Halloween Countdown: October 13 – a scream in the trees

Pop Quiz Time: There is a criminal on the lam who has been taken in by a gnarled old crone who lives by herself in a decrepit shack by the swamp. How do you think the criminal's course of action in the following panel will turn out?


The correct answer is, of course: "Horribly." I would also accept "He will accidentally set the shack on fire, not realizing that the crone has made a voodoo doll in his likeness and will thus become a human candle when the fetish goes up in flames."


Those of you who failed to answer correctly, please report to my introductory seminar in horror comicbook clichés. The rest of you may take a short break and enjoy today's musical selection.

Public Image Limited - Under the House (from The Flowers of Romance, 1981) - I remember The Flowers of Romance having a terrible reptuation among my peers back in the early 90's, who universally agreed it was to be avoided at all costs. (The opinion must have been fairly widespread, too, as a good two-thirds of the PIL section in any of the used vinyl stores I frequented consisted of 99-cent copies of the LP.)

Truth be told, I think it got a bum rap; it's not something I could listen to every day, but John Lydon's foray into the "tribal" sound (a brief craze that left a mark on a wide variety of acts, from anarchopunk to postpunk to new wave to gothic rock) is pretty interesting nonetheless. While I wouldn't go far as to label it with the "gothic" tag, the macabre lyrics and sonic atmosphere of "Under the House" capture the essence of the genre better than the work of many bands who actively claimed the label.