Every once in a while you come across a cool comic that turns out to be better than expected. I did not have high expectations for The Chronicles of Herbert West mainly because too many other horror tie in books were poorly written. Then again, they were based on slasher films and slashers provide very little material to work with. This book is, of course, based on the 1985 horror classic RE-ANIMATOR, one of the most groundbreaking horror films of the 1980’s.

“Herbert West has a good head on his shoulders….and another one in his desk.”

That was the funky tagline for the film and it is one of the most memorable of all film come ons. The 1980’s started out with a bang when it came to horror movies. However, the collapse of the drive-ins, the rise of home video, and the growth of Hollywood mega movies would kill the genre off. It slowly trudged to a slow death from 1985 – 1988. From 1989 – 1998 or so, the genre was deader than dead. (1987 saw Batman make the cover of Fangoria) The genre was strong from 1957 – about 1985 but it was slowly heading towards oblivion. Then, along came RE-ANIMATOR.

Stuart Gordon’s RE-ANIMATOR was part of the zombie summer that featured Romero’s DAY OF THE DEAD and O’Bannon’s RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD. Surprisingly, RETURN did the best box office with $40 million worldwide. RE-ANIMATOR really didn’t do well at all. However, it was a great film that spawned two mediocre sequels. And now it is the subject of its own prequel comic book.