To Hell You Ride #1

American folklore gone to the dark side! Colorado Mountains. Winter 1880. What started out as one white man’s carelessness & greed has turned into a savage malediction. Miners have desecrated an ancient Indian burial ground, which has propelled 4 Indian warriors to lay a terrible curse upon the area. Colorado Mountains. Present Day. Seven “Two-Dogs” George lives a meaningless life at the bottom of a bottle of booze, the ways of his ancestors doesn’t mean much to this young aboriginal. His life is about to change dramatically, as one evening, out collecting wood for his fireplace, a sign in a form of a black arrow splits the very tree he was cutting. Recognizing it as a legend of his ancestors, Two-Dogs grabs the arrow and heads into town like a bat out of hell. The ancient curse, deadly as it was, was always incomplete, but history always manages to repeat itself.

The Team

Written by Lance Henriksen (Not Bad For a Human) & Joseph Maddrey. Illustrated by Tom Mandrake. Cover by Tom Mandrake (Outsiders : The Hunt, Creeps) & Cris Peter. Published by Dark Horse Comics. #1 (of 5).

The Pros & Cons

This series is co-written by Lance Henriksen, for those who don’t know, Henriksen is a wonderful character actor who’s been in a copious amount of films. He played a hard as nails biker gang leader in Stone Cold, a friendly android named Bishop in Aliens and a medium/law enforcement consultant in the Fox TV show Millennium. Like Millennium, this series deals with myths, curses & prophecies and takes the old “Indian burial ground” idea and stomps it in the balls. The story goes from 1880 to the present day to 1939 and jumps back to the present day.

Tom Mandrake does the illustrations and man can this guy do creepy. No one can draw malicious spirits flowing like an evil wind, tortured souls & boney ghouls quite like Mandrake. His drawings on The Spectre in the 90’s were some of the best work he’s ever done. The Spectre series was a favourite of mine and extremely underrated, DC needs to reprint them as TPBs or an omnibus or something. Would have been nice to have seen this Indian curse at its full potential, but something tells me we’ll see it soon enough. The cover with its trippy colours and chilling feeling is pure Tom Mandrake all the way. I can’t say enough good things about this artist, except horror writers like Joe Hill & Scott Snyder need to pay attention more and give this man a well deserved ongoing series.

The Outcome

Only the first issue, but it got its rusty hooks in me and it will not let go. Henriksen, Maddrey & Mandrake have the potential for a truly terrifying tale and they’re off to a good start.