Psychokiller: Ep. 7 (final episode)
‘The Teenage Dead’ are waiting for Lenny and savagely beat him before throwing him to the Hell Dogs.
The previous episode ends with a brilliant final page as Morbus and Lenny plunge towards the ground, making full use of the depth of the page. There’s an ululation, a howling or wailing sound that is commonplace at traditional funerals. It’s not explained but I believe it’s Morbus calling on the Goddess to protect him as Hell creatures look on, chirruping and barking. I thought Morbus was going to use Lenny’s body to break his fall in an action sequence several years before it featured in the Jason Bourne film. Instead, they go right through the pavement into Hell!
There, ‘The Teenage Dead’ are waiting for Lenny and savagely beat him before throwing him to the Hell Dogs. It looks like Morbus will be stuck in the world of the dead as he says in the best mysterious tradition of magicians, ‘I’m not dead. Mind you, technically speaking, I’m not exactly alive either.’
Part of me would have liked more text, more dialogue, more revelations, more characterisation in Psychokiller but that would have been a risky endeavour because it could have slowed the story down and possibly interfered with its smooth flow. And may have been too much for the reader to absorb. Arguably, its fast moving approach foreshadows the Manga tradition that many modern readers are used to. Except, of course, Manga stories are so much longer.
There’s a very satisfying teenage ending where it looks like Jamie has finally pulled Mary Anne and at the very end Morbus appears in the shower in the best tradition of horror movies. He escaped Hell thanks to imitative magic.
And so I bid a very fond farewell to Doctor Morbus. I still miss him. If you’re missing him, too, and want to see more of Dave’s horror art – there’s a wonderful collection of Psycho Demons at the end of our print edition of Psychokiller.
Psychokiller is available from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback.
