“Is this testing whether I’m a replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?” - Rachel, Blade Runner

By Lisa Fary

Pigeons are creepy.

My sophomore roommate came from an affluent, immaculately landscaped sub-development in South Florida where, apparently, she had never seen a pigeon. My roommate had the genius idea of putting a birdseed bell out on our balcony ledge, which drew a mini-flock of permanent pigeon squatters (and all the pigeon poop that entailed). They cooed all night, and then when the blinds broke, I saw that they were all lined up on the window ledge, staring at me, bobbing their sinister little heads.

I hated those pigeons.

My roommate’s pigeons were the first thing that came to mind when I saw the cover of Pigeons From Hell, published from Dark Horse. It was as if someone felt the same way about pigeons as I do.

That someone was Robert E. Howard, whose work I’ve never read, and given my girlish weakness for sword and sorcery fantasy, I really should be ashamed of that fact - he invented the genre that brought us Arnold Schwartzenegger as Conan and Kevin Sorbo as Kull. Howard’s Pigeons From Hell was originally published in 1938 in Weird Tales and was later adapted as an episode of Boris Karloff’s horror anthology television series, Thriller. Pigeons From Hell was adapted again in the late 1988s as a graphic novel by Scott Hampton.

The latest adaptation is by writer Joe R. Lansdale (Conan and the Songs of the Dead) and artist Nate Fox. Their adaptation introduces Claire and Janet, sisters who have inherited the wrecked Blassenville house in the Louisiana back country from their late grandmother. Claire and Janet, decedents of the slaves who once worked the plantation, arrive with a group of kids to inspect their inheritance and are almost immediately set upon by one disaster after another, each worse than the last.

With Pigeons From Hell, Lansdale and Fox capture the pace of a Louisiana summer’s day: there isn’t a lot of movement until the sun goes down. Until then it’s kind of lazily paced, as if it’s too hot and humid to do much other than sit on the porch sipping iced tea.

While the sun is up in issue one, Claire and Janet do a lot of expository talking, but when night falls, things get really creepy. Despite the oppressive heat, the Blassenville house gets icy cold, flocks of pigeons fly from the hole torn in the roof, and misshapen haints peer in through the windows, much like my sophomore roommate’s pigeons.

I really liked Pigeons From Hell #1 and plan to pick up all four issues, which I look forward to re-reading in a creepy motel in Louisiana while John and I take our cross-country road trip this summer. You know the kind of place: with a toothless clerk, a green pool, a buzzy neon “Vacancy” sign, and lots of pigeons. I can only hope the power goes out while I’m reading.

Pigeons From Hell #1, published by Dark Horse, hits comic shops on April 16th.

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Lisa Fary is a graduate of the creative writing program at Florida State University and holds an advanced degree in Special Education. Her early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl.