What predicament has poor Peculia found herself in now? The continuing exploits of Peculia were the back up feature in Richard Sala’s “Evil Eye” comic and now are available all together in a creepy-hot collection. Sala’s work is almost exclusively black and white and frankly the examples of his full color work are much less effective than the stark images and textures he conjures from black ink and white paper.
The storylines of a typical Sala comic exhibit the same kind of snaking dream logic of troubled sleep, where one bad situation leads to another bad situation according to some kind of strange rationality. And also like a dream, the conclusions are sometimes weird yet poetically fitting. Their overall feel has been described as “Gothic humor” but the mixture of high-drama elements, like girl-pirates, mad scientists and masked figures retains a matter-of-fact presentation, never slipping into cheap camp.
A brief bibliography would include:
• Peculia and the Groon Grove Vampires
• Peculia
• Mad Night, Featuring Judy Drood, Girl Detective
• Maniac Killer Strikes Again!: Delirious, Mysterious Stories
• The Ghastly Ones & Other Fiendish Frolics: A Gallery of Gruesome Creeps
• Little Book Of Horror: Dracula (Little Book of Horror)
• Evil eye
• Delphine #2 (“Ignatz” Collection, Volume 20)
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