I believe there are seven volumes to Richard Moore's 'Boneyard' series and I have the first four of them on my shelf, so it's about time I dived into book one. It is very much a traditional book one in many ways, introducing us to the concept of the series, its primary setting and its lead characters, while wrapping up a coherent story in the process, but clearly setting us up for the next book that will follow. This came out in 2002, with each further volume following annually until book six, with the final volume wrapping up the series in 2010. Why that took so long, I have no idea, but they do collect twenty-eight issues of comic books, so maybe that plays a part.

The lead character is Michael Paris, who starts the book in someone else's vehicle having begged a ride to Raven's Hollow after his own car broke down on the way. He's never visited before, but he has inherited some property from his grandfather and he's only planning to go there now in order to sign the paperwork to sell it to the local council. He has no intention of keeping it, which is odd, given that he doesn't even know what it is. That sort of inheritance is how gothic novels begin and who wouldn't want a vast old mansion in the middle of nowhere?

That isn't what he gets, of course, because this series is called 'Boneyard' and it's pretty accurate. His grandfather left him the town cemetery, hardly a vast old mansion in the middle of nowhere. However, he's held up from selling it, because he arrives—on foot, because his ride refuses to set tyre inside the place—to find the townsfolk of Raven's Hollow marching through town with police department-provided torches so they can destroy the same cemetery he was aiming to sell them. What's more, they're marching behind the mayor and the sheriff, so it's a pretty unanimous deal.

Well, not quite. Behind the gates of the cemetery are the denizens of the cemetery, the evil that the townsfolk want to destroy, and they're the wildest bunch of characters a new protagonist can hope to meet. Unlike the mob, who appear both calm and unhinged, which is suspicious in itself, it has to be said that this myriad of monsters seem to be a lot more down to earth. Clearly, there's a story here and Paris—he goes by his surname, for reasons we aren't yet let in on—does have the common decency to hear both sides out.

Of course, we're meant to be on the side of the monsters and it doesn't take long for us to get on board with that. After all, we hardly meet the regular folk at their best and when they shower as many gifts as they can manage onto Paris back in town, it's clearly meant to be a bribe. They have no particular wish to help him, so it's all in aid of their goal, which seems extremely destructive. I don't need to have an affinity for the misfits of society to see that. There's no overt preachiness here and writer/artist Richard Moore doesn't appear to phrase this as a metaphor, but it's easy to see it as one, with the townsfolk as those who preserve the status quo and the monsters as those who are, to borrow a phrase, the strange and unusual.

It was interesting to me that Moore hit us with all these monsters in a single shot very early on in the book. They're all there, lined up on a landscape shot on the ninth page, behind the iron gates of the cemetery that make it seem a little like an identity parade at the local police station. Most obvious among them, and a sort of de facto leader is a young—well, she looks it, even if she's very old indeed—vampire by the name of Abbey, short for Abigail. They clearly share some charisma in the early scenes, so I fully expect this relationship to grow, but it's entirely platonic here.

The rest are a real set of characters. There's Sid the cigar smoking skeleton; Ralph the werewolf, who never leaves wolf form and never takes off his shades; Mr. Vincent, the stereotypical gloomy undertaker, with his practice corpse; Edgar, inevitably a sentient raven; Nightcrawler, some sort of underground dweller who manages to tunnel effortlessly in three pairs of glasses; Hildy the much-obscured witch, who we meet trying to cook Glomp, a whiny demon who was using her cauldron as a hot tub; and Nessie, a buxom female Creature from the Black Lagoon, who's all over Paris like a rash in front of her husband, the gigantic Brutus. Oh, and guarding the cemetery gates are a pair of gargoyles named Leon and Boris.

That's just a quick runthrough, but they're all worthy characters in their own right who only hint a little at their potential in this opening volume. The one we spend most time with is Abbey, a vamp who doesn't bite—as she tells Paris—but does save his life when someone, very likely the mayor, tries to run them both down with his speeding car. I liked Abbey a lot but I wanted to spend more time with the others too. I don't know if Moore was inspired by Clive Barker's Cabal, later filmed as Nightbreed, but he certainly built this series with exactly the same mindset, just replacing the horror with an abundant layer of humour.

Frankly, whether this works or not relies rather heavily on that humour. The art is tasty and drawn with plenty of detail but it's deliberately done with minimal lines, so it's not likely to be the draw for potential readers or the reason to stay for those who read this book. The story is beginning at this point, so we're not entirely hooked on what's going on yet. There is enough here to keep me for sure, so I'll dive into the following books that I have. What works most for me is that sense of humour, because it's right up my alley. If it isn't up yours, then you're not as likely to follow up by reading the rest.

To give one example, Paris wakes up in the Raven's Hollow Inn on his first night to find Abbey hung upside down outside his window, tapping on it to get his attention. He's a little shocked, which he has every reason to be, however cute she might look, and surreptitiously feels in a drawer behind him for a Gideon Bible to protect himself. Thinking he's found it, he waves it at her only to realise that it's the Yellow Pages instead. I like that as much as I like the fact that even the real deal isn't going to have any effect either.

All in all, this isn't a long or complex read, but it's a fun little escape from our world into one that looks rather like it but clearly isn't and that's never a bad thing. Bring on book two! ~~ Hal C F Astell

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