By Roman Dirge
32 pages, color
Published by Titan Books
Back in the day, if Johnny the Homicidal Maniac (and its spin-off Squee!) was title that SLG Publishing was best known for, Lenore was certainly right behind it. Roman Dirge’s stories of a cute little undead girl mixed sick humor with mind-crushing puns as punch lines; it was sort of like sitting next to two people each trying to out-gross the other, but in this case Dirge was the only one playing. Now, after several years of silence, Lenore is back and from Titan Books, and it’s nice to see that some things haven’t changed.
Dirge still follows the old pattern that I remembered in the past; Lenore moves through life in a slightly oblivious fashion, runs into an unexpected (and most likely deadly) obstacle, and ends up defeating it without really trying. All, of course, to the frustration of whomever she’s up against. That’s what we get here, as Lenore has an encounter with the man who originally attempt to embalm her. It’s funny and I chuckled in all the right (or should that be wrong?) places, although at the end of the day Lenore was exactly like I remembered its old run of stories. I think it actually works better as individual comics than a collected edition; the chances of the joke getting old are far less in short doses. Lenore may not set the world on fire, but it makes me laugh and at the end of the day that’s a good thing.