Writer: Joseph Oliveira
Artists: various
Release date: 2026 (collected edition)
Contains spoilers
Another comic book from indie publishers Afterlight Comics and they do tend to do quality releases. This volume is the three volumes of Folktales Of The Cryptids collected into one. There are two cryptid tales that have caused me to give this an honourable mention.
The first is a tale entitled Remember Me, which was drawn by Adrian Manuel Garcia and coloured by Bethany Varni and is a bittersweet tale of an elderly farmer who cares for his wife, who is suffering from dementia. We see him caring for her but, one night, he hears distressed sounds coming from his cows. Out to investigate he finds one down and bloodied and is attacked himself by something… which we see is a chupacabra – the honourable mention, as opposed to a review, is given because not enough is offered to the reader that distinguishes between this chupacabra being a bloodsucker or a general predatory creature (albeit a cryptid one).
The second story to mention is Hide and Seek, which employed the talents of artist Francesco Iaquinta. The start of the story sees a family picnic with Adrian playing ball with his dad, as his pregnant mom looks on. His dad is attacked by a popobawa, a one-eyed manbat (popobawa literally means Bat Wing) that hails from Zanzibar, Adrian is the only survivor and, some twenty years on, returns to avenge his family. Again, this is a creature that will feed on people (the comic suggests a once a year harvest), and the vampiric aspect isn’t really explored but being a man-shaped bat, albeit a cyclops, there feels like at least a genre crossover.
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