Drawing Horror: Uncovering Five of the Best Horror Comics
From serial killers to wytches, horror has long been a fixture in comic books. We’ve dusted off a long box to find five of the best horror comics…
Welcome to The Basement, a weekly column dedicated to unearthing the hidden secrets and mysteries within some of the most terrifying movies, books, comics and beyond. Each week we’ll bring you a new feature that delves deep into the darker side of pop culture. This week we’re opening an old long box to find five of the best horror comics…
Horror comes in many forms. It has found huge success in film and literature but comics are fast rising to become one of the most interesting forms of horror in the modern age. From writers like Robert Kirkman to artists like Jock, horror comics are fast redefining what horror stories look and feel like, creating some of the most daring, violent and harrowing imagery within the genre.
The Walking Dead | Robert Kirkman, Charlie Adlard
Long arms reach off the page, their bones dripping rotten skin and sinew. Stark blacks against endless whites. A group of characters struggling to come to terms with their violent new world. These are the pages of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Having helped launch one of the most successful TV shows of all time, The Walking Dead has been credited with relaunching the zombie horror craze leading to a plethora of TV shows and movies in its wake. It owes a huge debt to the godfather of the genre, George A. Romero, and his original undead masterpiece Night of the Living Dead (the original title for Kirkman’s book), with its black and white visuals lending a sense of Gothic unreality to the gory new world order.
Nailbiter | Joshua Williamson, Mike Henderson
You’ll never look at your fingernails the same way again. Not after you’ve seen a serial killer chewing the nails of his latest victim with a wry smile, anyway. Nailbiter, is an incredibly violent book revolving around the town of Buckaroo, a place famous for producing more of America’s worst serial killers than anywhere in the US. Part noir, Part Fischeresque serial killer thriller, but all nightmarish and bleak, Nailbiter is a truly harrowing journey into the mind of a murderer with blood-drenched imagery guaranteed to make you turn the page just a little quicker.
Wytches | Scott Snyder, Jock
Thick black trees reach off the page with abstract foliage growing wildly on the forest floor. A lone figure stands in the center of the woods, black against the diminishing white light that is seeping between the trees. They’re watching something in one of the trees. Set against the blacks, greys, and blues of the forest is a single trickle of bright red blood running from a hole in one of the tree trunks. This is the cover to Scott Snyder and Jock’s Wytches, a book in which flesh, branches, blood and wood are intertwined to tell the story of the Rook family who has moved to Litchfield, NH after an incident involving their daughter Sailor. Jock’s bleakly violent images of human bodies trapped inside trees will stick in your mind as you watch Snyder redefine how horrifying witches can be. “Chitttt…”
Uzumaki | Junji Ito
Spirals. Spirals everywhere. That is the simple, yet terrifyingly effective central conceit for Japanese macabre manga master Junji Ito’s infamous Uzumaki. Picking just one of his books for a top five list is nearly impossible as they all come packed with a sense of dread and horror but few are as effective as Uzumaki in delivering something so weird it is guaranteed to infect your brain, never to be cured. The book follows the residents of a small town which becomes plagued by a supernatural curse revolving around spirals. Its pages are incredibly dense, with its black and white art claustrophobic and oppressive for both the reader and the character alike.
30 Days of Night | Steve Nile’s, Ben Templesmith
Barrow, Alaska. The last day of sun before 30 days of night. The residents of the town are hunkering down for a long month. Many leave but those who remain are preparing for the cold. What they can’t prepare for, however, is the invasion of shark-like vampires that are coming. As the sun sets the town is beseaged by the undead, tearing the townsfolk limb from limb. Ben Templesmith’s unique art is as unearthly and surreal as anything from the mind of Junji Ito, with his vampires black-eyed with unnaturally formed bodies. By the time you reach the end of this one, you’ll be praying for sunrise.
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