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Graphic Novel Review: George A. Romero’s The Amusement Park by Jeff Whitehead, art by Ryan Carr

George A. Romero's the Amusement Park bookcover

George A. Romero’s The Amusement Park by Jeff Whitehead, introduction by Greg Nicotero, art by Ryan Carr, lettering by Marshall Dillon, edited by Sandy King

Storm King Comics, 2025

ISBN-13: 9798988728573

Available: Paperback

Buy: Bookshop.org

 

This graphic novel adaptation of George A. Romero’s previously lost 1973 film The Amusement Park comes from a collaboration between Storm King Comics, jointly owned by John Carpenter and Sandy King, and the George A. Romero Foundation.

 

Businessman William Lincoln returns to Pennsylvania and has a chance encounter with an elderly man in a small coffee shop. The impatient young man is drawn into a conversation about the history of the amusement park that used to stand in that very spot. The more William learns from the old man, the more uneasy he becomes.

 

Rather than a lighthearted tale of a typical amusement park atmosphere, the old man relates a story full of pain, sorrow, and loneliness. He simply wanted to visit the grand park one more time, to revisit childhood memories and surround himself with youthful joy and excitement. Instead, every interaction with younger people in the crowds shows the impatience and hostility directed at the elders in the park. Rides and other attractions place the aged in embarrassing and hostile situations. Everything is a reminder of how the mind and body deteriorate with age. As he makes his way through the park, he remains unaware of the looming figure that follows him on his journey.

 

The horror lies in the struggles the old man witnesses or is subject to himself. We all know someone aging, or who is well into their golden years. Some of us may be there ourselves or quickly facing what is to come. Both the film and this graphic novel sit with you, make you take in some uncomfortable facts about our flawed political system and how it affects healthcare; social reform; housing; and many other issues essential to us all, not just the elderly. That is simply where the systems, and our lives, end.

 

Whitehead’s adaptation differs from the film, but not in any way that detracts from the message. Carr’s artwork is incredibly effective, especially regarding the pain, emotional and physical, the old man experiences as he makes his way through the amusement park.

 

This graphic novel could fit in multiple places in a library collection, but the first one that comes to mind is Graphic Medicine. While that is not the sole focus, there are significant panels that address the current United States healthcare system and its failings.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on September 8, 2026 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Cover art for Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

 

Lovesickness: Junji Ito Story Collection by Junji Ito

Viz Media, 2021

ISBN: 9781974719846

Available:  Hardcover, Kindle edition

Buy: Bookshop.org | Amazon.com

 

In Lovesickness, originally published in 1996 and told in 5 parts, Ryusuke Fukuda and his parents move back to the town of Nazumi after his father accepts a job there. The story opens with a teenage girl approaching the crossroads of an empty street where a man is emerging from the fog. She quickly places her notebook over her face and asks for a fortune. The older man responds and they part ways. When the man meets his family at the Nazumi train station, it is revealed that he is Ryusuke’s father. He relates the story to his wife and son, the latter shaken by the chance meeting.

 

When he starts at school the next day, he is greeted by an old friend, Midori. Eventually the topic of rumors comes up regarding teenage girls committing suicide after encountering a mysterious handsome young man. Ryusuke, in an attempt to calm his own guilty conscience when he reveals a terrible fortune he gave to a woman in distress, which led to a grisly suicide, hunts for the shadowy figure delivering his own tragic fortunes to innocent strangers at the crossroads.

 

The artwork in Lovesickness is probably some of my favorite in Ito’s work. The effect of the fog and shadows is excellent, and the body horror is fantastic. The handsome stranger is eerily beautiful. The character design reminds me of Fukusuke from the visual kei band Metronome.

 

Four other stories are included in this volume. “The Strange Hikizuri Siblings,” told in two parts, are a strange family, often at odds with each other while still trying to support each other the best they know how… to a degree. The first story, “Narumi’s Boyfriend”, shows the cruelty of the siblings and how they all take part in driving Kotani, the titular boyfriend, albeit in a forced relationship, to madness. In “The Séance”, we see family power dynamics play out in the worst possible way, with the two eldest brothers being just awful people.

 

The next story in the collection, “The Mansion of Phantom Pain”, relates the story of Kozeki, a young man employed to be a live-in caretaker for Yusuke, the son of a wealthy family. Yusuke’s condition is a strange phantom pain that extends beyond his normal body. A team of caretakers who can never leave the bricked up mansion manage the boy’s pain, day and night. When they start to experience their own maladies, and the death of Yusuke’s father, his mother still refuses to let them leave. Some of the caretakers slowly succumb to infections and hallucinations, but those remaining can’t leave, with the promise of the family’s wealth at stake, no matter how much Kozeki pleads for doctors.

