To
Hell You Ride,
the five-part comic-book epic by Lance Henriksen, Joseph Maddrey, and Tom
Mandrake roars back into the pop-culture spotlight with the publication of its
fourth issue on May 14…in just a few short weeks.
This
fourth issue of this inventive horror series finds Jim Shipp’s quarantined town
still under siege by the government’s black helicopters, and now by foreign
nationals who have been authorized to kill Americans with impunity in order to
contain the crisis.
The
contaminated snow which is responsible for the deaths and the consequent
occupation has caused the town to become “divided
against itself,” a metaphor, perhaps for America today, almost universally caught
in the grip of fear. That fear,
interestingly, is termed an “addiction”
in the comic, and addiction ties in with the saga’s running themes, I submit,
about contamination and also avarice. To
Hell You Ride implies a modern society overdosing on fear, greed, and
violence.
The
same emergency has also created two breeds of people, notes the narration: The
Insiders, who hide behind locked doors and are afraid of the snow, and the
Outsiders who are afraid of the heat that the draconian presence of martial law
now brings to them. Instead of unifying
as a single, strong force, the Insiders and Outsiders turn on each other with
lethal ferocity.
Sheriff
Shipps -- the Lance Henriksen character, essentially -- finds himself in an
impossible situation here, attempting to preserve his town as it once was while
all Hell breaks loose. Armed mobs have
begun wandering the streets, opening fire on others, and this issue witnesses
the death of a major protagonist.
Finally,
the story ends with the ominous notation that “The End is Here,” a reflection of the fact that the final chapter
of the saga is upon us.
One
thematic conceit underlying this issue of To Hell You Ride is the nature of
time itself. The narration which opens
the book notes that time is “not an
arrow. It does not fly straight from
past to future.”
Instead, the
audience learns, “Time is a web…everything
it touches sends out vibrations.”
If
this information is parsed in terms of story specifics, I take it to mean that
the actions which occurred long ago -- and
which initiated the curse -- have caused reverberations through time itself,
climaxing with the town divided dangerously against itself in the present. Everyone is suffering because of the actions
committed long ago, when the land was sacrificed for the white man’s avarice. That act was the rock thrown into the placid
waters of time, and the shock waves have only begun to crash against the shores
of “now.”
Intriguingly,
this fourth chapter of the saga also introduces the “Spider,” the
creature/being who strides atop the web of time, and I found this character to
be a sinister reflection, oddly enough, of the other corrupt humans we’ve seen
so far, in the story, namely Blackwash and the (now-deceased) Mayor Cubby
Boyers.
To
write too much more about The Spider and the fourth issue’s narrative would
ruin some of the surprises, but suffice it to say that To Hell You Ride still
possesses the power to shock and awe, and to deeply unsettle. There’s a pulse-quickening momentum behind
the pages here, an inevitability that can’t be denied.
As I read the tale, I
kept thinking “the die is cast,” and (in the spirit of a favorite Henriksen
movie, Pumpkinhead), that the curse is going to run its course, with
all the damage that “course” entails.
With
that sense of inevitability in mind, the last frame of Issue #4 is very ominous
because of what it portends for another protagonist, and I get the feeling that
things are not exactly going to end well.
I’ll
be eagerly anticipating the final chapter of To Hell You Ride, and remembering,
specifically, the fourth issue’s words about death.
Death
is not an end, only a change in shape, a shift in worlds.
I have a feeling that this particular nugget
of wisdom will play powerfully in the finale…
Order your copy here!
Order your copy here!
Hahahaha the bad guys speak Romanian! (well...with some accent...)
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for the review, enjoyed all 4 and looking forward for #5.