I am really enjoying the on-going, which is sorta like an anthology to begin with, so I thought this Annual would be a lot of fun. It is a series of stories all based around the creepy mask featured on the cover. Vertigo does score extra points by making this mask something you could cut out of the front and actually wear. If the teenage bag and boarder in me could keep from curling into a fetal ball at such defacement.

I was a bit disappointed, because despite having some great creators involved, it read a lot like a $5 ad for all the Vertigo on-going series. You got a Hellblazer story. You got a Madame Xanadu story. You got a I, Zombie story which actually ended with a half page ad right there in the middle of the story for this new ongoing. You got a Dreaming story, which I guess does not tie directly into an ongoing series, but certainly reminded you of all the times various Vertigo series revisit that stuff. Now most of the stories were all right, but you just did not feel you were getting each creator’s best stuff. They were told to write 4-8 pages about the mask and they did it. These are previews, not great tales that had to be told.

So yes, there is some really great art and many genuinely creepy and disturbing moments, but I found nothing in here that I will likely ever go back to again. Well, except next Halloween. That mask would be pretty sweet.