Taboo in Four Colors

I'm really beginning to believe that Tim McGregor is both one of Canadian horror's best kept secrets, and that he's completely incapable of writing anything less that stunning, insightful, wonderful work.

The set-up for this is brilliant, with the team of Salazar and Carson writing and illustrating EC-style horror stories for a struggling comic book company, but when the mysterious Salazar is suddenly behind with the scripts, Carson goes to meet him for the first time, to see what's wrong...

...and what follows is what an EC-style horror story would look like if it was written by a master author instead of a team that had to bang out the story in a couple of weeks. It holds all the salacious details—death and gore and sex and nefarious show more secrets and dangerous lovers—that the comics were famous for, but McGregor plays it straight, taking the time to embue his two leads with humanity and intrigue.

Along the way, we get the bonuses of a fair amount of factual comic book history, and some summaries of the stories Salazar and Carson work on, that are perfect pastiches of the horror comics of the early Seventies.

This book grabbed me and kept me hooked right to the final page...as every damn McGregor book has.

He's absolutely fantastic, and he should be read by every horror fan.

One final bonus...and the resemblance is far too close to be accidental, so I'm going to say it was both intentional and brilliant to cast Tim McGregor as the unfortunate body on the cover of this book.

Well done. show less