Review: The Nightmare Patrol #1

What would happen if the things that go bump in the night were recruited by the Government to go thump (other bad things) in the night? The answer is you would have the Nightmare Patrol!

Nightmare Patrol #1 by the writing team of Jeff and Bruce Haas, Art by JC (Pencils), Colours by Katrina Mae Hao, Lettered by Zen and additional Art by Dennis Coyle and Scott Barnett. Published by Vector Comics.

The Nightmare Patrol, written by the father and son team of Bruce and Jeff Haas is a well-executed, high concept book which is a whole lot of fun to read. It contains a fair bit of gore, but remains the bombastic, Saturday night movie type entertainment that I really love.

Seriously, what’s not to love about the idea of monsters being recruited to fight a zombie menace… Shut up and take my money! (Hollywood are you listening?).

The Nightmare Patrol’s members consists of a Werewolf called Poe and a nerd who can transform into a slick and cocky vampire called Nightcorpse (hands down my favourite character, I’d read a solo on him any day), an emo Witch called Hester Mathers and a brutish powerhouse reminiscent of the Hulk called The Golem.

You Wouldn’t Like Him When He’s Hangry

Its fair to say that these guys aren’t exactly team players and that the Nightmare Patrol’s first mission together goes a little pear-shaped to say the least!

As a book, Nightmare Patrol is a solid read and I believe that the concept has some real potential. However I did have a few minor issues with some of the pacing decisions in the book. Such as the fact I would have like to have seen more of the team being recruited and less of the reason why they were recruited. But it’s an origin story and I fully understand the reasoning behind the setup of the story.

Always make a good first impression

One other thing that I would have really liked to see was, some expanded transformation scenes for the two shapeshifters as they are the main drawcard of the book in my opinion.

Luckily for me, Nightmare Patrol #2 is coming soon and we will get to see much more of this fascinating group of characters together in action. Overall, I found that the Nightmare Patrol #1 is a great debut issue of a fun new team. I’m looking forward to see more from this accomplished creative team in the next instalment.

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