Ghostlore Volume 1 

Writer – Cullen Bunn 

Artist – LeoMacs 

Ghostlore Volume 1 was a blind buy when I purchased it at Phantom of the Attic’s Halloween/Day of the Dead sale. The cover art of the trade (by Jenny Frisson) was too good to pass up. 

A reverend and his family are driving home after services when tragedy strikes them. The reverend’s daughter Harmony swerves to avoid the ghost of a baby on the road and hits a tree. Harmony and her father are the sole survivors of the accident and they both share a newfound gift: they can see ghosts. They both have a difference in opinion on how to handle these specters, which will cause friction between them.  

LeoMacs illustrates the main story of Harmony and her father. He is joined by four others that draw the ghosts’ stories – Brian Hurtt, Danny Luckert, Vanesa R. Del Rey, and Jonas Scharf. Each terrifying tale has a great twist to them and the reveals are jaw-dropping in some fashion or another. The overreaching arc has a man targeting Harmony and the good reverend to see if either or both will join his mission. He can control ghosts and uses them to do his bidding, it seems. This nameless character (at this point) has a sinister air about him. His plans for Harmony and her dad aren’t revealed just yet but I’m chomping at the bit to see what he has in store for them. 

A regret I must share with you, dear readers, is that I looked at the solicitation for this twelve-issue maxiseries and passed on it when I had a chance to update my pull list. After reading this volume, I’ll probably wait until the next two collections are released to see how everything plays out but I’m very interested to see what happens next. 

Anthology series, much like their movie counterparts, can be hit or miss. I really loved Silver Coin when it came out and was sad to see it end (for now). Creepshow made the leap to comics recently and you get two stories for the low price of $3.99. You get a lot of bang for your buck with Ghostlore also. I appreciate the dual storytelling structure in one issue. I wish this could be done more often. It would make comic buyers and readers more willing to spend the money on the series in question. But I’m curious if this would hurt the company’s bottom line. This is a discussion for another time, maybe in a future Comic Book Chat. 

Ghostlore Volume One is available now at your local comic shop. The first four issues are available on Hoopla. Do yourself a favor and use one of your monthly borrows to read Issue One. There are enough scares in the debut issue, you’ll still think it was the Halloween season.