Hack/Slash: Keeping you safe from slashers since 2004

There are many mediums in which horror can be found flourishing. Some of the most obvious are film and literature. However, what do you get when you take the stories from literature and the punishing visuals from film? You get horror comics! If you haven't ever experienced a horror comic, don't feel bad. I hadn't picked up a comic book in my life until around two years ago when I was introduced to horror comics and a story called Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash. This was kind of an obvious choice for me since it brought together three of my favorite horror film icons. However, I've found that there is much more to horror comics then taking already-popular characters and putting them to print. Hack/Slash is an example of a unique set of heroes and villains engaged in an original set of stories.

From Devil's Due publishing, Hack/Slash tells the story of Cassie Hack, an troubled and abandoned young woman who grew up in Western Wisconsin. Her father left her and her mother shortly after Cassie was born. She was raised by her overbearing and eccentric mother who was a lunch lady at the local High School. Cassie was an outcast and some of the kids in her school felt it necessary to pick on her.

Soon, at Cassie's High School, students started being reported missing. This was going on, perhaps not coincidentally, as the lunch lady started serving some kind of mystery meat to those students who chose to eat school lunch. Well, Cassie's mother was the main suspect, and as the authorities confronted her in the lunchroom, she plunged her head into a pot of boiling gravy and killed herself.
Cassie was put into the foster system and free of her mother and her past life. However, it wasn't long before the more disappearances were reported and Cassie knew that it was her mother come to enact more vengeance from beyond the grave. The Lunch Lady was back and Cassie, who felt responsible for the killings, hunted her mother down and killed her. Since she had nowhere to go and little chance for a "normal" life, she took it upon herself to travel the world hunting slashers. Slashers come in two varieties: those who died in such a fit of rage that they have come back from the dead to kill and those who are still alive but insist on killing for whatever reason.

Along her travels and hunts, Cassie comes upon Vlad, a huge disfigured man who happened to be in the same business. They met as they were hunting the same slasher at the same time. Little is known about Vlad except that he was cast into the garbage as a baby and taken in by a kind Butcher. This butcher raised him and taught him to cope with his disfigured appearance. He also taught Vlad how to use knives as weapons. Cassie befriended Vlad and they began travel together. Vlad is the muscle, in somewhat of a gentle giant capacity and Cassie makes the decisions. Both Cassie and Vlad are very dangerous.

This series is already somewhat mature. In 2004, Hack/Slash was born as a series of self-contained comics called one-shots. Since then there have been a collection of one-shots, a series with 17 issues, and a set of trailers and special issues. All of these issues can be found in a few different collections, including two Omnibuses which encompass most of everything that has been published to date.
Hack/Slash is continually presenting new, original slasher stories where the slashers themselves vary in size, look, preferred killing method, and back stories. That, along with the different environments and situations that Cassie and Vlad find themselves in is where the strength of the series really shines through. Over the multiple issues, Cassie and Vlad have run into some familiar faces such as Chucky, from the Child's Play Series, Herbert West, as portrayed by Jeffrey Combs in the Reanimator series, and even the Suicide Girls. Although there have been some cross-over with other horror icons, most of the slashers found in the series are completely original and unique.

Writer, Tim Seeley, has a great knack for coming up with interesting slashers and environments. The art and lettering are done by a plethora of artists. Both the story and the art is of the highest quality. If you are looking for some horror comics, regardless of how familiar you are with comics in general, Hack/Slash is a great set of stories that will definitely entertain.

For More Information: Visit Devil's Due Publishing