Wednesday, September 21, 2011

The Rook issue 14



The Rook #14

This is the last issue of The Rook. It was published by Warren. The title feature is about a time traveler. He is known as the Rook cause his time machine looks like the rook chess piece. Like all Warren magazines this was published in black and white and is an anthology title.

We start off with "The Dane Curse' starring the Rook. The Rook goes back 1781 to stop the curse and runs into one of his ancestors. The Rook is seem when he appears and is mistaken for being a witch. But in this 11 page adventure he manages to get away. Strangely this tale ends with To Be Continued. If find this strange since this is the last issue of the magazine. They do mentioned that the Rook will start appearing in Eerie magazine. So I assume the story is continued there.

Next we get the story "A Study in Scarlet" which stars Sherlock Holmes. We get a great 10 page story. With great moody artwork. At the end Sherlock has managed to solve the mystery,but the culprit gets away. And again the story ends with To Be Continued.

The third tale is "The Goblin". We start off with the Rook and his old west ancestor Bishop Dane. They have traveled back 1917. This is so they can discover the origin of a strange creature they had run into. This creature is a strange little blue man. The find out that this creature is a creation of a coven and the leader of the coven dies. And Bishop and the Rook get arrested.  While this is a decent story,you can tell it is being used as a way to promote the new magazine from Warren. This magazine titled "The Goblin" is what replaced The Rook.

Up next is "The Fighting Armenian". In this tale we meet two super powered humans. One has had his powers for years. The other just got them. Nice little morality tale. With stunning artwork.

The final tale is a western titled "Eagle". A beautiful western tale. With two warring tribes of American Indians and the settlers stuck in the middle. Now I am not a fan of westerns in pretty much any form. But the artwork of this tale more than makes up for my bias against the genre.

If this issue of the Rook is a good example of what the prior issues are. I am sad it didn't last longer. It is a great set of adventure tales. And all of them have some great artwork. The Rook #14 gets a A-.