Welcome back to Rotten Ink! As you can see, it’s the start of October, and we are ever so much closer to Halloween 2023. What better way to kick off this month than with a From Horror Movie To Horror Comic update that will take us to the Overlook Hotel in Colorado that needs a new caretaker for the off season, as the last one well…you know. Finally we have a comic based on The Shining thanks to the company Evil Genius Artworks who did a fan made comic featuring Jack Torrance and his family, and this is one I am very much happy to do as I am sure this will make your 2023 Halloween season a little more spooky. So let’s head to the Overlook Hotel and see what is in store for us, and if the spirits have decided if we will always be here.
Let’s first take a look at the killer that makes The Shining so scary, the crazed Jack Torrance! Jack is a family man who takes a job of being a caretaker for the Overlook Hotel that closes down in the winter due to bad storms. Jack himself has had issues in his life, mostly being an alcoholic that has caused him to go into rages and become abusive to his family. Jack is highly smart and is a teacher as well as a writer and has a wife Wendy and a son named Danny who is special as he has what is called The Shining, a gift that gives him powers like telepathic abilities and premonitions. Jack Torrance is also very unstable, and when in the Overlook Hotel, the evil spirits that call it home take over and turn him into a lunatic who can and will commit murder. Jack is very mean spirited and loves to use hurtful words in order to break down his victim; he likes to get into their mind and cause them to be afraid of what he wants and plans to do to them. He has no super strength or powers and is just your normal middle aged man when it comes to his abilities and endurance. But I should also say that at times the evil spirits of the hotel will make themselves known to the victims and will add more fear to the situation at hand. Jack also loves to use sharp objects to deal death and an axe is his weapon of choice to hack away at his human target. Jack’s mental state also makes him very dangerous as he has no feelings when it comes to his mental and physical abuse of his family and gets enjoyment from their fear, that is of course once he is fully mad as a hatter. But Jack Torrance, while dangerous, is still just a normal man who is driven insane by evil spirits and mental illness, so any normal ways of killing a man would stop Jack from being shot, stabbed, burned or even freezing to death. While Jack Torrance is not the most brutal or most powerful killer we have seen on a From Horror Movie To Horror Comic Update, he still is very dangerous and can deal death with his trusty axe.
Now that we have talked about Jack Torrance, the killer of The Shining, I think it’s time we take a look at the film version that sparked this fan-made comic we will be taking a look at. So if you are ready, let’s wander around the halls of the Overlook Hotel and see what horrors await us.
The Shining (1980)
“A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.”
Stephen King is considered one of the world’s top modern horror writers, and Warner Brothers optioned the film rights to his 1977 novel The Shining. This was because director Stanley Kubrick wanted to make the film after reading the book and disliking a stack of other horror novels. The film was in development as he liked the idea of the human personality. The film was written by Kubrick as well as Diane Johnson and was based on parts of The Shining novel by King as the screenplay added elements not featured in the book, as well as even took away characters and situations. The film was mostly shot on sound studios with the sets being created in order to capture the look of an old hotel with the exterior shots being filmed by a second unit. The sets were used as Kubrick liked to work with a small crew as this allowed him to push everyone harder and in his mind, helped him get the performances and look that he wanted to see on the screen. When casting the film the main decision was who would play the character of Jack Torrance and the first pick was Jack Nicholson who would end up taking the role but other names considered included Harrison Ford, Robert De Niro and Robin Williams with Stephen King wanting Martin Sheen, Jon Voight or Michael Moriarty to play Jack. Imagine just how different the film would have been if one of those actors ended up in the role. Other cast brought on were Shelley Duvall, Scatman Crothers, Danny Lloyd, Anne Jackson and Lisa & Louise Burns. It is said that during the filming Kubrick treated actress Shelley Duvall terribly and was downright abusive to her, causing her life long trauma. The film was scored by Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind and is very iconic and is always considered one of the best scores in Horror Cinema. The film was released in theaters on May 23, 1980 and was meet with mixed reviews from both critics and fans, with Stephen King being the one who was not that fond of the film due to the changes as well as Kubrick in general being a monster of a director who was a control freak. But over time the film has built up respect and is now one of the genre’s most well loved films. The Shining was # 12 at the American Box Office for the year 1980 brining in $44,017,374.00 and beating out such other Horror Movies as Friday The 13th, Motel Hell, He Knows You’re Alone and Guyana: Cult Of The Damned. The film would later be released on all types of home media from VHS to Blu-Ray. And this was a micro write up about the production of this film, and if you want the whole scoop make sure to check out the many books and documentary films about the making of this classic fright flick.
