“She’s a Kubrick House”
Creative Staff:
Story: David Avallone
Art: Silvia Califano
Colors: Walter Pereyra
Letterer: Taylor Esposito
What They Say:
Elvira is back, and she’s going PSYCHO!
Your strange love is rewarded, as Elvira’s space odyssey gets a new shine! As the clockworks glow orange, the Mistress of the Dark dons her full metal jacket and follows the paths of glory with her eyes wide shut, awaiting a killer’s kiss! Something something Barry Lyndon! Join writer David Avallone (Elvira Meets Vincent Price, Bettie Page: Unbound) and artist Silvia Califano (Star Trek, Judge Dredd) for a comic we call “”She’s a Kubrick… house.”
All the fun, thrills and spills under a series of amazing covers by returning artists Dave Acosta, John Royle, series artist Califano and an amazing Elvira photo cover!”
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With the most recent miniseries having wrapped up with some good fun from David Avallone as Elvira was paired with Vincent Price, And she’s moved on to some interesting things as her journey through various film-verses is happening, first with Psycho and Hitchcock fun and now with Stanley Kubrick. For this series, we get Silvia Califano on board for the artwork and this is my first time seeing their work. It’s definitely really good and fits this kind of property well and as the book progresses you get a sense that they’ve got an even better handle on Elvira and working her expressions a lot. Some properties take a bit of time to get a handle on but Califano nails it pretty quickly here and is sitting alongside the other greats that have cataloged Elvira’s shenanigans.
Elvira’s arrival in The Shining has her operating with a good sense of how to deal with these things by figuring out “when” in the story she is. The problem is that this place is like the ultimate villain’s lair in a lot of ways and there’s some good distance to cover to figure things out. The fun is in the quips and great artwork recreating it all and then when “Nick Jackelson” shows up and things get underway. Elvira’s something that doesn’t belong in all of this and she’s trying to understand the rules of it all while looking for the remote that might get her closer to home. When she interacts with the bartender we get a little clue again how she’s a disruptive force in all of this, though I was mostly just amused by the Blade Runner reference. It’s small things but clues abound in all of this.
What we get from this point on is having Nick getting agitated by Elvira, which is made worse when his wife shows up with the bat in hand. It leans into the usual kind of crazy that we’d expect, especially when Stanley shows up and offers him a bat, and the chase around while Elvira tries to keep the wife and child alive is a lot of fun. It plays to the humor and physical comedy well and the references, tweaked just right, abound beautifully. But it also reaches that point where Elvira has to find her way to the next thing and finding the remote in room 2001 is just brilliantly beautiful. The lean into that film as part of Kubrick’s run really works well as a way to transition to what’s next with Ridley Scott’s Alien film and seeing Elvira in space ought to be a real blast.
In Summary:
This series continues to delight in its execution of playing with familiar films and the director’s behind them. It’s upfront about what it wants to be but it delivers in spades with the wordplay and reworkings to make it all happen without there being any legal issues behind it. Which is what makes it so much fun because it’s handling it all so masterfully while still making sure that Elvira is at the forefront and having a terrifying blast in the midst of it all. It’s got a solid script with great lines and some fantastic artwork that knows how to adapt what’s come before but giving it its own playful twist at times, especially in the character designs. The first two issues are fun and while there is a bigger story unfolding here, I could just go on with this style and approach for quite some time yet to come.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 15+
Released By: Dynamite Entertainment
Release Date: June 22nd, 2022
MSRP: $3.99
