Freak Show has all the feel of being a lost comic from the '70s, dug up and reprinted in modern times. From Jones's rambling introduction, I gather that this is exactly what it is, an old story of freaks and the foibles of man that reads like something out of the EC catalog. Like those EC Comics of old, it's a little musty and overwritten, but charming when viewed through the lens of that era. Jones's lead story is a tad on the sensationalistic side, uncomfortable to read as it drops the reader into several piles of human misery, but it's also fairly gripping, and shows none of the meandering style of Jones's modern work. The star of this story, though, is the amazing artwork of Bernie Wrightson, painting a grotesquely vivid portrait of these freaks and of the horrors that the human members of the cast inflict upon them.
Freak Show is notable if only for seeing Wrightson tackle some of the material he's best suited for, making me wonder "Where's our Art of Bernie Wrightson book?" The stories in this volume allow him to tackle freaks, creepy forests, barbarians and a gothic era vampire tale, and he delivers all of these things with a mixture of photorealism and exaggeration that shows why he has become a legend in the realm of horror illustration. The designs for the freaks of "Valker's Wretches," from the frog-faced Deja to the freakish-legged Robin, are compellng, strange and tragic, and Wrightson makes sure to give the human members of this band an air of mystery as well with their cowled look and vaguely sinister air.
The lead story, the one that gives the book its name, is easily the strongest story in the volume, an EC-style story that revolves around human weakness and a twist ending. Jones doesn't flinch when it comes to the central tragedy that Valker suffers (and causes), nor does he cheap out in terms of the vicious revenge that befalls him. Freak Show is an uncomfortably real look at how people are affected by jealousy, passion and rage, and Jones does a good job of getting us to invest in these characters so that the pains that they suffer are something the audience can sympathize with. Sure, it's all a little over the top, and Valker in particular crosses the border from real crazy into cartoon crazy, but this lurid sensibility is perfectly fitting for the type of tale that Jones and Wrightson are telling.
However, while it's an entertaining tale, it's also something of a short one, and the other two stories in the book pretty much read as filler. "Out on a Limb" features a story of persecution and anger that, even at six pages, feels padded and overlong. "The Task" is full of the purple prose of the barbarian subgenre, true to the style of the story but comparing poorly to the modern-day Conan or even to Roy Thomas's more energetic Marvel Conans, and "Nosferatu" is a densely-packed two-page affair that doesn't really go anywhere. Not one of them would be worth a purchase on their own, and neither are they strong enough to stand alongside the main story, so they basically wind up artificially inflating the page count and price point.
I generally don't consider price in my reviews, but there are times when it becomes such a sticking point that it influences the decision one way or the other. Freak Show is a treasure trove of Wrightson artwork, and well worth its $15 price tag for those who would like a little more of that work in their collection, although I'd happily pay $30 for a longer, more focused artbook instead of the uneven stories that make up this volume. Freak Show is a gorgeous hardcover production, but I can't help thinking that $10 for the 48-page main story instead of $15 for 16 more pages of basically unrelated weaker material would have been a better deal. 6/10
