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Tapping the Vein: Book One

(Tapping the Vein #1)

Clive Barker (Goodreads Author),

P. Craig Russell,

Chuck Wagner,

Fred Burke,

Scott Hampton (Illustrator)

4.08 · Rating details · 274 ratings · 10 reviews

Clive Barker's nightmarish vision has changed the face of horror forever. Now barker does for comics what he's already done for film, stage, and fiction--stretching the very boundaries of the medium itself to bring forth the lyrical and the brutal. ...more

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Paperback, 56 pages

Published 1989 by Eclipse Books

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Lists with This Book

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· 274 ratings · 10 reviews

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Jul 07, 2019 ✨Bean's Books✨ rated it really liked it

Horror done in true Clive Barker style. Sex, beliefs and humanity all come into question in these 5 graphic novels.
There are two stories / graphic novel and each story is not only different in content but also in art style. Essentially it's like reading 12 different comic books with the same writer. It's almost like reading an animated Books of Blood. And just like the Books of Blood some stories are better than others, nevertheless, Barker definitely has a handle on the short story format. And ...more

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Nov 27, 2015 Derek rated it really liked it

Shelves: comic-books, horror, highly-recommended, read-in-2015

The first story, HUMAN REMAINS, must be the scariest, creepiest story about Doppelgangers ever written. It's a total creepfest.
The second story, PIG BLOOD BLUES, is familiar to me, I've read it in the first volume of The Books of Blood. Still, that was a long time ago, it was nice to see that story of angsty rebellion rendered into Graphic Novel medium.
Both tales are disturbing in their eloquent imagination. ...more

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Mar 22, 2012 Querus Abuttu rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "I am a thing without a proper name," it pronounced...
"I am a wound in the flank of the world. "
( "Human Remains," by Clive Barker)

Clive Barker is ten years older than me, and I've read so many of his stories and compared them against the work of other writers, that I've declared him to be my favorite writer. While I've never aspired to BE exactly like Barker, I do hope that one day I will produce a piece of work that reads with the fluidity and animalistic self assurance that he so flawlessly ...more

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Nov 05, 2012 D.M. rated it liked it

I got into Clive Barker when he broke the American scene back in the 1980s, and was into comics not much later, so when these comic adaptations of Barker's Books of Blood short stories came out I was all over them. Not only do they do an admirable job of adapting Barker's prose, leaving very little of his rhythm and style out, but they got some of the top artists in the field at the time to illustrate them.
This first book chooses some lesser stories to begin: 'Human Remains,' about a curious sor ...more

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Nov 30, 2017 Leila Anani rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: anthologies, clive-barker, graphic-novels, horror, clones-doppelgangers, ghosts

This first volume of Tapping the vein contains Human Remains and Pig Blood Blues from The Books of Blood.

Human Remains deals with a beautiful young hustler who encounters an evil doppelganger intent on taking over his life - Creepy for the most part but I found the ending just fizzled and Craig Russell's artwork didn't do much for me - although I have seen much worse.

Pig Blood Blues is for the most part supremely freaky - a new teacher at a reformatory 'prison' encounters a sow possessed by one ...more

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Dec 22, 2020 Langel Catan rated it did not like it

Okay, Clive your graphic novels are good.
I am huge fan of your novels but these are trash.

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Mar 04, 2017 Jamie O'Rourke rated it really liked it

The first volume of the illustrated editions of Clive Barkers stories is a very interesting one to talk about, as both of the stories do certain things well and other things not so.

HUMAN REMAINS 3* (Origional 3*)
Human Remains was never one of my favorite stories from the BOB collection, but it does do certain things well and this rendition takes that and serves it right back out at you. While I'm not so keen on the artstyle of this one, I do think that the emotional moments hit harder here than ...more

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Nov 20, 2014 Nikita Katiyar rated it liked it

I went to sleep after I was done reading it and woke up around 2 am feeling a bit queasy, normally once I sleep I don't wake up till the alarm goes off. Weird. The stories aren't all that eerie, but you will feel uneasy for a while. Gavin's doppelganger and the demonic sow are hard to forget, they are nowhere near as horrifying as some of the monsters Barker has created but like I said they will leave their imprint. ...more

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Jul 23, 2015 Helen rated it really liked it

Shelves: graphic-novels

While I enjoyed this graphic novel, and the art was stunning, it feel below my expectations for Clive Barker's writing. I have not read the original stories so this opinion could be down to the adaption, I am not sure ...more

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May 23, 2019 Γιώργος Μπελαούρης rated it it was amazing

beautiful collection
a must-have

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About Clive Barker

Clive Barker

11,124 followers

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It was in Liverpool in 1975 that he met his first partner, John Gregson, with whom he lived until 1986. Barker's second long-term relationship, with photographer David Armstrong, ended in 2009.

In 2003, Clive Barker received The Davidson/Valentini Award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. This award is presented "to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for any of those communities". While Barker is critical of organized religion, he has stated that he is a believer in both God and the afterlife, and that the Bible influences his work.

Fans have noticed of late that Barker's voice has become gravelly and coarse. He says in a December 2008 online interview that this is due to polyps in his throat which were so severe that a doctor told him he was taking in ten percent of the air he was supposed to have been getting. He has had two surgeries to remove them and believes his resultant voice is an improvement over how it was prior to the surgeries. He said he did not have cancer and has given up cigars. On August 27, 2010, Barker underwent surgery yet again to remove new polyp growths from his throat. In early February 2012 Barker fell into a coma after a dentist visit led to blood poisoning. Barker remained in a coma for eleven days but eventually came out of it. Fans were notified on his Twitter page about some of the experience and that Barker was recovering after the ordeal, but left with many strange visions.

Barker is one of the leading authors of contemporary horror/fantasy, writing in the horror genre early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 – 6), and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991) and Sacrament (1996), bringing in the deeper, richer concepts of reality, the nature of the mind and dreams, and the power of words and memories.

Barker has a keen interest in movie production, although his films have received mixed receptions. He wrote the screenplays for Underworld (aka Transmutations – 1985) and Rawhead Rex (1986), both directed by George Pavlou. Displeased by how his material was handled, he moved to directing with Hellraiser (1987), based on his novella The Hellbound Heart. His early movies, the shorts The Forbidden and Salome, are experimental art movies with surrealist elements, which have been re-released together to moderate critical acclaim. After his film Nightbreed (Cabal), which was widely considered to be a flop, Barker returned to write and direct Lord of Illusions. Barker was an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which received major critical acclaim.

Barker is a prolific visual artist working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings have been seen first on the covers of his official fan club magazine, Dread, published by Fantaco in the early Nineties, as well on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series.

A longtime comics fan, Barker achieved his dream of publishing his own superhero books when Marvel Comics launched the Razorline imprint in 1993. Based on detailed premises, titles and lead characters he created specifically for this, the four interrelated titles — set outside the Marvel universe — were Ectokid, ...more