Comic books used to be stand alone short stories rather than sprawling epics that explode over huge amounts of books per month, and sometimes, it feels good to shed the trappings of big time funnybooks and get some smaller tales that nevertheless manage to pack a punch. That’s what we get with Dirk Manning’s Love Stories (To Die For) #1.
This issue contains two stories. The first features solid art from Rich Bonk (perhaps the greatest name of all time) and is about a warrior named Erik Skullsplitter back in 946 A.D. who is entreated to fight to protect German monks from the creatures of the night who seek to destroy them. However, near the end of the gruesome battle, he discovers that the only reason this nasty army of vampire creeps are attacking the monks is because they stole a child from them, which they are attempting to use to figure out ways to kill the rest of them. Erik, being a man of honor, turns on the monks and joins the side of the creatures.
The second story is the far superior one, taking place in an isolated space station in the future and featuring some strong and powerful artwork from Owen Gieni. Allison and Eric, a couple planning an escape from the station overrun by extremely toothy techno-beasts, learn to their shock and despair that Allison’s husband Frank – a burly Cable-esque future warrior who looks like an unstoppable force of tech-nature – is alive and fighting his way through the station to get to the last escape pod, completely oblivious that Allison was planning on taking off with her secret lover Eric instead while rigging the station to explode. We follow Frank’s bloody, messy fight through the station, with the help of a straggler named Matt he found along the way – a man who knows he’s doomed but fights to the last anyway. Once Frank manages to reach the escape pod, though, things do not unfold as you might expect. Everyone involved has love to die for.
Manning has made his hay in the short story realm, with books like Nightmare World made up entirely of 8-page stories, each with different artists and of vastly different tones, but given the fact that he had through-lines connecting all of those stories to a greater whole, he proved that you don’t have to sacrifice the long arc to keep with self-contained short stories. He has an impressively economical way of getting into your gut and finding buttons to press to get your attention and twist your feelings around. Love Stories (To Die For) is the perfect vehicle for his brand of writing. I’m very much looking forward to more of it.
