Dark Horse Presents #48

The cover is simply awesome.

Harlequin: Act 1

So is the story for which it was drawn.

'It is said that madness is the only lot of liars and fools. I am both a liar and a fool'

So many beautifully written phrases in 'Act 1' that I can't wait for the continuation already. The art is great, 'in motion' pieces of a background, while characters are driving a car, are proof of a great work by an artist. Dark humour is another reason why I enjoyed some parts. There are quite interesting narration tricks. But man some quotes are really great, the second page is especially good. Some excerpts I would go back to later:

'The odor of pretentiousness is quite disgusting'

'How do you know I was not lying?'

'- Show some respect for the dead.

- I will as soon as you show some for the living'

And not for everyone, but it cracked me up:

'- You're not really into necrophilia, are you?

- I don't know. I've never tried it.'

P.S. Shout out to Brian Eno!

Downtown: A Nightmare on Elf Street!

'- It's God...

- Nah... it's Bernard Manning.

- Same thing.'

I don't really know what I've read. I enjoyed the pun in the name of the story. For me, it was a mess, but a fun mess, I will give it that. I laughed out loud at the TMNR (that stands for Teenage Mutant Ninja Reindeers if you didn't know already), the details that reference the other franchises were cool to search. Like, I knew that the Moon is made of cheese but Micky Mouse? That's BS right here. TIE Fighter, Optimus, Atari shirt... and so on, I definitely didn't get all of 'easter eggs'. I liked it a lot.

Desperate Clergy

Geary is great. He has this 'soft' art style that I can recognise anywhere (well, that's an exaggeration but whatever) and this style of humour that raises questions and puts smiles on the faces. And that is what he has shown in this one-pager too. It is important to say that he didn't laugh at religion but at some extreme manifestations of it. At least, that's how I saw it.

Homicide: Tick

'- So naturally, being just a little past sunrise, he figures the 'vampire' was caught by the sun before climbing back into her coffin.

- Naturally?! What the hell you talking about, naturally?'

'Homicide' returns with another disgusting gut-wrenching story! Awesome! No, seriously, I'm glad to see the detectives back at work, the authors are really nailing the noir feel and they like to show people who you totally won't think would be sick killers in real life as sick killers. And I love how not every case is resolved by the heroes of the story and it really shows that some really weird stuff happens in the real life and even the clown can save the little girl's life while the police are digging into previous files.

Overall, four strong stories make one great issue!