story in here!\u00a0 Written by Che Grayson and illustrated by Miguel Mendon\u00e7a this is a quick one featuring someone\u2019s favorite duo, Jessica Cruz and Simon Baz. And I gotta say, this story is doing exactly what it needs to do. In what is really the strongest overall piece in the anthology, our green goodies hang out and travel to space to deal with some nefarious happenings and encounter some spooky shenanigans. Basically Grayson does everything she can do in the limited space to get a horror story out of not just the GL concept but the actual characters he\u2019s using. She has them investigate an issue of a murderous alien lurking aboard a spaceship. It of course reminds of other genre stuff we\u2019ve all seen, like Alien in plot and Event Horizon in tone. So is it derivative? Maybe – but it\u2019s also the perfect sort of horror story to tell about space cops and reminds that the Green Lantern concept can lend itself to basically any type of story in this setting. And Grayson does you one better by also including the unique horrors related to Jessica Cruz\u2019s personal anxieties. Many would have done or the other, but in this little space we get both. That\u2019s maximizing your writing space and it\u2019s also just pretty frigging cool.
There\u2019s something of a paint by numbers feel of quantity over quality to the story but credit where credit is due, this can stand as a template for a traditionally told Green Lantern space horror story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And while the characters come across a little generic, that\u2019s not exactly Grayson’s fault. They haven\u2019t exactly had a ton of personality in general the last few years. But she does a good job getting into Jessica\u2019s mind quickly and makes them both likeable characters. Most importantly she sells what is their greatest strength – their camaraderie. And of course their mutual obsessions with sweets. Comic superheroes are fantasies yadda yadda but these guys just would not look like that if they ate and lived the way we\u2019ve seen them eat and live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


Often the best thing about these anthologies is the art and that\u2019s absolutely the case overall, and particularly in this story. Mendon\u00e7a draws some fun monster stuff and also handles the (admittedly minimal) action pretty well. Lots of energy and a real grasp of the type of storytelling needed. Safe but it works. My only real issue would be the generic nature of the \u201cmonsters\u201d though I imagine considering the story is an homage and the small-ish nature of the project limits what you can do. And even so \u201cJessica\u2019s monsters\u201d are suitably upsetting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n


Ultimately a lot is compacted into the story and it feels routine but it\u2019s exactly the type of thing you\u2019re looking for in a project like this. It gets in, gets out and looks good doing it. And at least it\u2019s not evil space pumpkins.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secrets of Sinister House #1 <\/em>gets a 4 out of 5<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Eric Cahill Timed for that sweet, sweet holiday-themed release, \u2018Secrets Of Sinister House\u2019 is an anthology of all new stories featuring lots of fun work by very talented people. Some are names you see often and others don\u2019t … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[538,728,958,460],"class_list":["post-9745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-jessica-cruz","tag-miguel-mendonca","tag-secrets-of-sinister-house","tag-simon-baz"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thegreenlanterncorps.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}