Clive Barker. We all know the name. Ever since his Books of Blood were unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, he has become synonymous with the horror.
For years, Clive teased that he has been working the final send off to his most famous creation, the Cenobite Pinhead, and this May The Scarlet Gospels pitted the Pope of Hell against another Barker creation, the world weary occult detective Harry D’Amour.
By the 1980s, as the horror genre began to stir back to life in American popular culture, horror comics stood poised to take advantage of this revival. The two traditional powerhouses, Marvel and DC, had already begun releasing comics without the Comics Code Seal of Approval for the first time in years.
Alan Moore was ending his revolutionary run on Swamp Thing (including a shout-out to The Books of Blood in issue 45), and EC had just re-released its original run of horror and sci-fi titles from the 1940s.
It was Marvel that first saw the potential for Barker’s unique blend of deviance, brutality, and his unflinching depiction of gore and monstrosity to translate to the world of comic books. After the popularity of the Hellraiser movie and its sequel, Hellbound, Marvel began publishing the Hellraiser comic through its “mature” imprint, Epic.
Envisioned as an anthology book in the vein of Tales From the Crypt, but with a thicker cover and sporting painted covers to stand out from the typical newsstand pulp, Clive’s first foray into comics explored the Hellraiser mythos, introducing new Cenobites and expanding the possibilities of different and unique puzzles opening the gateway to Hell.
Early issues depict a boxer unlocking the door through an intricate shadowboxing routine, an expat writer whose poetry summons forth the Cenobites, and a blind composer who solves a musical puzzle by finding the right notes on a bit of sheet music. The twenty-issue series (along with numerous specials and annuals) eventually shied away from the anthology format, instead focusing on a cast of reoccurring characters and interconnected stories. This early Hellraiser series was remarkable for featuring the early work of such comic book luminaries as Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, John Bolton, and Bernie Wrightson.
Just as The Books of Blood signaled a radical shift in horror fiction, these early Hellraiser comics strove to match this new, post-modern horror sensibility. Gone were the ironic, morality tales of the original EC classics, where evil-doers were punished in ever more gruesome ways. In the universe of Hellraiser, the demons were just as likely to be the heroes as the mortals they preyed upon, and often the only lesson learned was that the world was a dangerous, carnivorous place where innocence offered no protection.
The Epic line also released Nightbreed, an extension of the novella Cabal, and its subsequent movie adaptation. Nightbreed ran for 25 issues before it was canceled, including Jihad, a two-part crossover with the Hellraiser franchise, depicting the Cenobites as agents of order against their chaotic nemeses, the Nightbreed. Once again, monsters are depicted as hunted outcasts rather than inhuman predators.
The collaboration between Clive and Marvel continued in 1993 with the launch of Razorline, a more traditional line of comics with characters wholly created by Barker himself. The Razorline imprint consisted of an initial offering of four interrelated titles that were wholly separate from the continuing Marvel universe, featuring protagonists that blurred the lines between good and evil. Ectokid centered on 14-year old, Dexter Mungo, who has access to another sphere of reality; Hyperkind, Clive’s take on the traditional super-hero team; Hokum and Hex, the story of a stand-up comedian charged with defending earth from an ancient and vengeful god; and Saint Sinner, depicting the adventures of Philip Fetter who is possessed by both angel and demon. Each of the Razorline titles only lasted nine issues before being canceled, victims of Marvel’s great purge of titles in the mid-nineties.
The rest of the 90s and into the 00s saw some of Barker’s most famous work adapted for comics, including a three issue series based on The Thief of Always from publisher IDW, as well as adaptations of Rawhead Rex and The Yattering and Jack, but it would be another two decades before Clive turned his attention back to creating an original world for the comic book medium, and once again he would be pushing boundaries. In 2009 Boom! Studios announced that it would not only be publishing a reboot of the Hellraiser and Nightbreed comics, but also a new title penned by Clive and writer Mike Miller.
Next Testament seeks nothing less ambitious than to tell the tale of god-come-to-earth. As always with a Clive Barker work, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. His depiction of god is not as a paternal father figure, but rather a physical manifestation of the Old Testament god in all of his fickle, vain, wrathful, and psychopathic glory. The new Hellraiser title is also penned by Clive, ignoring the storyline of the movies after Hellbound. This new Hellraiser title continues the story of Kirsty Cotton in her struggle against the Cenobites.
