YMMV / Hack/Slash

• Arc Fatigue: Some critics have applied this to the Black Lamp Society and Samhain arc. Possibly lampshaded in Super Sidekick Sleepover Slaughter:
  Cassie: "I don't know about you, Vlad, but I'm getting really bored with this black flower crap already."
  Vlad: "Yes. I liked our old bad guys better."
• Audience-Alienating Era: Son of Samhain, a slightly awkward attempt at revamping the series and shifting it into straightforward dark fantasy territory. Cassie and Margaret are broken up off-panel under flimsy circumstances, and Sandra is taken away by Child Protective Services. Cassie then gets roped into becoming humanity's latest defender against an ancient secret society of subterranean Orcs, assisted by a young, genetically-engineered clone of Samhain named October. The following series, Resurrection, has so far largely ignored all of this, with the only reference to the events of the story being Cassie offhandedly mentioning that she used to be a bounty hunter.
• Complete Monster:
  • Akakios is the original "slasher" and founder of the evil Black Lamp Society. He becomes heroine Cassandra "Cassie" Hack's Amnesiac Lover and ally, Samhain. However, once he regains his memories and true villainous personality, Akakios is disgusted by his former self's feelings for Cassie, reasoning he could have taken her any time "whether she wanted it or not". Akakios forges the undead slashers into a fighting force and systematically kidnaps or kills everyone Cassie loved, purging the upper echelons of the Black Lamp Society for being "too nice," despite their own atrocities. Akakios plans to spread the slasher disease, turning innocent humans all over the globe into murderous monsters.
  • Ashley Guthrie is a slasher believed to have killed numerous children in their dreams. Even before becoming a slasher, he was a selfish, Creepy Child whose actions included strangling a litter of kittens to death just because he he was annoyed his cat was spending so much time with them; and caving in his baby brother's skull just because he was annoyed the brother was always playing with his toys. After becoming a slasher, his first acts were to cause his father to commit suicide and drive his mother insane. Later, as a Killer Teddy Bear, he kills more people and frees fellow slashers.
  • "Sons of Man" arc: Andrew Rodin is a Mad Scientist with the Black Lamp Society who only works for them to indulge his sadism. Rodin feeds one of his associates to two creatures, who eat him alive, and besides creating other creatures for evil purposes, creates sapient sex slaves, not caring what happens to them; he also has killed at least one that had outlived its usefulness. He later tortures Samhain, who he later forces to kill one of Rodin's co-workers. In addition, Rodin videotapes his work, either for business reasons or, at least in one case, for his "personal collection".
• Crosses the Line Twice: The RapeVan. An evil van that rapes cars, crushing anybody unlucky enough to be inside them to death.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Pooch and Libby Lochs.
• Fridge Horror: The only major characters who initially get killed by Akakios's mass attack on Cassie's friends are Chris and Lisa. Who got murdered by Dr. Gross. The guy who specialises in long and sadistic physical and mental torture...
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Plenty with Haverhill, the parody of Riverdale from Archie Comics.
  • For one, the joke of dropping the Archie gang into a violent horror story was later done for real by Archie Comics themselves starting with Afterlife with Archie. Furthermore, after Cassie's second visit to Haverhill in issue #28, the town and characters, previously drawn in a cartoonish style reminiscent of the comics it was parodying, undergo an Art Shift to a more realistic style to reflect the Cerebus Syndrome that had come over the place — one that looks very similar to the actual art style used in the 2015 reboot. And then there's the TV show Riverdale...
  • The Haverhill-set arc in Resurrection #8-11 featured vampires... and guess what Archie Comics itself added to its horror-AU set of titles at much the same time.
• Squick: Mother Leeds from The Living Corpse crossover.
  • When Taber threatens to kill himself with a shotgun in Something's Fishy, Mary Shelley Lovecraft disarms him by sprouting another tentacle... from between her legs.
  • The Sundermann brothers (one lived inside the other).
• Ugly Cute: Pooch. Vlad saw Mother Leeds's children as this, but Cassie and The Living Corpse were just squicked out by them.
• The Woobie: Although Cassie keeps her 'tough bitch' act up for the most part, when something manages to break through her defenses it's almost impossible not to feel for her. A standout example is her breaking down hysterically crying in the bathroom after her physical and mental torture by Doctor Gross.

---