Table of contents for #6: Blood in four Colours in RUE MORGUE

AS A CHILD GROWING UP IN THE 1970S, MY EXPOSURE TO THE HORROR GENRE WAS LIMITED, to say the least. A Restricted rating in Ontario meant that even with the aid of an adult, there was no way I was entering the cinema to see Halloween. As for television, in those barren days before home video or pay channels, the scariest thing I was likely to see was Goober and the Ghost Chasers. Sure, I’d occasionally stumble upon a horror flick on the tube, but these were heavily edited and, at any rate, they aired way past my bedtime. No, my earliest horror memories sprang from the local 7-Eleven comic book spinner rack. Here was a world that any six-year-old could easily enter. After all, most parents equated comic books…

FOR MOST OF US, ANY THOUGHTS OF 1950S HORROR COMIC BOOKS ARE SURE TO CONJURE THE restless spirit of the legendary EC Comics. Sixty-two years after the Comics Code Authority effectively dismantled the booming industry of horror comics (very nearly taking the entire comics business with it), William Gaines’ iconic publishing house still holds a monopoly on creepy comics nostalgia – even though it only produced a scant seven percent of the joyfully gruesome fare that crowded the era’s newsstands. What about the other 93 percent, then? In the long shadow of EC, most of it has been virtually forgotten. In 2010, comics historians Greg Sadowski and John Benson hoped to change that with Four Color Fear: Forgotten Horror Comics of the 1950s (from Fantagraphics). “I collected comics as a…

BY 1955, THE COMICS CODE AUTHORITY WAS IN FULL EFFECT AND MOST PUBLISHERS HAD TO SCRAMBLE TO adapt to the new restrictions. Some fared better than others; EC Comics and similar companies whose major output consisted of horror and crime books effectively went out of business, while Archie Comics and DC made their already kid-friendly humour and superhero books even more juvenile. Somewhere in the middle, there was Marvel Comics. During the 1950s, the company that would eventually become Marvel was known as Atlas Comics, headed by publisher Martin Goodman. After the superhero craze had slowed down in the late 1940s, the company was releasing a number of titles in a variety of genres, including westerns, romance, humour, funny animal and adventure. According to comics legend Stan Lee, who was…

THE COMICS CODE AU THORITY HAD PLACED A STRANGLEHOLD ON MUCH OF THE INDUSTRY, BUT THERE WAS a handful of companies that refused to bow to their demands. Among them was Dell Comics, a division of Dell Publishing, which had started out producing pulp magazines in the 1920s. In 1938, Dell partnered in with Western Publishing and for the next couple of decades they would release comics based on a number of popular licences, including properties from Warner Brothers, Hanna-Barbera and Walt Disney Productions. By the time Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent began to make waves, Dell was firmly ensconced in the children’s comic book market, with its family-friendly titles accounting for nearly a third of overall comics sales. So in 1954, confident that its relatively tame output could avoid…

“WE ARE THE CREATIONS OF HUMANITY ITSELF, PHYSICAL PROJECTIONS of mankind’s collective unconscious. We exist because man exists; we are, in truth, his dark side given flesh.” In issue #111 of The Defenders, Satan and his devilish brethren dropped what can only be called a hellfire-bomb on Marvel’s superhero universe. This 1982 comic marked the concluding chapter in a storyline known as the Demon Drama, a twenty-issue arc years ahead of its time in terms of progressive, big-picture stories examining metaphysical horror in capes-and-tights comics. With one deft word balloon containing the above quote, writer J.M. DeMatteis retconned the entire nature of Hell in the Marvel universe. Under DeMatteis’ inspired redefinition, Marvel’s various incarnations of Satan – there were approximately a dozen operating at the time, the most commonly deployed…

