Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Omnibus Vol 1, Comic Book Review

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Omnibus is 500 pages of some of the best art I’ve seen all year, it really brings the feel of the movies to a book. Huge apologies for the quality of the pics shown here though, they were taken before I knew better and I have since lost access to the source material for this update.

Spoiler Free Review

After being wowed by the art I remembered that I don’t actually like the movies all that much. I really like the idea of them. That hell opens up when you unlock a puzzle box and demons are actually a bunch of weirdly sexy BDSM extremists who spend eternity inflicting an exquisite pain on the damned. I mean, I love puzzles!

But the movies, and this book, are kind of slow, kind of bogged down with a philosophy that isn’t fleshed out enough, and try to make the conflicts too large when a personal existential crisis is good enough for most of us.

When the book should focus on single characters and dive deep into their personal anguish it broadens out to a grand exploration of good and evil as a whole. It becomes a bit tiresome and harder to relate to.

There are two things though that I absolutely loved about Hellraiser Omnibus. First, the aforementioned art. It’s stunning. The colors, the designs, the spectacle. I would be proud to hang many of these pages on my walls. The digital download took my very out of date tablet an hour to download and I’m guessing the art had a lot to do with that.

Second, is that this book contained some reverse fridging that I got very excited about. If you are unfamiliar, I wrote about fridging as a literary trope a bit back. The gist is that a woman will get killed off as a way to kick start the hero into action. This book starts with our female hero, Kirsty Cotton, finally accepting her boyfriend’s proposal after he is brutally slaughtered.

I have to give huge credit to a book that breaks the trope by killing off the man instead. This book also has some much appreciated equal opportunity graphic nudity. It’s mostly women but there is a penis on proud display toward the end! If you’re gonna do nudity do it all the way!

The rest of the book falls prey to a common problem of the works of Clive Barker, he’s sexually progressive at the same time that he’s weighed down with religious guilt. Religious iconography should enhance a book about hell but it comes off as a confused author who hasn’t yet figured out his personal philosophy or overcome childhood Catholic trauma.

There are definitely some positives about this Hellraiser Omnibus but overall I did not find the plot very engaging and kept going for the pretty pictures more than anything else.

3/5 happy demons 😈😈😈

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Clive Barker’s Hellraiser Omnibus Summary

This summary is being written for the update of this post and a fair bit after I read the book. Forgive the briefness but this will give you an idea of the plot points.

A group of soldiers discovers the Lament Configuration puzzle box, you may have seen these before in the movies. They’re very enticing, I know I’m drawn to puzzles and would absolutely attempt to solve them no matter how evil looking they are.

Frank Cotton solves the puzzle and opens the box which summons the dreaded Cenobites. These are the S&M demons who look so very cool in their design and are the reason we all keep trying to like Hellraiser. They drag Frank down into their realm to perform their pain and pleasure tortures on him.

Kirsty Cotton, niece of Frank begins to investigate his death. She is grieving her fiance’s death as well and this is a sort of distraction for her to not have to think about how she should have been more committed to him while he was alive. During her investigation she discovers and solves the puzzle box to get trapped with the Cenobites as well.

She is lucky enough to meet the famous Pinhead and strikes a deal, trading her soul for Frank’s. She of course manages to escape and finds a human going by Pinhead to help her take down a cult trying to dismantle the Cenobites and protect humans.

Kirsty teams with this cult known as the Harrowers and engages in a showdown with the Cenobites. This ultimate battle spans both Earth and Hell and is far too grand to have an impact on the reader. It gets Marvel level big and I lost interest somewhere along the way. Blah blah blah, Earth and humanity in peril, good vs evil, you know the deal.

Hellraiser as a whole likes to blur the lines between good and bad as well as wins and losses. The Cenobites are clearly demons but we are also supposed to be tantalized by them. It’s Clive Barker’s intention to make us secretly want to indulge in their hedonism despite the grotesque outcomes. Whether you admit it to yourself or not, they’re kinda hot. Do we actually want them to win? Just a little bit?