Hyde Street #7 // Review
Pranky is going hunting. He’s hunting Oscar. Oscar doesn’t like Pranky. Pranky doesn’t like Oscar because he’s a monster. Pranky knows, though: if you want to hunt a monster, you’ve got to become one. So he steals a mask. Some masks don’t come off, though. There’s that Nietzsche quote that sometimes shows-up in comics that Pranky doesn’t read: “Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster.” Pranky’s about to understand this on a different level in Hyde Street #7. Writer Geoff Johns explores the darkness a bit more in an issue brought to page and panel by the art team of Ivan Reis and Danny Miki. Colors comes to the page courtesy of Brad Anderson.
If Pranky’s going to be able to fight Oscar the Matinee Monster, he’s going to need a hell of a lot more than a werewolf mask and the powers it possesses on Hyde Street. He’s going to need an army of monsters that might be found on the boxes of sugary cereals. There’s something about them that just might go further than Franken Berry and Boo Berry and Count Chocula. It’s going to be a showdown between monsters with a certain kind of innocence held in the balance.
Johns narrowly misses a steaming pile of cliche as he works his way through a strikingly well-written standalone story that fits perfectly into the world of Hyde Street. There ARE horror tropes that rest right in the heart of Johns’ script, but they are well-articulated and closely connected to deeper, more resonant themes about humanity and the nature of the darkness that seems to be everywhere these days. The showdown between Pranky and the Matinee Monster is cleverly-conceived and quite entertaining. The ending might seem a bit predictable, but Johns makes it fun anyway.
Reis and Miki’s art feels a bit like a clever mash-up of different horror comics styles. At its best, it kind of resembles the powerful rendering style of Bernie Wrightson. At its worst, it just feels a little silly and gloopy. Thankfully, the general darkness of the story prevails and it ends-up feeling suitable spooky throughout. The art style of the Big G sugary monster breakfast cereals proves to be a bit illusive to the art team. This isn’t a huge problem, though. There’s a strong enough contrast between the characters on the box and the monstrosities in the graveyard to bring across the horror that Johns is carving into the script.
There IS deeper horror haunting around the edges of the panels. The idea of mutated innocence has been a big part of horror since the dawn of pop culture. It’s kind of difficult to explore it in a new way that doesn’t come across as being cheap exploitation. With the character of Pranky, Johns is exploring a deeper darkness of the eternal youth that society continues to chase in the midst of the horrors that continue to persist everywhere in the post-modern world.
