Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts HC Review: A Wonderful Tribute

With the sad death of Anthony Bourdain, his final written work “Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts” with Joel Rose and a team of artists has been published in HC form. While the comics themselves are great, there needed to be something more to appease fans in the HC version. Dark Horse and Bourdain didn’t disappoint.

The series is about a group of chefs who are playing an old Japanese game called “Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai” where each person tells a scary story inside a circle of 100 candles and after each story a candle is blown out. This game was suggested by the billionaire who these chefs work for and the theme is food.

Most of these stories are pretty scary, though they do have a tendency to either be too short or (for some) not that scary. The weakest of these is “The Pirates” (art by Vanesa Del Rey) where the crew of a pirate ship have their way with a woman. The ending may be schadenfreude, but it isn’t executed well. The art is the only real creepy thing here.

The absolute best story is “Deep” (art by Sebastian Cabrol.) This is about the scariest thing a chef can think of: a brigade with a perfectionist. This brigade also has a chef who likes to bully other chefs. While this may not sound all that scary to the normal person, chefs will tell you that working in that kind of environment will cause someone to suffer from PTSD. The art is fine. It isn’t terrible but it does work well with the story.

While the stories are great on their own, Bourdain did decide to add a few extras in the HC. These include recipes that appear in each story and a short list of yokai (Japanese monsters.) The recipes make a ton of sense since this is a series about food written by a chef and they do sound great recipes (even though the meatballs sound like any other meatball recipe.) The list may be paltry at best, but the yokai here are just the ones that appear in the stories. If this was a complete list, it would be an entire book.

“Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts HC” has some great food themed stories that are pretty damn creepy even if some are short and one not being all that great. The artists did well enough to bring these stories to life and the extras are well worth the price of the HC version even with its few shortcomings.