DEN VOLUME 1: NEVERWHERE by Richard Corben (Dark Horse Comics) Hoopla
I've, of course, heard of Richard Corben and seen many of his covers over the years. However, it wasn't until recently when I read CREEPY PRESENTS: RICHARD CORBEN that I took an extended look at his comics career. I couldn't get into the first release of Dark Horse's Corben Library, MURKY WORLD, the later Corben style comes off as more artificial or digital, if you will. Not so this representation of the first DEN story from 1973, I love the classic mixture of cartoony and grotesque in Corben's characters that is in evidence throughout this whole book. I was not a fan of the story at all in the beginning, as it struck me as another lame Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiche. I, of course, knew it had to get better as the story went along. Right? Fuck yeah, it got a LOT better. Unlike fellow comics master Alex Toth, Corben was not weighed down by his genre influences. Corben brings a Lovecraftian turn to the outline of ERB pulpiness and that's when the story really takes off for me. It's an adventure story filtered through menace, suspense, evil characters, sympathetic characters, sex, love, obsession, and an incredible use of sound effects when the cthulu shit is hitting the fan. In closing, of course I loved this introduction to classic Corben, hopefully Dark Horse can bring out many more volumes.
Comic Kkrakk (Terence Fuller) is my go to expert on Corben, and he had some well thought out opinions on this first volume of DEN:
First look on "NCBD" at the 19:30 mark:
With LahRasa at the 1:20:00 mark:
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