Evil hillbillies, mysteriously cloaked cultists and a menagerie of dubiously distinguished ghouls permeate Richard Sala’s Violenzia and Other Deadly Amusements. If you’re not quite ready to let Halloween slip into its yearly ether, take a moment to clutch onto Sala’s pulpy graphic novel. In “Violenzia” and “Violenzia Returns,” expect macabre mayhem, hyper kinetic pacing, and sly absurdism influenced by EC Comics, Edward Gorey, and Charles Addams. As always, these obvious influences are clearly distilled through the uniquely rendered pointy watercolors and inks of Sala, who very much makes the work his own. Read as Violenzia assuredly blazes through skullduggery minded minions while macabre mysteries unfold for both reader and the protagonist. These two rapid fire (literally and figuratively) Violenzia tales bookend “Forgotten”, a Lovecraftian weird tale of woe where the light slowly ebbs and our unreliable narrator drifts into an enveloping shroud of darkness. “Malevolent Reveries” follows with 26 A through Z single panel alphabetical illustrations that owe no small debt to Gorey’s “The Ghastlycrumb Tinies.”
A fast moving graphic novel, Violenzia is a blast of pulpy fun, told in scenes of audacious action and splashed with rich watercolors. With elements of golden age comics and old movies mixed in with the author’s trademark humor and sense of the absurd, Violenzia is a bloodly enigma masked as eye candy, a puzzle box riddled with bullet holes from the master of the macabre.