Nosferatu Wars
Written by Steve Niles
Art and Cover by menton3
Letters by Nate Piekos of Blambot
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 12, 2014
Cover Price: $3.99

Don’t you just love it when something great just comes together? Take Nosferatu Wars, for instance. Originally published in four parts in Dark Horse Presents #26-#29, this comic is a perfect example of a classic vampire story. And what makes it even better is the way the creators twist this tale to bring us something completely out of this world.

Centered around two vampires, Tarquin and Moira, we are given a story of unfettered bloodlust and carnage mingled with a love affair that has stretched for ages. The setting is the old world and the time is that of the Black Death. Using this horrible plague as a cover for their nightly exploits, the two undead lovers travel towards the estate of a nobleman with deadly purpose.

Upon arrival there, they are faced with seemingly overwhelming odds that quickly turn in their favor thanks to their strength and ruthlessness. Slaying much of the household, they present the lord of the manor with a proposition, one he quickly accepts. But as with all things, the devil is in the details as he soon finds out.

Veil #1
Written by Greg Rucka
Art by Toni Fejzula
Colors by Toni Fejzula
Letters by Nate Piekos
Cover by Toni Fejzula
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: March 5, 2014
Cover Price: $3.50

Writer Greg Rucka’s comicography reads like a wishlist of every kid who ever dreamed of creating comics. Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Punisher, Spider-Man, Wolverine, the man has penned all the main eventers. Lately, Rucka has focused on his creator-owned comic Lazarus. Veil is his latest project. Rucka claims that this concept has been fermenting in his mental brewery for over 20 years. Shit, man, that’s all you had to say!

Veil #1 opens with a bizarre scene in an empty, locked subway filled with rats, pentagrams, money exchanging hands, a gun, and a crazy naked chick with amnesia. It makes no sense. Two pages into the book and my mind was already loaded with a cross-examiner’s list of questions.

Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem
Story by Steve Niles and Matt Santoro
Script by Steve Niles
Art by Dave Wachter
Letters by Nate Piekos of Blambot
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: February 26, 2014
Cover Price: $14.99

Every so often a comic comes along and reminds you why you began reading them in the first place. The perfect marriage of art and story can be used to produce some epic books. Breath of Bones: A Tale of the Golem is just such a work, from the spectacular writing of Steve Niles to the exceptionally emotional artwork of Dave Wachter this comic is more than the sum of its parts.

The story opens to a firefight taking place in April, 1944. A young man, Noah, finds himself in a dangerous predicament and his thoughts turn to his early life and how certain events changed him and his perception of evil. As his mind focuses on this, so does the story, allowing us a look at what happened we he was but a teenager in Poland during the German invasion.

Brain Boy #0
Written by Fred Van Lente
Illustrated by Freddie Williams II
Colored by Ego
Lettered by Nate Piekos of Blambot
Cover by Ariel Olivetti
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: December 11, 2013
Cover Price: $2.99

Open up your mind and allow writer Fred Van Lente to introduce you to an early adventure of the trained telepath, Matt Price in Brain Boy #0. With illustrations from Freddie Williams II, this prequel issue to the new series from Dark Horse is one wild adventure filled with betrayal, espionage, and a plethora of mind control tricks.

In one of his first missions ever, Matt Price, also known as Brain Boy, is subcontracted by the secret service to help protect the president and a special package called the “football” at a world leaders summit. Able to read the thoughts of others as well as telepathically and telekinetically force them to do things against their will, Brain Boy is tasked with determining every eventual outcome in regards to the summit in order to prevent something catastrophic from occurring; however, when lethal assassins force their way onto the premises and the other secret service agents begin committing suicide, Brain Boy quickly discovers that he is not the only telepath in the vicinity — nor the world.

Criminal Macabre
The Eyes of Frankenstein #3 of 4
Written by Steve Niles
Art by Christopher Mitten
Colors by Michelle Madsen
Letters by Nate Piekos
Cover by Justin Erickson
Dark Horse Comics
Release Date: November 27, 2013
Cover Price: $3.99

Cal McDonald, the creation of Steve Niles (possibly best known for his title 30 Days of Night) is back in his latest mini-series under the Criminal Macabre banner. As the inset of the comic so accurately summarizes him, Cal is a pill-popping, alcoholic degenerate, who teams up with his ghoul associate Mo’Lock and traverses around the sin-infested streets of Los Angeles battling a growing horde of monsters. Think Dylan Dog but with less clarinet and more inebriation. The Eyes of Frankenstein picks up shortly after Cal’s last adventure where he found himself transformed into one of the undead and is now contending with life, so to speak, as a ghoul.

For Cal though, there is no rest for the weary and he finds himself quickly swept up in his latest adventure, this time providing his unusual investigative talents to Frankentstein’s monster, who is slowly going blind and it is up to Cal to find a solution. Through his associate Mo’Lock, Cal reluctantly turns to Jason Hemlock, an authority on the occult, for assistance. Hemlock may just be able repair the Monster’s eyes, and shed some light on Cal’s transformation into a ghoul, but is his help truly benevolent or is there a larger sinister plan at work?