Now then comic book fans this wasn't something I planned on doing but after I watched and reviewed the film version of what i'm about to review I did some digging around and I found the original comic book version. So I thought that i'd take this chance to to take a look at the original source material and since this can't be helped i'll also be making alot of comparisons to the movie so here is my review of the comic boo version of The Haunted World Of El Superbeasto.
Now I know what your wondering is the plot to the book the same as the movie well yes and no because while the book does contain a story that is the plot of the movie. It also contains another story and I will say that if you've seen the movie you'll notice alot of differences in the first story i'm not going to give them away but I think that the movie told the story better as for the second one it's about Aliens invading earth and our hero has to try and stop them and it's as wonderfully over the top as you'd expect by now.
Now if your like me and you saw the above picture you'd be thinking that the characters look like there animated counterparts well to quote Dolores Umbridge this is a lie because outside of Superbeasto and Suzi none of the characters look like there animated counterparts. Heck you could even make the very real argument that the comic book version of Suzi doesn't look like the character in the film but in my eyes she looks close enough so it counts.
I'm not going to lie tho some of the designs do indeed work like the comic book version of Dr. Satan actually looks terrifying. Then there are some designs that just don't work at all like the design for Velvet in my opinion she looked alot better in the animated movie because she's meant to be this knockout babe and in the comic book she just looks plain and unattractive to me and that doesn't work with the story at all.
We had two people doing the art for this book for the first story it was Kieron Dwyer and taking over from him was someone called Ej Su. Don't worry if you havn't heard of either of them because I havn't either and i'll admit when I heard that they were switching artist mid run I honestly thought that the art style would change but no they keep it the same all throughout the book which for me is a good thing because the artwork is honestly pretty decent it's not going to win any awards anytime soon but the art is still fun to look at.
As you might have guessed given that his name appears on top of the first two pictures in this review this series was created by and written by director Rob Zombie I don't really think I need to say what he's directed since he's a well known horror director. With that in mind if you picture the almost terrible writing of his Halloween remake and then mix it in with the self awareness of the scream movies then you'll get what the writing of this book is like because while it is written badly you get the feeling that that's part of it's charm.
What struck me about this book is how El Superbeasto was written in the movie he's alot more aloof and goofy where as in the book he is still a bit goofy like he still does get a few jokes but he's also alot more serious. Which at times does indeed work but then there are times where him being very serious goes against what's happening in the book it's almost as if they still wanted to get some jokes out of him but instead of making him a goofy hero they just chose to make him act goofy sometimes and that doesn't work in my opinion.
Now while I was reading the book I couldn't help but make comparisons to the movie and yeah in the first story there's alot of changes in this version of the story some of which work and some don't. One of the things that I think doesn't work is for some literally unknown reason they have Velvet turn evil near the end it comes out of know where and is utterly pointless and another is how Suzi gets introduced in the movie she's introduced with her taking down a bunch of Nazi zombies and here it's just with her taking a phone call in the bath.
I have to say that I prefer the movies introduction to the character just due to how insane and over the top it is where as her it's not a good introduction to this bada*s character. If i'm being honest her character in the comic book is perhaps the most different to that of the movie in the movie she's alot more unstable shall we say where as here I think she's a bit more level headed and that makes it hard for me to say which version of the character I like the most because on the one hand the movie version is alot more fun to watch but the comic book version is alot more interesting.
Now if your expecting there to be as many cameos in the comic book then get ready to be disappointed don't get me wrong there are some cameos but there some cameos but there more from public domain characters so don't go around expecting Jason to show up or to see Micheal get hit by a car. With that being said I might have found an Elvira cameo but i'm not going to include the picture just because there's a lot of nudity in the scene.
There are a few jokes to be found in this comic book but oddly enough there not always from what the characters say alot of the time they come from the word boxes. Which to me does work because alot of what's said in those boxes are really funny like for example in one scene El describes a popular song and then the very next word box says that he's now got the song in question stuck in his head that to me is a really funny joke but for every joke that's funny in the book there's alot more which just aren't funny.
Overall this comic book is pretty bad but then again so is the film and before you all say anything yes I know that the comic book came first. There are a lot of good things to be found in the comic book but there's also alot of things that are bad as well and so with that in mind this book gets a 5.5 out of 10 from me.