THE COMICS CODE AU THORITY HAD BEGUN TO LOOSEN ITS STRANGLEHOLD ON THE INDUSTRY BY THE early 1980s, but it still dictated what was acceptable and kept a close eye on the major publishers. Horror comics had made significant strides during the ’70s, but by the end of the decade they were spinning their wheels; four-colour fear hadn’t progressed much beyond Marvel’s monster aesthetic or DC’s anthology format, which many felt had run their course. Luckily, several elements had been simmering on the backburners over the last few years and were about to boil over. The first was the increase of stores dedicated exclusively to the sale of comic books. Feeding into this was the creation of the direct market in the early 1970s – a new distribution method spearheaded…

ON DECEMBER 23, 1944, HE WAS BORN TO MURDER THE WORLD: A DEMON CREATED in fire and summoned to Earth by Hitler’s evil scientists in a desperate attempt to win World War II by bringing about the absolute destruction of mankind. Humanity would never know how close it came to extinction when the clandestine experiment known only as Project Ragna Rok was intercepted by a team of specially trained GIs from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD), who narrowly averted the Apocalypse by intercepting the furious beast at the moment of its corporeal birth. Taken back to terra Americana for further examination, the demon conjured from Hell’s fury was a harbinger of doom in its latent state only. To all appearances, in fact, he was a tiny red…

WHILE MAINSTREAM NORTH AMERICAN COMICS FOCUSED ON SUPERHEROES ALMOST to the exclusion of everything else, Asian comics of the 1990s offered a diversity found nowhere else in the world. Manga, as comics are called in Japan, offer a surprising variety of genres: action, sports, humour, sci-fi, crime, politics, romance and even cooking. And, of course, lots of horror. The Asian horror movie boom of the ’90s carried over into comics, and just like their cinematic counterparts, manga experienced a surge in popularity in North America during the latter part of the decade. In these pages we’ve rounded up a few of the genre’s most notable artists, whose work should be on every horror fan’s shelf. JUNJI ITO It’s people sticky with mucous and slithering on the ground, turned into huge,…

HORROR COMICS WERE FIRING ON ALL CYLINDERS BY THE EARLY 1990S: THERE WAS VERTIGO ON ONE side pushing the envelope with mature storylines, and companies such as Image that expertly melded visceral violence with superheroics. Yet despite this bounty of riches, there were those that felt even more could be done to exploit the genre on the comic page. That might go far in explaining the existence of someone like Brian Pulido, founder of Chaos! Comics and a staunch horror devotee. Chaos! debuted in January of 1993 with tales of a psychotic, undead teenager named Evil Ernie, created by Pulido and artist Steven Hughes. The comic, with its gleeful cocktail of over-the-top violence and exaggerated horror, was an instant success. Determined to further cultivate supernatural horror in comics, Pulido went…

THERE HAVE BEEN VARIOUS NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD COMICS IN PUBLICATION SINCE 1991; FANTACOM, Dead Dog, Avatar, IDW and, most recently, Double Take have all released comics based on the original film and its sequels. These comics vary widely in theme and content, but the one thing they all have in common is the non-participation of creator George A. Romero. That all changed in 2014, when Romero continued his Living Dead saga with Marvel’s Empire of the Dead series, proving he’s as skilled with the comics format as he is with film. A decade earlier, however, Romero cut his teeth on a six-part DC series called Toe Tags, which, unlike the later work, was separate from the universe he built on the screen. Toe Tags was the brainchild of…

IN 2006, WHEN WRITER STEVE NILES AND ARTIST BERNIE WRIGHTSON WERE PITCHING their new horror comic City of Others, the pair ended up on the doorstep of Dark Horse Comics. “Dark Horse has an established horror line, we fit right into that, and they have welcomed us with open arms,” Niles told Rue Morgue at the time. “We called up [Dark Horse publisher] Mike Richardson and had a meeting with him. I remember Bernie pulled out one piece of art and the pitch was over. Mike took one look and said, ‘Yeah, we’re doing it.’” Horror has long held a place of honour at Dark Horse. Since its creation, the publisher has consistently been a champion of creepy content, from its early dabbles with the Alien franchise to the meticulous…

