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modernzorker's review
2.0
Primal: From the Cradle to the Grave is just the sort of madness you would expect from the mind of Clive Barker. The story follows Professor Ferrell, an anthropologist at McLauren University whose request to use human remains held at the university museum for his research has been denied. Not because the university has a problem with his studies, but rather because the Department of Paleontology cam generate more funding through their use of the ancient skeletons while Ferrell's work merely generates academic interest. Since only one of those can be used to pay the bills . . . .
But Ferrell feels his research is too important to be brushed off so easily, so he contacts DARPA, offering to cook them up a brand new weapon in exchange for funding. The Department of Defense being what it is, there's a general all too happy to bring Ferrell in and give him the money and subjects he needs to uncover everything he wants to know about fear. True fear. The sort of primal fear human beings have forgotten over the millennia.
A fear brought by The Riven.
* * * * *
This is an awesome collaboration between writers Clive Barker, Daniel G. Chichester (who wrote Marvel's Daredevil from 1991 to 1995), and Erik Saltzgaber (a long-time collaborator of Barker's, who did writing work on the comic book incarnations of Weaveworld and Hellraiser), and artist John Van Fleet (perhaps best known for the artwork he produced for White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop RPG). Like much of Barker's fiction, it deals with an ordinary person obsessively digging up secrets that were buried for a good reason, and paying a price for that pursuit of knowledge and power.
There's only one problem...the story's incomplete. This is just part one.
Part two was printed in individual comic issues, just titled Primal #1 and 2, put out by Dark Horse Comics in 1992. They feature the same writing team but John Van Fleet was replaced by Lionel Talaro. I never envy an artist being brought in to do different art for the same book, because invariably that artist will be compared to the original and found wanting. Talaro's watercolors aren't a match for Van Fleet's surreal depictions of a reality that felt just a degree or two off from normal, but they're still fine works. They weren't collected into a TPB though, so you have to hunt them down on their own.
Unfortunately, they don't bring any resolution to the story. Primal #2 just stops, having introduced a whole host of new questions without tying up any of the loose ends opened in From the Cradle to the Grave.
There never was any part 3 to follow, and thus no answers as to the fate of numerous main characters now that the ruinous Riven has been unleashed upon the world. That's a shame. It's not like Barker to leave things unfinished like that in his short stories, which leads me to wonder if perhaps this was the germ of an idea which Barker had, then gave to Chickhester and Saltzgaber to expand upon and this was all the title's sales would support.
The premises of the book are well worth exploring. It's just a shame everyone involved either stopped caring or never got the chance to finish. This would have made a great entry in another Books of Blood -style novella compilation. A pity we'll never find out what happens next.
But Ferrell feels his research is too important to be brushed off so easily, so he contacts DARPA, offering to cook them up a brand new weapon in exchange for funding. The Department of Defense being what it is, there's a general all too happy to bring Ferrell in and give him the money and subjects he needs to uncover everything he wants to know about fear. True fear. The sort of primal fear human beings have forgotten over the millennia.
A fear brought by The Riven.
* * * * *
This is an awesome collaboration between writers Clive Barker, Daniel G. Chichester (who wrote Marvel's Daredevil from 1991 to 1995), and Erik Saltzgaber (a long-time collaborator of Barker's, who did writing work on the comic book incarnations of Weaveworld and Hellraiser), and artist John Van Fleet (perhaps best known for the artwork he produced for White Wolf's Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop RPG). Like much of Barker's fiction, it deals with an ordinary person obsessively digging up secrets that were buried for a good reason, and paying a price for that pursuit of knowledge and power.
There's only one problem...the story's incomplete. This is just part one.
Part two was printed in individual comic issues, just titled Primal #1 and 2, put out by Dark Horse Comics in 1992. They feature the same writing team but John Van Fleet was replaced by Lionel Talaro. I never envy an artist being brought in to do different art for the same book, because invariably that artist will be compared to the original and found wanting. Talaro's watercolors aren't a match for Van Fleet's surreal depictions of a reality that felt just a degree or two off from normal, but they're still fine works. They weren't collected into a TPB though, so you have to hunt them down on their own.
Unfortunately, they don't bring any resolution to the story. Primal #2 just stops, having introduced a whole host of new questions without tying up any of the loose ends opened in From the Cradle to the Grave.
There never was any part 3 to follow, and thus no answers as to the fate of numerous main characters now that the ruinous Riven has been unleashed upon the world. That's a shame. It's not like Barker to leave things unfinished like that in his short stories, which leads me to wonder if perhaps this was the germ of an idea which Barker had, then gave to Chickhester and Saltzgaber to expand upon and this was all the title's sales would support.
The premises of the book are well worth exploring. It's just a shame everyone involved either stopped caring or never got the chance to finish. This would have made a great entry in another Books of Blood -style novella compilation. A pity we'll never find out what happens next.
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