Back in 2024, I read and reviewed the first four of the seven volumes of 'Boneyard', because they were all I had on the shelf. Technically, I'm not reading volume five now, as I still don't have it, but I do have everything in it, as it collected issues sixteen to twenty and I now have all those to hand. I must highlight that that counts five issues, whereas each of the previous volumes only collected four, even Volume Three, as that collated issues nine to eleven, along with the swimsuit issue, so explaining why that felt anomalous. However, shrug. It's more bang for the buck.

If you can remember back two years and change, Volume Four was half zombie plague and half an emotional back story for Nessie, the sexy Creature from the Black Lagoon, as told to Abbey, cute but tough vampire chick, as the former succumbs to a zombie bite. That's a pretty big cliffhanger to leave the series on for two years, but not so much from fifteen to sixteen. Anyway, I'm back to dive back in, with Abbey and the unconscious Nessie in a pet store and most of the rest of the cast barricaded from the zombies in Robin's book store.

Certainly, Richard Moore felt comfortable enough at this point to let a few pages run completely without dialogue, the panels ably moving the story along without any words being needed. Then again, huge tentacles sprawling everywhere tend to do that. They belong to a giant dimensional traveller called K'taal Haz'aroth. We know that because Abbey knows him, if we can ever assume gender for a creature like this. He's just got himself lost between dimensions and Abbey serves as all the grounding he needs to end this whole story arc.

However, in a way it sets up the next one because it highlights once again just how important the diminutive vampire girl is in the grand scheme of things. She was the focal point from the outset of the many monsters living, for want of a better term, in the cemetery in Raven's Hollow, not to forget a constant potential partner for nominal lead Michael Paris, but it seems to me that she's only grown in importance ever since. Moore certainly seems to think so, as I think he emphasises her curves just a little more with each issue.

And he elevates not just her talents, which are already pretty well established at this point, but a broader acknowledgement of them. In issue seventeen, we learn that there's a serial killer on the loose and a "secret government agency charged with policing matters of a paranormal nature" is on the hunt. Think Men in Black, but a lot more inept than the title characters in the movie series of that name. Fortunately, they know who Abbigail Abrahms is and they want her to join the case, going undercover as a counselor-in-training at Camp Waterlake. She isn't an official agent but it's pretty obvious that she's a lot more capable than any of the official agents.

We're not sure if Jack Pumpkinhead is the serial killer, but he certainly seems to be getting into a lot of places and causing trouble in all of them. He visits a lot of regular characters to send them into strange dreams. Nessie goes skinny dipping with Paris before he sells her back into slavery at the carnival we learned about in the previous volume. Brutus dreams about Nessie rejecting him for a creature like her, with just as much cruelty in how that plays out. Hildy forgets all her spells. Ralph is cornered by the authorities for murder. Glump's ridiculed by all the other demons.

Clearly Jack is an arbiter of nightmares and his character design plays into that wonderfully. He's never given voice, but appears as a dashing rake-thin creature in a jaunty black tuxedo and a huge top hat. He's mostly head, that head of course being a pumpkin, but the face carved on it is stylish in the extreme. That's a flamboyant grin and the slashes for eyes see everything. Moore conjures a lot of knowing out of those minimal features. It's less emotion, which is reserved for characters with more humanoid features, but it's far from nothing and it's very effective indeed.

Of course, much of issue twenty is devoted to the big boss battle and a set of revelations, but the book actually ends with a subtle good deed that cleverly takes care of a dangling plot strand even as it deepens the core relationship of the series, between Paris and Abbey. There are only a pair of volumes left for that to actually get somewhere, but it's clearly ready to hit whenever Moore feels the time is right. I can't see him pulling the rug out from under this much promise. I guess I'll find out next month if it happens in Volume Six or whether it's going to wait all the way to Volume Seven and the end of the series. ~~ Hal C F Astell

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