Clive Barker's Night Breed #5
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeIssue #5 marks the decisive turning point in the Epic Comics run: after four issues adapting Clive Barker's 1990 film screenplay, 'The Blasphemers – Prelude' launches the series' first original-story arc, expanding the Nightbreed mythology well beyond what the movie established. It introduces the central dramatic tension of the entire Chichester era — a violent ideological split within the Nightbreed between those willing to coexist with humanity and a faction that wants to prey on it, with Aaron Boone/Cabal's soul and leadership as the stakes. For readers of Barker's source novel 'Cabal' (1988), this was the first sustained comic-book world-building beyond the film's events, giving minor and background tribe members genuine panel time and personalities. The issue also serves as the gateway to a roster of comic-original Nightbreed characters — among them Aello, Fachan, Mulciber, Nana Nickneven, Oral, Piglet, and Tater — who exist nowhere in the film or novel, making this the ground floor for their entire fictional existence.
In Clive Barker's Night Breed #5, titled "The Blasphemers - Prelude: Scattering Seeds of Damnation," the remnants of the Night Breed turn violent in the wake of Midian’s fall, unleashing chaos on the mortal world. Meanwhile, Boone, Kinski, and Lori pursue a local drug dealer, hoping to uncover the whereabouts of a long-hidden Night Breed elder living among humans. Written by Daniel Chichester and illustrated by Jackson Guice, with inks by Alfred Ramirez and colors by Ramirez, the issue’s cover by Butch Guice and Alfred Ramirez captures the dark, frenetic energy of this fractured, desperate chapter.
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The series was published by Epic Comics, Marvel's creator-friendly mature-readers imprint that operated outside the Comics Code Authority, which made it a natural home for Barker's horror-tinged material. D.G. Chichester served as writer for the bulk of the first year's issues, and the letters pages of the run carried editorial assurances that Barker himself supervised the storylines. Issue #5 brought in Jackson 'Butch' Guice on art — a significant craft upgrade for the transition to original material — as the book shifted gears from film adaptation to ongoing series. The entire early Epic run, including this issue, was later remastered and collected in BOOM! Studios' 'Clive Barker's Nightbreed Archive Vol. 1' hardcover (2016), with a foreword by Chichester and a cover by Mike Mignola.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: 'The Blasphemers – Prelude'; release date July 17, 1990; cover date August 1990.
- Written by D.G. Chichester with art by Jackson 'Butch' Guice — the first issue of the run to feature Guice on interiors.
- First issue in the series to tell an entirely original story, not adapted from the Barker film; issues #1–4 adapted the 1990 Nightbreed screenplay.
- Launches the 'Blasphemers' arc, which runs through subsequent issues and centers on a civil war inside the Nightbreed: a pacifist faction versus flesh-eating members who reject coexistence with humanity.
- Aaron Boone (Cabal) appears as the newly established leader of the Nightbreed, with the arc explicitly framing the fate of his leadership as the central dramatic conflict.
- Baphomet, the god-entity of the Nightbreed tribes, and Dagon appear as part of the broader mythological framework introduced in this issue's expanded tribal roster.
- Characters Aello, Fachan, Mulciber, Nana Nickneven, Oral, Piglet, and Tater — comic-original Nightbreed tribe members with no direct counterparts in the film — are indexed as appearing in this issue, representing comic-exclusive expansions of Barker's creature mythology.
- The early Epic run including this issue was collected in the BOOM! Studios hardcover 'Clive Barker's Nightbreed Archive Vol. 1' (September 2016), remastered and featuring a Mike Mignola cover art.
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