By STEPHEN ROMANO, DEREK ROOK (Eibon press; 2019)

I’ve been interested in this comic series ever since first hearing about it in the late nineties. A three issue adaptation of the Lucio Fulci anti-classic CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD (utilizing its Americanized title THE GATES OF HELL) by scripter Stephen Romano and artist Derek Rook, it was set to follow the Romano scripted Fulci adaptations THE BEYOND and ZOMBIE. As outlined in a lengthy afterward by Romano, THE GATES OF HELL took until 2016 to see print as single issue comics, and three years later to be collected in graphic novel form.

My biggest complaint with Romano’s BEYOND adaptation was that it was too linear, explaining away all the odd and discordant elements that helped make the film such an outrageously surreal triumph. Here, thankfully, that’s not the case. While Romero does try to streamline CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD’s unspeakably wonky narrative, which none-too-harmoniously incorporates a city built on one of the gates of Hell, a lunatic priest, a swarm of flying maggots, brain eating zombies, a premature burial and a blow-up sex doll, the film’s pell-mell, anything-can-happen non-narrative is largely preserved.

That’s not to say that Romano doesn’t add a great deal of his own. Present here is a streetwise attitude that wasn’t in the film (evident in dialogue like “I think it’s time to get our thumbs outta our asses and do something about all this weird shit”) in addition to all the things Lucio Fulci buffs have come to cherish about this and other Fulci related products: flayed corpses, spilled viscera, rotting flesh, amputated limbs and bloody mutations.

If I have a complaint it’s that there’s so much bloodletting throughout this book that it lessens the impact of the film’s major vomited-intestinal-tract and drill-through-the-skull set pieces. It must be said, though, that both sequences are replicated with enormous gusto. The same is true of the book overall, which is pulled off with a gleeful more-is-more aesthetic that I fully believe Mr. Fulci would have appreciated (and would probably like to have utilized himself had his resources been more ample).

In terms of production value THE GATES OF HELL is leaps and bounds above the BEYOND and ZOMBIE graphic novels (the latter of which, according to Romano, “looked like shit”). Despite being published by a staunchly independent non-mainstream outfit—the Romano founded Eibon Press—the layout and artwork have a sleek, professional sheen, even though the book contains all the adults-only grue one could possibly desire. Indeed, Romano apparently encouraged his colorist Chris Hall to “Make this so bloody that the guy reading it will feel like the victim of a violent crime.” Mission accomplished!