Imagine a world where the classic portmanteau films of yesteryear were still a thing, where pulp horror anthologies and the fantastical televisual tales dreamt up by Rod Serling still took centre stage and continued to weave their hypnotic magic on generations of adoring fans and willing supplicants. Can you picture it? How wonderful would it be to live there if such a place existed?

Well, wonder no more, as the one shots that Mike Mignola (this time with a little help from his literary compadres in fearful fiction, Christopher Golden and Olivier Vatine) has been breathing life into through his Hellboy universe have been slowly but surely building that geek-centric paradise, story by story, for more than two decades, and The Secret of Chesbro House & Others is a golden ticket that will allow you to leave the humdrum everyday rat race behind and enter that wondrous place of strange stories filled with paranormal peculiarties and oddities from beyond the veil for a fleeting, but glorious satisfying moment.

Collecting five beguiling and entrancing voyages into the haunting imagination of their creator, including ancient curses fuelled by jealousy, familiar legacies driven by demons, the eternal embrace of evil and wandering ghosts and the misalignment of time, Mignola’s latest anthology, spurred on by the gorgeous art of Vatine, McNanus, Laszlo and Hernandez has picked up the crown that EC comics dropped so long ago and assured it’s creator’s, and his creations, roles as the rulers of the four colour horror kingdom. Mignola never fails to amaze, or inspire me, and this latest collection of all-too brief forays into his world continues to do so. Incredible. Simply incredible… Tim Cundle