The Last Temptation »

Novelist Neil Gaiman has sent a British businessman tumbling into a fantastic underworld and had a devil and angel comically conspiring to thwart the Apocalypse. He found his biggest success, though, in Death, Dreams and Destruction -- and the four other similarly named siblings who controlled the reins of the human race's emotional impulses in his graphic-novel series The Sandman, a wholesale rejuvenation of graphic fiction that had everyone from Tori Amos to Norman Mailer spinning with, yes, Delirium.

Steven is afraid. Afraid of ghost stories, afraid of growing up... just afraid. That is, until he meets the mysterious Showman and his Theatre of the Real. Steven takes a ticket and watches the show on a dare, but getting out of the performance will be harder than he ever imagined. And then Steven learns what it is to be truly afraid.

Neil Gaiman, internationally acclaimed and bestselling writer of both prose fiction (Neverwhere, Stardust) and graphic novels (The Sandman, Signal to Noise) teams with veteran artist Michael Zulli (The Sandman, Creatures of the Night) to create this dark and brooding morality tale. The Last Temptation is the latest addition to Dark Horse's proud and growing library of Neil Gaiman hardcovers. Originally published as part of the short-lived Marvel Music line of the early '90s, Zulli's lush and beautiful duoshade artwork is now showcased in a new format for this stunning second edition.

Publishers Weekly

Gaiman meets rock star Alice Cooper in this Halloween tale that originally appeared in the early 1990s. It adapts a story from Cooper's album Lost in America, to which Gaiman contributed story and lyrics. Halloween is coming, and young teenager Steven is scared-scared of girls, scared of his friends and scared of growing up. When he and his friends stumble onto the back-alley Theatre of the Real ("The Grandest Guignol"), it looks like the Master of Ceremonies (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Cooper) may have a way to save him from those fears-permanently. Soon, he's seeing the creepy master of ceremonies everywhere. This is not Gaiman's most sophisticated work, as he admits in his introduction. But the story borrows some strong horror tropes-mashing Nightmare on Elm Street together with Something Wicked This Way Comes. Moreover, Gaiman writes Cooper's Master of Ceremonies as a whimsically demented horror show host made of equal parts Torquemada and Willy Wonka. Zulli's black-and-white art uses cross-hatching and shadows to create a suitably creepy atmosphere. His characterizations are also dead-on: Steven is a convincing early teen, and the Master of Ceremonies looks just like Alice Cooper. (Sept.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.