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Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark #9 (Dynamite Entertainment) Comic Review
Released by: Dynamite Entertainment
Released on: September 18th, 2019.
Written by: David Avallone
Illustrated by: Dave Acosta
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Somewhere east of Anaheim, an arcane society of those who would practice the black arts look to amass the Eldritch Power that they need to…. do something. We don't find out because their Satanic ceremony is interrupted when a flying broomstick taps at their window. They realize this besom (don't be ashamed, I had to look it up too) holds great power and they figure if they use it as a diving rod, it'll take them to the source of said power.
Elsewhere, Elvira is dishing it to Dracula on the set of their latest film together. After making some beautifully barbed quips about the cinematic legacy of The X-Men, she talks her director, Floyd (his last name may or may not be Kaufman), into letting her split the set. It's been a long day and she needs to get her beauty sleep. She deals with the traffic she knew she'd have to deal with and then makes it home to her faithful dog, Gonk, and, in a Jim Starlin-esque page (hey, they admit as much in the dialogue), she tells her pooch about her adventures through time and space with Vlad, Faust, Glenn and the rest (and if you don't know what that means, read the first eight issues of this delightfully zany series to get caught up).
Elvira takes a bath - partially for the wowza factor and partially to get her nice and vulnerable for what's about to happen - unaware that the besom is leading the cult from the opening right to her home. She grabs a baseball bat to defend herself with but she doesn't count on a dart gun and soon enough she's been knocked out. She wakes up, bound to a chair Bettie Page style (no coincidence there) and is told by the three male witches (warlocks?) that she's the source of the Luciferian energy they seek - a side effect of her recent trip through Hell, no doubt -
A good jumping on point for new readers, this one has it all - Dario Argento gets name dropped, the ever loving blue eyed Thing gets more than a few shout outs, there's a Vincent Price reference, renn faire jokes, phallic objects, sexual innuendo, a lovely tribute to personal favorite John Carradine and witches in a station wagon - what more could you hope for? As is now the norm for this series, David Avallone's writing is quick, witty, clever and funny - there are a lot of gags in here, some more self-referential than others but most of them genuinely top notch. The story manages to tie into the continuity established in the earlier issues while also clearly letting our titular (I used that word on purpose) heroine explore new ground. The cliffhanger ending sets up what we can assume are big things to come and the quirky coven of goofball witches brought into the Elviraverse add plenty of genuine comic relief.
Artist Dave Acosta, with some help from colorist Walter Pereyra, continues to do a great job of bringing Avallone's inspired lunacy to life. There are some impressive panel layouts here - we won't spoilt the last third or so of the book but in these pages we get to see Elvira take flight and when that happens, Acosta brings a nice sense of movement to the panels that helps this sequence really work. Additionally, as mentioned in probably every other piece I've written about this series, he does an excellent job of capturing the lovely Cassandra Peterson's likeness -a key detail that is super important to getting the look of this comic right. The Jim Stalin tribute page is also fantastic. Oh, and he draws mohawked dogs really well too!
The last storyline was fantastic, one of the most enjoyable reads of the year. This new installment will, understandably, need room to stretch its wings but it is off to a strong start, ensuring that we'll be back for issue #10 next month.
And that cover from Kevin Eastman is seriously cool.