The Shining really is one of those iconic Horror Movies that has even gone beyond just being well loved by the genre fans as many non-Horror fans have it listed as one of their favorite films. The first time I saw the movie was via VHS that my brother and I rented as we had always heard about it via the Horror books and magazines we read and even our parents mentioned the film to us. When we finally saw it, we both ended up being a fan of it with my brother even having at one point a T-Shirt of Jack’s face grinning from behind the chopped up door! And let’s also not kid ourselves, we have all at least once in our lifetime said “Here’s Johnny” and have seen a parody of this film done on film and TV like The Simpson’s who had the super funny “The Shining” segment that was part of the Treehouse Of Horror V episode or even the South Park episode “A Nightmare Of Face Time” that has Randy Marsh going crazy and possessed by the evil spirits from the Blockbuster Video he has bought…both are super hilarious and are worth tracking down and watching if you have not seen them. At one time in my life while I truly like and enjoyed The Shining I did find that it was overrated when it came to making my friends Top 10 Horror Film lists as many of the folks I knew personally who placed it on their list when we were all teenagers only did so as they thought adding a Stanley Kubrick film to their list made them look like a genre fan who had taste and understood the art of filmmaking. It was more about the director than the film itself, as they would later admit to me. I think what makes the film work so well is that the Overlook Hotel setting is very grim and isolated giving you a feeling of dread, and when you learn of the pervious murder committed by the last caretaker, it makes the outlook even grimmer. And I agree with what so many other fans have said: the Overlook Hotel is a character itself in the film and really is the hub for bad vibes and even more sinister spirits. Jack Nicholson is delightfully crazy in the role of Jack Torrance, and his performance is outstanding as we watch an unstable man get more and more crazy as the film goes on, and the look of insanity in his face is chilling. And while some folks are hard on her performance, I think Shelly Duvall did a great job as Wendy Torrance. Plus let us not forget all the wonderful evil spirits of the Hotel from the creepy Grady Twins to the rotting Old Woman In The Bath. They truly help add to the Horror of this film. Is The Shining one of the scariest movies of all time? No, but it is one of the creepiest ones that is well acted, well directed, well scored and has great spooky atmosphere.
The Shining is a film who took the source material and mixed in the vision of a filmmaker who was set in his ways, and while he and the books writer might not have seen eye to eye, what was created is a film that Horror and non-Horror fans can enjoy for centuries to come. So first I need to thank Evil Genesis Artworks and his Etsy shop for making and having this comic in stock and making this update possible. I want to also remind you all that I grade these comics on a star scale of 1 to 4 and am looking for how well the comics stay to the source material, its entertainment value and its art and story. So let’s open the door to Room 237 and hope the old naked lady doesn’t choke us!
Boulder # 1 ***
Released in 2022 Cover Price $6.79 Evil Genesis # 1 of 1
Wendy Torrance walks outside and finds her son Danny sitting by his bike on the curb, and she goes out to check on him, only to find that he is worried that the family’s car will breakdown on his father Jack who has a big job interview to be a caretaker for a hotel. Wendy does her best to calm him down when Danny next asks why his father lost his job, and Wendy tells him that while teaching Jack cut a student from the debate team for not being good, and that the student claimed that he was only let go due to the teacher not liking him. The student then slashed the tires of Jack and was caught by him, and Jack lost his cool and beat the student up and this made him lose his job teaching. Danny remembers back to when his drunk father lost his cool and broke his arm for spreading out school papers. Danny then asks his mother if she wants to live at the Hotel for the winter, and she says sure if that is what your father wants. Wendy then asks Danny if he wants to live there, he says sure as the neighborhood has no kids to play with anyway. Wendy goes inside and tears up as she drinks her tea, and Danny stays outside waiting for his dad to return home.
This comic captures the moments that take place for Wendy and Danny as the movie The Shining starts and follows Jack heading to the hotel for his job interview to become the caretaker. The story is the mother and son having a chat outside about the actions and possible move due to the father of the family who has a bad temper and a drinking issue. The main character in this issue is Wendy Torrance, who is a mother trying to keep her family together and answer the fears of her son as well as try her best to be supportive of her husband even though its clear he is unstable. Danny Torrance is a young kid who has no friends, and is dealing with being special as he has powers he does not understand and also both loves and fears his father who broke his arm at a young age. We also get a look at Jack Torrance as a teacher and see what lead to his firing and that was beating a former student up who made the mistake of slashing his old teacher’s tires. The mood of the comic is dark, and while it does not have gory, bloody moments it’s the dread that each page brings that makes the comic creepy as you know that both Danny and Wendy’s lives are about to truly change for the worse when Jack gets home and tells them he has the job. The comic is a very quick read and is well written and does capture the mood of the film very well as it does feel like a missing scene. The cover is pretty cool and has a crazy looking Jack standing behind his baby son Danny, and there is something uncomfortable about it. The interior art is done by Paul Payne and is fantastic stuff as his art captures the look of the actors and this helps add to the mood of the comic he created. This is one of the better fan comics I have read, and I really do look forward to getting more comic from Payne and reviewing them here at Rotten Ink. If you like the film The Shining, make sure to track down a copy of this limited released fan comic as it is a great read and is a very cool idea. I look forward to more fan comics from Paul Payne in the future. And with that checkout the artwork below to see the art style of Paul Payne used in this one shot comic issue.
The Shining is an iconic Horror Movie that brought the character Jack Torrance played by Jack Nicholson to the big screen off the pages of Stephen King’s novel and will forever be one of the genre’s most loved films. And I have to say that Paul Payne and his fan comic does a great job of bringing the film character versions to comics, and I hope that he continues making these fan Horror Movie inspired Horror Comics as I could think of many that I would love to see him do. For those wondering, his biggest series is “Rambo vs. The Blair Witch” and yes it’s as cool as it sounds. Well as you can see, the wind is turned chilly and that is our cue to leave the Overlook Hotel behind, as we need to get back to the Rotten Ink Arena as Kamala will be in action this Halloween season. So until next time, read a Horror Comic or three, watch a Horror Movie or two and as always support, your local Horror Host. See you next update as we take a look at one of my favorite big man wrestlers of the 1980’s!
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