 

Following that is “The Rib Woman”,  a cautionary tale of rib removal surgery and  obsession with the perfect figure. Yuki laments the lack of an hourglass figure like her friend Ruriko’s, and decides surgery is the best option. Throughout the story, Ruriko is tormented by strange and discordant music. One evening Yuki and her brother, who is also dating Ruriko, find the latter in agony on the sidewalk as she is trying to find the source of the song. They offer to help, and when they do find the source, they see a mysterious woman in the park playing a small instrument. She flees and leaves behind her instrument, which looks to be a large rib. After Yuki’s surgery, she too can hear the music. She also finds the woman and discovers there is more to the story than she believed. There is some deliciously good body horror in this one.

 

The final story in the collection is the inexplicable “Memories of Real Poop.” It’s the shortest chapter in this collection, at only four pages, but it’s memorable. I’ll just leave it at that. Highly recommended.

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on February 7, 2024 by , Reply

Graphic Novel Review: The EC Archives: Terror Illustrated edited by Daniel Chabon, original series editor William M. Gaines

Cover art for EC Archives: Terror Illustrated

The EC Archives: Terror Illustrated edited by Daniel Chabon, original series editor William M. Gaines

Dark Horse, 2022

ISBN-13: 9781506719788

Available: Kindle edition, hardcover ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

 

The EC Archives: Terror Illustrated includes illustrated prose stories of terror, murder, and the supernatural with works by Al Feldstein (also writing under Alfred E. Neuman), Jack Davis, Joe Orlando, Johnny Craig, and more! This collection also features the never printed third issue, and a foreword by Mick Garris. The book, advertised as “Picto-Fiction,” contains illustrated stories rather than a traditional comic.

 

I’m going to start out this review with the negative. There are some problematic stories in this volume, the worst of them being “Mother Love” by Maxwell Williams and illustrated by Charles Sultan, and “The Long Wait” by Alfred E. Neuman and illustrated by Johnny Craig. In “Mother Love,” Leona’s father sells her to a brute named Clint as a bride. She is endlessly abused and tormented, and rape is alluded to in this story. She is described as no smarter than a toddler, and lines like “Not that Leona thought of her life as a horror. Her mind was not capable of that” made this hard to get through. It gets worse. Clint discovers she is pregnant, and after he beats and abuses her further, he devises a plan where he would abandon her at the hospital. I don’t often ruin the end of the story in my reviews, but I will here. She eventually escapes the hospital and returns to the cabin, with her stillborn baby in a jar, and kills Clint. When the police arrive, nothing is done to try to figure out why what happened, happened. An abused woman is arrested for killing her abuser. This story is problematic on so many levels. 

 

In “The Long Wait” by Alfred E. Neuman, illustrated by Johnny Craig, Red Buckley murders his boss, plantation owner Emil Duval. As can be expected when a plantation is mentioned, you can bet there are racist depictions of Black “workers” Kulu approaches the main house and says “Kulu wanna be house-boy. Kulu wanna be servant.” Yikes. You think Buckley gets his comeuppance in the end…but it still reveals a racially insensitive reason that it occurs. 

 

This is not to say there are not some gems in this volume. There are some good stories here. The first story in issue 1, “The Sucker”, by Maxwell Williams and illustrated by Reed Crandall, is told in second person: you are on the run when you meet a beautiful dame who cheats and robs you, and the only thing you can do every night is kill her…again…and again…and again. In “Halloween”, by Alfred Feldstein and illustrated by Reed Crandall, Ann Dennis is hired as the matron of Briarwood Orphan Asylum by the headmaster, Eban Critchet. She does her best to improve the lives of the orphans in her care, but when she discovers what the headmaster has been doing, she takes matters into her own hands, and the children aren’t far behind. “The Gorilla’s Paw”,  by Alfred E. Neuman and illustrated by Johnny Craig is a violent and brutal retelling of the classic “Monkey’s Paw” tale. After a man is convinced he must purchase a mummified gorilla’s paw from a curio shop, he is plagued by nightmares and wishes he had never bought it, then awakens to find the paw holding the amount of money he paid for the paw. When he discovers the secret of the paw, he keeps on wishing, and his last wish proves to be a doozy. “Keepsake” by Jack Oleck, illustrated by Graham Ingels, gives us the story of an undertaker mourning the death of his childhood friend and unrequited love, Miss Hettie. During his time as undertaker, he kept a deadly secret for her, and after he discovers another one of her little secrets, he will be able to keep another. A fun inclusion in the third issue is the “Letters to the Editor” column the best one that denounces the magazine as “the highest and most advanced form of Brainrot on the market today” and “the stories and thoughts that these magazines contain are truly the work of Satan.”

 

This volume provides a glimpse into the horror enjoyed in the 1950s and echoes the radio plays such as Suspense, The Mysterious Traveler, Inner Sanctum, and others. Despite the problematic elements of some of the stories, I still found enjoyable tales of terror within these pages, and the artwork was well done. This book, along with other EC Comics archival editions, would be an interesting addition for comics history, as well as courses studying comics and graphic novels. Recommended.

 

 

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Posted on March 18, 2023 by , Reply
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