Review by Comix
How many horror movies have you watched? Is the answer a lot? I bet the answer is a lot. Now how many times have you watched the useless female lead stumble her way from one dead body to another while screaming at the top of her barely legal lungs? I bet a lot more. Well Hack/Slash finally gives our sweet, lovable lead character a well deserved makeover, by arming the young lass with a bat and, get ready for it, a brain. Oh, and a huge-ass, deformed body guard named Vlad. Similar to “Cabin in the Woods” type debauchery, the comic follows the wacky misadventures of the dubious pair as they fight their way through monsters, killers, and creatures of all types.
The stories are centered around our girl Cassie Hack, a tough but super-hot and barely dressed young go-getter who travels the country fighting what the comic calls “Slashers.” Slashers are your basic bad guys; you know, malevolent ghosts, serial killers, parasitic, flesh eating twins. The usual. If the Slasher is a living being, no problem, stab the prick and wash your hands. But if they’re dead, undead, or “other”, she battles them through a mix of ingenuity and severe body damage. Basically, if it works in B-movies, it works in the comic. Cassie fearlessly hacks and slashes (see what I did there?) her way through each issue while fighting her own inner demons, namely, the murderous legacy of her mother, a woman who killed and cooked several teenagers at a high school. As Cassie travels, she begins picking up a number of strange characters who lead to even stranger cases which lead to the strangest secret club called the Black Lamp Society, which might or might not have something to do with all this….strangeness. Needless to say, it’s a pretty great read.
Not one to ever take itself too seriously, Hack/Slash spends most of its time riffing on the horror genre and giving fan service (by fan service, I mean tits and panty shots.) The comic is a great back hand to an industry stagnant in its portrayal of women in horror, even if the lead character is dressed in the sluttiest clothes this side of the stripper pole. There’s a lot of fun name dropping and geekery to be had as well, such as Cassie teaming up with Chucky, or spending several issues running around a comic convention trying to stop a serial killer dead set on murdering real-life comic book creators. Basically, Hack/Slash becomes a running horror joke that eventually pans out to an actual story, so if you’re hungry for both laughs and frights, this is the way to go.
Created and originally written by Tim Seeley, the comic is currently printed through Image Comics. The first several story arcs were actually published by Devils Due Publishing, but due to some legal issues, Seeley pulled the comics from them and began writing it for Image Comics, which is pretty awesome. Image Comics is best known for the iconic Spawn and its willingness to bring in indie-made comics to the big stage, so it was a really good move for the Hack/Slash crew. Though Seeley owns the comic, the credit for its continued publishing really goes to several authors and illustrators who have worked under Seeley’s consultations. Thanks to him and his people, Hack/Slash has literally blown up on the comic scene. The series has been adapted into a stage play, there have been talks of a movie, and Cassie Hack herself is an honorary Suicide Girl. You heard right, she’s naked on the internet! To the computer!
I know you want to pick up this sweet series and Image Comics has made it incredibly easy to do so. There are ten actual graphic novels that were released, collecting all the horror and mindless savagery, but if you don’t want to spend your precious money on ten separate collections, there are also four omnibuses collecting all the comics. The graphic novels and omnibuses have various pencil tests and cover galleries, so you can get into the nitty-gritty details that go into making big-breasted she-heroes. A word of warning of though! Apparently, there has been several reports of poor binding with the omnibuses, so purchase with caution. The books are regularly available at your local comic book stores or anywhere that sells fine printed media, so go get yours! Trust me, you’ll never find a better set of…ahem, comics anywhere else…