Comics Corner - Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (2018 - Present)

Comics Corner - Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (2018 - Present)

Elvira was my first crush.  As a wee fella, I stayed up late one Friday night, and then BOOM!--there she was.  Wow.  I've got goosebumps just thinking about it.  In truth, as a lifelong horror fanatic, my fondness for dearest Elvira and my love for things that go bump in the night represent a legitimate "chicken or the egg" scenario.  In other words, I'm not sure which one came first.

Anyway, the Mistress of the Dark is still my biggest celebrity crush (and my only celebrity crush, truth be told*), and I may just have her to thank for all the joy the horror genre has brought me over the years.  I also dig comics in a big way, so when I heard that Dynamite was set to launch this Elvira: Mistress of the Dark series last year, I made sure to put it on my pull list at Fanboy Comics.  To be quite frank, I didn't know if it would prove to be a solid book (I'm a reader first and a collector second), but I was willing to give it a shot, and I knew it would make for a quality keepsake if nothing else.  Hey, nostalgia sells.

As it turns out, writer David Avallone and artist Dave Acosta have taken this loaded property and ran wild with it.  I am grateful for their efforts; the art is inviting, as it should be, the writing is clever, and the series exists largely as a love letter for both those who treasure horror at large and those who are as charmed by the title character as yours truly.  That bawdy Elvira schtick works as well in this format as it does on the screen, and the tongue-in-cheek approach to the macabre and our lovely heroine's unique assets come through loud and clear.

And the puns!  Oh, the puns!  Puns for days, peeps.  Throw in some classic horror characters and their creators, a diabolical pace, a demented and appropriately snarky sense of humor, and you wind up with a genuine crowd-pleaser that delivers big laughs and big thrills in every issue.  I'm sure the naysayers were expecting nothing more than a big bust, but I am greatly pleased to take this opportunity to rate Dynamite's vivacious Elvira: Mistress of the Dark as an absolute blast.

Final Grade: A

*I'm not counting my man-crush on Michael Fassbender.