Review – Where Monsters Lie: Cull-De-Sac #1 (Dark Horse Comics)

October 18, 2024

3 minutes

Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
Writer: Kyle Starks
Artist: Piotr Kowalski
Colours: Vladimir Popov
Lettering: Joshua Reed
Release Date: 16th October 2024

The first volume of Dark Horse’s Where Monsters Lie transported us to Wilmhurst, a gated community where slashers, serial killers and psychopaths of all persuasions can enjoy a little down time between murder sprees. Unfortunately, when the golden rule of the community (“don’t kill where you sleep”) is violated, an escaped teen brings down the full weight of local law enforcement – including former slasher-survivor-hell-bent-on-vengeance Connor Hayes – resulting in a brutal massacre with both sides suffering heavy casualties.

The four-part series ended when Connor realised he had unwittingly been sculpted into a monster in his own right by the trauma of his childhood, and saw him agreeing to travel with his pregnant wife Ella – who coincidentally turned out to be the daughter of prolific murder family patriarch Wyatt Mordare – to “Site B”, a brand new Wilmhurst. And that’s exactly where we pick things up here…

This new series sees co-creators Kyle Starks and Piotr Kowalski building on the insanity of the first arc by packing this new community with a cast of colourful killers and monsters, and injecting things with the same brilliant action comedy blend that the multi Eisner-nominated Starks has carved out his unassailable niche with. Starks’ knack for brilliant names here continues with the likes of “Mr Wrinkly”, and the new site features an impressive blend of supernatural, monstrous and just plain psychotic characters.

As before, Kowalski does a great job on the visual side of the book, proving to be just as adept at this humorous, over-the-top style as he is with the straight-up horror of, say, Bloodborne. The character designs are all top-notch, particularly “Dream Master” Vilmos, whose distinctly visual powers can be seen on Kowalski’s striking cover above. Colourist Vladimir Popov, who puts in a strong shift throughout, also deserves a ton of credit for the Vilmos sequence, and he continues to show an impressive ability for bringing vibrant blood and viscera to the page – something I get the feeling he’s going to have to do a lot more of as this series progresses.

Also, in a brilliant (and massively welcome) wrinkle, teen escapee Linus Merriweather – who provided many of the comedy highlights of the first series with his dry, no-nonsense delivery – makes a return here, continuing his own story with the same two ‘buddies’ we saw him end up with at the end of the first arc.

If you enjoyed the first series then you’re likely already picking this one up, but if you somehow managed to miss Where Monsters Lie first time around, I’d highly recommend grabbing the first trade paperback and diving headlong into this one as soon as possible. Cull-De-Sac takes the twisted premise of the first series and ramps up both the craziness of the psycho killers and the laugh-out-loud gems of comedy dialogue. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4.5/5.

[PREVIEW ARTWORK – CLICK TO ENLARGE]