The hardest thing in the world is when something is just mediocre. It’s not great in any unique way, it doesn’t fail in any unique way. It just sort of exists and it does an okay job at it. What do you grab onto? What can you say? At least how do you do either of those things in an interesting way? That’s where Creepy #19 comes in. With two solid, but not great, stories and the rest of it filler. Of the two solid stories Team Player is probably the better. It is the vaguely told story of a player with all the talent on a baseball team. When it’s revealed that he became that way by taking a drug that absorbs everyone else’s talent the team turns on him and consumes him. Where did he get the drug? How did he qualify for it? How does it work? Is it covered by Obamacare? Who cares! The story is told quickly and efficiently with a moderate twist. That I just ruined for you. Spoilers.

The second, lesser, of the two solid stories, Acquisitions, is a much more complexly told tale of a man who collected paintings and what happens after he dies. It, too, has a twist but it’s entirely too complicated to get into here and that nuance as well as the pieces length work against it. I didn’t find it to be a great concept but it does have that Outer Limits feel to it. Acquisitions is a much more intricate tale but it loses something in the telling while Team Player is incredibly efficient with every word and panel necessary to work towards that big finish.

Mad Jack is a pretty standard horror story with a pretty standard twist. It didn’t do much for me and pulls the rug by showing a side character being much more crazy and dangerous than the main character we spent most of the time focusing on. That twist always makes me wonder why I spent so much time with the main character if they just get eliminated by some side character. There are also cartoons that act as palate cleansers between each story and they do their job, there’s nothing outrageously good or bad about them but they’re necessary to keep the tone and isolate each story.

Personally I would rather spend the money on an old Creepy anthology. They’re a lot more expensive but I think you’d get more out of the stories. Of course, even the Creepy anthology has some misses in them so maybe in the long run this series will end up having some stronger issues to balance ones like this out.

Score: 2/5

Writer: Various Artist: Various Publisher: Dark Horse Comics Price: $3.99 Release Date: 2/18/15 Format: Ongoing; Print/Digital