ACW #624 – Deadman

Action Comics Weekly #624 (Deadman)
“Wildwood”
Writer – Mike Baron
Pencils – Vince Giarrano
Letters – Albert DeGuzman
Colors – Daniel Vozzo
Inks – Tony DeZuniga
Editor – Barbara Kesel

Ya feel that?


That… I dunno, chill… in the air?  It’s ominous, isn’t it?  Hairs are standing up on the back of my neck… got goosebumps atop goosebumps… it can only mean one thing.


Today… is our final… Canary-Free day.


Let’s make the most of it!


—

Picking up where we left off last week, Deadman-as-whatshisface and Madame Waxahachie have arrived at the Peckshaw Ancestral Estate for to look for the final resting place of those zombie-queen twins.  Their grave-site is evidently a very closely-kept secret.  They decide to enter and look around… while pretending to be zombies themselves in order to avoid detection.  I wonder how that’s going to work out?  Before long, they find themselves in a grand ballroom… where ghostly pairs are cutting a rug.  Ya see, it’s the annual Peckshaw Harvest Ball!

They are soon confronted by the ghost of Tyson Peckshaw… the father of those dastardly twins!  She introduces herself as Mabel Waxahachie, but Ty knows that mustn’t be true… far as he knows, Mabel’s only a “little girl of twelve”.  He orders the interlopers be removed forcibly from the proceedings… which Deadman and the Madame kind of laugh off.  After all, what can a ghost ever do to them?  Well, it looks like he somehow can toss ’em on out on their ears!

Deadman decides he ain’t gonna take this laying down, and so, he abandons his groundskeeper-bod and rushes back through the ballroom door… only to find: nothing!  It’s as though there wasn’t a soiree going on like two-seconds ago!  The Twins look on, and laugh at his dumbfoundedness.

The Madame ain’t much keen on waiting, and so she bursts into the room not a moment later.  The twins mock her for being both old and uppity.  She fires back by calling their father a drunk and a whoremonger.  Man, schoolyard taunts in the south were pretty weird!

Just then, Papa Tyson shows up to see what’s going on.  Mabel clues him in on all of the girls’ misdeeds over the past little while.  Oh yeah, she also informs him that he is, in fact, dead.  He doesn’t take the news all that well… shouting at the twins, and demanding they cut the crap.

And so, they send Pops back to the afterlife… or wherever.  Thing is, it’s too late to truly stop everything they’d put into motion.  Ya see, the army of the dead… they’re still heading this-a-way!

—

A rather fun chapter!  I wasn’t expecting this one to veer into comedy… but, I’m pretty glad it did!  I feel like up to this point, it was a little too “straight”.


I like that the twins are being depicted more as “mischievous” than evil.  I mean, they are kids, after all… stands to reason that they wouldn’t be able to grasp the seriousness of the situation they’ve put into motion.


Madame Waxahachie is really growing on me… she’s a lot of fun.  I dig that there (apparently) was a little history between she and the Peckshaws.  Really looking forward to seeing how this plays out!


Tomorrow: She’s ba-ack…