Recently, when putting together another edition of 4 Color News and Brews’ (our weekly video podcast) month in review, I realized something: I am reading a LOT of horror comics. Well, at the very least, books that would be included in the Venn Diagram of “horror comics,” as many books occasionally have horrific aspects to them.
It’s a very healthy time for that genre, as publishers like Dark Horse, Image and IDW strongly promote books that are both horror and of the highest of quality. It helps when you have people like Scott Allie in the industry, a guy who lives and breathes horror and wants to see quality horror back in comics, and you can see that heavily in Dark Horse’s production over the past few years.
For this week’s Countdown, I wanted to take a look at that genre and figure out really what my favorite horror comics are. This list very easily could be confused with my favorite comics list, which speaks to the quality of just how damn great the genre has been represented recently. Weigh in with your favorites in the comments!
5. Fatale
Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips have done an incredible job tapping into a lot of genres once strongly represented in comics, as “Criminal” and “Incognito” gave us brilliant crime and pulp stories that were of the highest of quality. Then, “Fatale” came and blew us away once again, creating a hybrid horror and noir story that was steeped in a dark yet alluring style and powerful character work. Is it straight horror? Absolutely not. But it fits into that world with its always lurking monsters and a pervasive sense of foreboding, and its told with the skill we’ve come to expect from two of comics master storytellers. Bonus points go to it for Phillips’ perpetually superb covers, pin-ups that underline how it’s the things that draw us in that often we should fear.
4. Rachel Rising
It seems to me Terry Moore can take any genre and immediately make it his plaything. While many struggle switching even titles within the same genre, Moore goes from genre to genre with the greatest of ease. His latest project, “Rachel Rising,” is an absolute stunner and one that never scares and thrills with gore or even true horror (well, maybe not never), instead dropping jaws and sending chills down our spines with the implied and the atmosphere he creates. His simple, clean art style fits perfectly with the complex, character centric story, and often creates a serenity to the nightmare the characters are often getting themselves into.
3. Revival
The weird thing about this book for me is when I first picked it up, I liked it but didn’t love it. Yet like with our favorite records, Tim Seeley and Mike Norton’s “Revival” has grown on me with each passing issue, with the most recent issue being my favorite issue yet. At the root of this story is the tale of a family with major problems, but the world they live in – one where the dead come back to life, but not in an undead sense – provides many opportunities for horrific acts performed by the living and the recently dead. In particular, a recent storyline featuring co-lead character Em fending off a set of organ harvesting brothers felt like the best we can get from revenge horror, as Em systematically Charles Bronson’s the living shit out of these ginger death capitalists. Read that last sentence and tell me this book isn’t basically the bee’s knees. It makes me turn a movie star’s name into an adverb.
2. B.P.R.D.
A team book that, in reality, is bringing some of the absolute best horror storytelling in comics to life, this comic has set itself apart from the pack in recent months with its “Wasteland” storyline from Mike Mignola, John Arcudi and Laurence Campbell and the mini-series “Vampire” from brothers Gabriel Ba and Fabio Moon. Both fit into the same umbrella, but they couldn’t be different types of horror if they tried. While the former is more of a end-of-the-world, monster-centric story fiercely grounded in realism, the latter is a moody, atmospheric tale of the monsters that exist in every man. Both are unbelievably well told. Both are scary and haunting in their own right.
Continued belowI mean this when I say it: if you read comics and you aren’t reading “B.P.R.D.,” you are doing yourself a grave disservice.
1. Locke & Key
In my opinion, this is both the greatest horror comic of all-time, but also one of the best comics of all-time in any variety. With master storytellers Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez onboard, we’ve been taken to a world with some of the most uniquely terrifying and fully realized characters and situations we’ve ever experienced in storytelling, period. It’s all set in a very real place, a story of young people finding themselves and a family reestablishing who they are after a tragic loss, but what unfolds chills the readers to their bones as you go through it. The raw imagination and inventiveness that takes place in this book is well grounded by the characters, and each issue is a perfect example of writer and artist working in lock step at achieving their decided goal: to tell a thrilling, chilling, funny and tragic tale with a defined beginning, middle and end. It’s near its end, but it won’t be a series that is soon forgotten.
