Writer – Doug Campbell
Artist – J.H. Williams III
Inker – Larry Welch
Colours – Joseph Allen

Taking place eight years after the motion picture film of the same name, the first issue of Demonic Toys finds the Arcadia Toy Company being demolished. One toy, at the very least, seems to have survived the flames – a jack-in-the-box. This is no normal toy, though, and one man finds out the hard way as he loses his life to the little demon inside, after which the reader is made privy to the man’s blood filling a pentagram upon the toy company’s grounds. The book cuts forward in time again, where a man named Eddie learns that his girlfriend, Daphne, is pregnant, and Jack Morton, the president of Arcadia Toys, goes for a run and meets his maker in the most gruesome of ways. It is at this moment that the body of Morton is ripped open by a child, perhaps that same child from the movie, who then crawls inside and ‘zips’ it up, thereby using it as a puppet. Worlds soon collide as Daphne, who works at Arcadia Toys, comes into contact with Morton and even further, is attacked by a teddy bear with razorblade claws. For fans of the Full Moon production, this book makes for an interesting continuation, picking up a couple of threads from that film and carrying them over here. The horror is solid, the violence is grisly, and there is no doubt this book was written for an older crowd. The storyline by Doug Campbell is compelling, if a little sparse, as he has not connected everything yet. The pieces are all laid out, and he has started to move in that direction as readers see Daphne, Morton and Arcadia all come together. There is the matter of those first scenes and what will come of them, unless it was merely to state that yes, this is a horror story and the toys have come alive. As for purpose, one has no idea what the boy controlling Morton’s body is going to do, which lends a bit of mystery to it all, nor does the reader have any idea what all these Demonic Toys plan to do other than invade Arcadia Toys. Looking at this creative team, one will notice J.H. Williams III handling the artistic side of things with some of his earliest work. It is definitely not as polished as his current output, a little rough around the edges, but the man does a decent job of transforming the script into something to look at, and it provides an interesting comparison between where he used to be and where he currently resides. Overall, the book has that Full Moon feel, and there is enough here to want to find out exactly where it might be headed.

3 out of 5