Criminal Macabre: Cellblock 666

The latest in the Cal MacDonald series finds the drug-addicted paranormal investigator homeless and hiding from the police, who want to stick him with a false murder rap. Then things get really unpleasant. Cal has always protected ghouls (while fighting zombies, werewolves, and vampires), but a renegade ghoul turns him in to the law so that he's sent to a corrupt hellhole of a prison, badly beaten, and thrown into solitary confinement. Fortunately, Cal's undead buddy Mo'lock brings him pills and helps him get the information he needs to reanimate the corpses of murdered prisoners that the prison warden has been burying nearby. Creator Niles was responsible for 30 Days of Night and certainly knows how to do graphic horror. Stakal's art is appropriately choppy, but that roughness combines with Madsen's dark-toned coloring to make it difficult to recognize which body part is being shredded or whether a character is alive or dead. Nevertheless, the result will entertain nonsqueamish readers. (Jan.)