Grab your Hootie & The Blowfish cd, your Dr. Seuss hat and your Jnco jeans…it’s time for another trip back to the 90’s, couresy of Haunt #2! Granted, this issue doesn’t hysterically portray cliches from 90’s Image Comics to the extent of the previous issue, but the general feeling is still there. It’s starting to fade, though, so hopefully this book will not be hampered down my McFarline’s silly premise.

This issue continues the set-up of this overall series, so it’s still not too clear what the overall direction is going to be for the future. All we know is that ex-mercenary and human being Kurt Kilgore (still one of the most retarted names ever) is inhabiting his priest brother’s body, and therefore cause him to become a symbiote wearing killing machine. So it looks we may have to wait a little longer for some lateral plot movement, as it’s probably going to take this entire arc to set everything up. Until then, I doubt we’re going to see much great dialog or character moments, as there werenone really here. That’s not to say the script was bad, as Robert Kirkman is a more than competant writer. It’s good, just not great yet.

Say what you will about ridiculous Image plots and stories, but those books are usually always vehicles for amazing art, and Haunt is no different. Ryan Ottley has proven in Invincible that he can draw some pretty shocking and captivating art, and in Haunt, he cranks that shockingness up to 11, as all the brutal decapitations and vivisections are wonderfully displayed in these pages. You can argue that this book is strictly style over substance, but there’s a good chance that you already knew this while buying this book.

I’d recommend getting this book purely for the great bloody art, though I understand that there are those who think that these types of books that Image used to put out were extremely contrived. For those people, I’ll have to say that Haunt #2 is their personal antichrist, as it pretty much encompasses everything they most likely hate about these types of comics. I do believe eventually, though, that the book will grow out of it’s initial aesthetic premise and become a strongly written book under Kirkman. Just not yet, though.