This is the third go-round for Seeley's adventure/horror/humor piece Hack/Slash, and this time out, he's pitting his slasher-hunting leads against a slasher at a comic book convention. Sounds like a great mix at first blush, and allows Seeley to lob a few barbs at the always entertaining target of the comics industry, but a sort of "softball" approach to that aspect of the book combined with a somewhat uninteresting villain and surprisingly vanilla interaction between Cassie and Vlad makes this the weakest Hack/Slash so far. Fortunately, while it didn't click with me the way the first two did, there are still some fun moments to be had here, especially in seeing the innocence of Vlad in the comic book world and the humorously bizarre use of real comic book celebrities in pretty important roles in the book. A fun read if you've never read Hack/Slash before, a little disappointing when compared to the previous outings.
There's sort of a weird lack of commitment on Seeley's part in terms of how he portrays the comics industry here. He uses some real people, including Robert Kirkman, Steve Niles and Skottie Young, but then sets the whole thing at "Whizzer" World and has the cops running into an extra from "Immorality Ville." It's a minor discrepancy, but it highlights a larger problem, that Seeley doesn't really use the backdrop to its fullest extent. Comic Book Carnage presents a sort of bland, uninteresting take on the comic convention, and while it's sort of laudable that Seeley skipped the easy jokes at geek expense like making fun of all the costumes or presenting the attendees as maladjusted losers, there's kind of a lack of bite in any of the comics sequences, except for a half-hearted and uncertain running story about turning classic characters into dark and gritty versions of themselves.
Which is not to say that Seeley doesn't have some fun in taking his characters to the comic book convention. I got a big kick out of the brief friendship between Robert Kirkman (who, with this and his PVP appearance, is becoming as ubiquitous in the panels as he is in the credits) and Vlad, for instance. In fact, Vlad sort of gets the best moments in this issue, with his totally in-character (and adorable) love of a kids' comic book character, his reflection on losing people in the line of work he's found himself in and a pretty cool little badass moment facing off with the bad guy at the end. I can't help but feel that Seeley could have deepened all of these moments, especially Vlad's friendship with Kirkman, which developed and disappeared all too quickly to make as much impact as it should have, but the moments are there and they're good.
One of the reasons that I feel these moments could have been expanded upon, however, is that sometimes Seeley seems to be wasting some page space. The Stepford Whizzer employees bit is kind of a waste of page space, to such an extent that I was sure that they were being set up as being in on the whole thing somehow. Carrie's attempted "seduction" of Skottie Young also sort of comes out of left field, and feels like a weird moment without much of a purpose beyond showing Skottie's loyalty to his girlfriend, which doesn't really have any impact on the story.
If Comic Book Carnage does stand out to me in any particular way, it's actually in the many times that it made me say "That's just wrong!" I mean that in a good way, though. Killing off actual comic book celebrities in the pages of the comic is a break with the tradition of going with parody fake names, and has a sort of odd, funny disconnect when you think about "Holy crap, the slasher just killed Steve Niles!" Then there's the villain of the piece, who is sort of an obvious metaphor, but who has a truly bizarre and disturbing visual courtesy of Manfredi, and the "weapon" that Vlad chooses to take down the villain is a little off the beaten path as well. Hack/Slash: Comic Book Carnage is definitely strange, and has some good moments, but it doesn't have quite the same punch as the previous two installments. 6/10
