Clive Barker’s Hellraiser #2 NM Pinhead Cover B Boom! Studios 1st print 2011

Description

Hellraiser #2B
Published Apr 2011 by Boom
Cover B by Nick Percival
(W) Clive Barker, Christopher Monfette
(A) Leonardo Manco

One of the greatest horror franchises of all time returns, now under the control of its original creator!

Witness Barker’s long-awaited return to tell a new chapter in the series’ official continuity – a trajectory that will forever change the Cenobites and Pinhead!

Kirsty Quinn is back! To fight the forces of the Cenobites she has become a Harrower and has gathered a team that, like her, is damaged and insane enough to take on what Hell has got! As Pinhead’s plan becomes clearer, what will Kirsty’s role in it be?

I enjoyed the first issue Boom’s new Hellraiser comic, but there was certainly a lot of setup as Clive Barker and Christopher Monfette laid out the groundwork for what was to come. It’s nice to see with this new issue that setup is now over and we’re already seeing a rapid acceleration of the major storyline.

Most of Hellraiser #2 lets us see how Kristy and the rest of her Harrowers are discovering and destroying the various LeMarchand devices that open gateways to Hell. It’s nice to see that Kristy and company are hardly stupid; when the device known as the Carousel appears practically on their front door (instead of halfway around the world), they’re instantly wary. So often characters in horror stories (no matter what the particular media) seem to miss the most obvious things in front of them, and if this team of demonic-device-destroyers acted that way, it would be hard to swallow that they’d survived for so long.

As for the Carousel itself, Barker, Monfette, and Leonardo Manco make the Cenobite demons that it summons particularly creepy and gruesome. For a device that opens a gateway straight to Hell, all three creators recognize that this can’t just be an everyday monster that pops up. (After all, this is the same mythology that brought us Pinhead.) And when we get the glimpses of all of the other pieces of LeMarchand devices that Kristy’s encountered over the years, it’s a fun little “untold story” moment, the sort that makes me wish that “Hellraiser” will at some point backtrack and give us the story for each of those devices.

Overall, it’s good to see Hellraiser already on a strong path in just its second issue. With the final pages preparing the next chapter to hit the ground running-just like this one did-it’s a perfect hook to make readers want to buy issue #3. Hellraiser is definitely my kind of horror comic. I’ll be back for more.

Hellraiser is a 2022 horror film directed by David Bruckner, with a screenplay by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, from a screen story they co-wrote with David S. Goyer. It is a reboot of the Hellraiser franchise, the eleventh installment overall, and a second adaptation of the 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker, which was adapted into the 1987 film Hellraiser.

In Oct 2023, Bruckner expressed interest in developing a sequel contingent upon the perceived success of the 2022 movie, and the collective interest of the audience.

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Bagged and boarded, near mint condition. 1st printing. More pictures may be in description.