History
Published: Oct 2018
Rebellion followed up 2017’s Scream! and Misty special with this one a year later. This is a strange volume though. One the plus side, it continues The Thirteenth Floor’s outing from last year, setting up an interesting story arc with young Sam Bowers using Max for his own psychopathic reasons. But beyond that, Scream!‘s presence is barely felt.
Black Beth makes another appearance after dominating a large chunk of the 1988 Scream! Holiday Special but she wasn’t really ever a Scream! story. Elsewhere, Black Max returns (after being branded as a Scream! story last year) and Decomposition Jones, a brand new character, shows up in our half of this special.
That makes this special very disappointing to be honest. Beyond The Thirteenth Floor and a few pages with Ghastly McNasty on there, there’s not much for fans to get excited about here.
The Thirteenth Floor
After being recruited by Max in the last special, Sam Bowers has been spending his time taking people he doesn’t like to the thirteenth floor. This ends up bringing unwanted attention from the Police (who must have forgotten that Max was a kill crazy psychopath in the ’80s). Max doesn’t want to hurt the innocent policewoman who shows up, but Sam insists.
During her stay on the thirteenth floor she is traumatised by Max but he eventually lets her go, much to the annoyance of Sam. We see her outside, looking back and showing some signs of maybe remembering what happened to her.
Decomposition Jones
This story is the debut of a new character. Decomposition Jones is a private investigator who is part zombie and part vampire. It’s an okay tale that is fun and silly but it feels more like a 2000 AD strip than a Scream! one. It has some decent art though.
Black Beth
After dominating a chunk of Scream! Holiday Special 1988 we were pretty happy to see the back of Black Beth but here she is in a tale where she is fighting the undead. She eventually tracks down a warlock who is the cause of all of this trouble. However, when she kills him he transforms into a demon of vengeance. This sets up a future story but one we don’t really care much about.
Return of Black Max ‘No Man’s Land’
After last year’s introduction, Maxine loses her medal which is taken back to Black Max, the evil spirit of a WW2 German fighter pilot who is able to command bats and is generally fairly demonic. In this issue he is finally released and begins an attack on London.
As ever, Kek-W’s writing is excellent, as is Simon Coleby’s art, but again this isn’t a Scream! story and it doesn’t really have enough time to really get going but it’s still enjoyable and we’re invested in where this might go.
This issue also includes three Misty stories: Best Friends Forever, Mint Condition and Book Worm.
An alternate version of this issue was available, branded as Misty and Scream with Misty getting higher billing on the cover (see below).
