The Pull List – Hungry Ghost #1
Food isn’t the only thing being cooked up in the kitchen. Sometimes its pissed off spirits. Anthony Bourdain returns to comics to whip up a new series that blends the kitchen attitude with grim realities. Hungry Ghost is an anthology of haunted tales inspired by horror stories around the world. Taking inspiration by the Japanese Edo period game of Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai (100 Candles), the main narrative of the series is a group of chefs sharing scary stories, each telling increasingly haunting tales to scare off the rest.
The issue one features the writing of Anthony Bourdain and Joel Rose, with illustrations by Alberto Ponticelli and Vanesa Del Rey. The first story is features a modern day ramen chef who refuses to help a beggar, this ignorance leads to a series of frightful encounters that punish the chef for not being more helpful. The second story takes place in the age of pirates, with a band of pirates save a drowning woman. However, their lustful ways are turned against themselves and their rescued captive becomes a ghastly terror.
The main narrative that follows the chefs acts as an introduction to each stories. The group of chefs are a colorful cast that tell peculiar tales from their backgrounds. Its really awesome to see a how horror tales can connect on a international level and Hungry Ghost shows that monsters can be found anywhere. Horror fans looking for some bite size tales should check out the series for it’s creepy one shot stories and its flashy visuals of people scared out of their minds by ghost.