Doctor Zomba’s Ghostly Tales by David Lucarelli
Abacab Studios (November 2025)
Reviewed by Joshua Gage
David Lucarelli is a writer, musician, sound engineer and dad. He is the creator of Tinseltown The Children’s Vampire Hunting Brigade graphic novels. He is the writer/producer of Doctor Zomba’s Ghost Show of Terror, the award winning campy horror comedy revival of a 1950’s style spook show, and the writer/director of Crude, the award winning completely unauthorized play about a band that rose up from the streets of Hollywood to become a cultural phenomenon. He has had stories published by Omnium Gatherum and DNA Publications. The Winter Horror Days anthology which he also edited debuted as the number one horror anthology on Amazon. He was featured in the Monsters and Other Scary Sht, and Cthulhu is Hard to Spell: The Terrible Twos anthologies. His newest comic endeavor is Doctor Zomba’s Ghostly Tales, which is a modern horror anthology comic in the style of E.C. Comics.
There are three stories included in this book: “Ghosted” is a short story about a young man who seduces the wrong person in the club. He later learns what it means to truly ghost a romantic partner. “The Sin Eater” is a medieval tale about a societal outcast whose ability is to consume the sins of others. His body distorts with every sin he consumes, until a tragedy occurs, and they’re released. The final story, “The Ghost in the Machine” is a post-apocalyptic tale about the inevitable fallout from the use of AI. All three of these stories are complete and unrelated, and they’re hinged together by the narrator, Doctor Zomba, and his cast of characters.
This collection is intentionally campy, as it hearkens back to the heyday of horror comics. The stories are pretty simple but this is expected from an episodic comic book. They’re solid stories, though, and play into the campiness. Furthermore, the scenes with Doctor Zomba and his friends are playfully creepy. The whole book is reminiscent of a sideshow, with each story featuring a quick, entertaining tale before moving on to the next one. The tone is one of creepy fun; the stories are dark and unsettling, possibly even gross, but not necessarily nightmare inducing terror. This book is very much in the vein of Tales of the Crypt or Vault of Terror, and readers will thoroughly enjoy the throwback style of storytelling combined with unique, 21st-century stories and scenarios.
Doctor Zomba’s Ghostly Tales is a fun, deliberately campy horror anthology comic. The stories are deliberately simple and shocking, very much in the vein of mid-century E. C. horror comics. The anthology format, along with host Doctor Zomba and his bizarre cast of characters, works well and makes for a quick, entertaining read. Anyone interested in horror graphic novels will enjoy this new collection.
