''Chiaroscuro'' was a horror series which appeared in the British weekly comic ''
2000 AD''. It was written by
Simon Spurrier
Simon "Si" Spurrier (born 2 May 1981) is a British comics writer and novelist, who has previously worked as a cook, a bookseller, and an art director for the BBC.
Getting his start in comics with the British small press, he went on to write hi ...
with art by
Cam Smith Cameron or Cam Smith may refer to:
* Cammie Smith (Cameron Wilberforce Smith, born 1933), West Indian cricketer
* Cam Smith (artist), British comic book artist
* Cameron Smith (rugby league, born 1983), Australian rugby league player
* Cameron Smit ...
(also known as Smudge).
Characters
*Anthony Elvy is a film
journalist
A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism.
Roles
Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...
and the son of a once famous
film director
A film director or filmmaker is a person who controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the film crew and actors in the fulfillment of that Goal, vision. The director has a key role ...
. He is sick of the fake sincerity that surrounds the film industry.
*Samuel Erin is a seventy-year-old film director who is full of self-pity. He hands Elvy a film reel before he is killed in an accident.
Plot
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
2006. Anthony Elvy heads to
Elstree Film and Television Studios to do an on set interview with a film director by the name of Samuel Erin. During the interview, it is discovered that Erin is full of self-pity. At the end of the interview, he hands Elvy a film reel telling him it will be what he is best known for. Elvy decides to head home early to watch the reel. Elvy discovers, to his horror, that its actually a
Mondo film
Mondo film is a subgenre of exploitative documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of ''mondo films'' include portrayal ...
showing
US troops
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. U.S. federal law names six armed forces: the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, and the Coast Guard. Since 1949, all of the armed forces, except the C ...
executing
Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
ns during
Operation Urgent Fury
The United States and a coalition of Caribbean countries invaded the small island nation of Grenada, north of Venezuela, at dawn on 25 October 1983. Codenamed Operation Urgent Fury by the U.S. military, it resulted in military occupation with ...
in
Grenada
Grenada is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean Sea. The southernmost of the Windward Islands, Grenada is directly south of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and about north of Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad and the So ...
, 1983. He phones Erin for another interview but he is lying dead, impaled on a
prop set and surrounded by fire.
See also
*''Ancient Images'' a
1989
1989 was a turning point in political history with the "Revolutions of 1989" which ended communism in Eastern Bloc of Europe, starting in Poland and Hungary, with experiments in power-sharing coming to a head with the opening of the Berlin W ...
novel
A novel is an extended work of narrative fiction usually written in prose and published as a book. The word derives from the for 'new', 'news', or 'short story (of something new)', itself from the , a singular noun use of the neuter plural of ...
by
Ramsey Campbell
Ramsey Campbell (born 4 January 1946) is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awa ...
with a similar theme
*''The Grin in the Dark'' by Ramsey Campbell that deals with the horrors of a silent film and actor.
*''
Flicker'' (
1991
It was the final year of the Cold War, which had begun in 1947. During the year, the Soviet Union Dissolution of the Soviet Union, collapsed, leaving Post-soviet states, fifteen sovereign republics and the Commonwealth of Independent State ...
), a novel by
Theodore Roszak
*
Faces of Death
''Faces of Death'' (later re-released as ''The Original Faces of Death'') is a 1978 American mondo horror film written and directed by John Alan Schwartz, credited under the pseudonyms "Conan Le Cilaire" and "Alan Black" respectively.
The f ...
, one of the most famous Mondo films
External links
2000 AD profile
British comics
Horror comics
2000 AD comic strips
2006 comics debuts
{{UK-comics-stub