THERE’S AN ASTOUNDING NUMBER OF COMICS ON THE MARKET TODAY BASED ON MOVIE and television properties, many of which are horror-related. It’s possibly because horror fans are among the most loyal and likely to pick the books up. Or maybe it’s because the genre easily lends itself to the graphic medium in a far more satisfying way than a straight-up drama or comedy – after all, there doesn’t seem to be much demand for comics based on Friends or The Good Wife. What’s impressive is the selection of titles available, as comic companies seem intent on picking up the licences to just about any genre property, regardless of its age or popularity. In recent years we’ve had comics based on Big Trouble in Little China, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, Puppet…

THE LATE 1970S AND EARLY ’80S WERE A BOOM TIME FOR RISING TALENT IN THE BRITISH comics scene – especially horror. Mainstream titles 2000 AD, Scream!, Misty and a number of Marvel UK publications, such as Doctor Who Magazine, were spawning a vanguard of soon-to-be industry leaders that included Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, Brian Bolland, Dave Gibbons and Neil Gaiman. As in North America, however, recent years have seen a decline in comic sales, the result being that the already small pool of UK-published comics has gotten even smaller. Of the few mainstream titles remaining, only 2000 AD offers horror stories on a regular basis. There is some relief, however, in the small press and self-publishing industry, where some of Britain’s top talent currently resides. “The only place horror comics…

THE PULP STORIES OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY CONTINUE TO CAST A LONG SHADOW OVER THE COMICS industry, influencing everything from superhero series to adventure, crime, horror and suspense stories. The last few years have seen many titles directly alluding to the classic pulp style, either thematically or by resurrecting old characters. Undoubtedly, the most popular of these remains. The Shadow, a character who, despite his name, has remained in the spotlight since his creation in 1930. The psychic-powered vigilante with the ability to “cloud men’s minds” has starred in several comic book series, most notably for DC and Dark Horse, but since 2011 his home has been Dynamite Entertainment, which has made the character’s mystical origin a key element of his series. This emphasis on the supernatural has left…

BEFORE COMIC BOOKS, THERE WAS PULP FICTION. BACK IN THE DAYS OF BREAD LINES AND HOBO JUNGLES, millions of readers found escapist thrills in the pages of cheaply produced magazines printed on rough pulpwood paper. Known as “the pulps,” these all-fiction titles catered to every imaginable reading taste, from detective yarns to pirate stories, from jungle adventures to science fiction and even romance. But the wildest of them all were the notorious horror tomes known collectively as the shudder pulps. The so-called “shudder” or “weird menace” titles were a blood-red splash of colour in the grey days of the Great Depression. They announced their monthly wares with circus poster-style covers featuring voluptuous, underdressed beauties pursued by hordes of leering lunatics as bent as boomerangs. Their promise: cheap thrills, and plenty…

WHEN 25-YEAR-OLD BILL GAINES WAS UNEXPECTEDLY THRUST INTO THE ROLE OF publisher and co-editor at EC Comics, he couldn’t have been less interested – after all, these cheap, gaudy newsprint publications were kids’ stuff, right? Not always, it turns out, as Gaines’ early indifference eventually turned into passion, thanks to the gory potential of a pen-and-ink army of shuffling corpses. In just a few years, EC’s trend-setting, adult-minded titles – including Tales From the Crypt – built the company into one of the most influential publishers of the decade. Although Tales From the Crypt and EC Comics’ other horror publications spent a mere five years on newsstands after being introduced in 1950, the groundbreaking titles have been consistently revived in some form every decade since their publication, in everything from…

DC COMICS SPENT THE MAJORITY OF THE 1960S CATERING TO THE PRE-AND EARLY-TEEN SET with superhero, humour, romance and funny-animal titles. But by the latter part of the decade, the company was beginning to lose ground to Marvel, whose angst-ridden heroes were striking a chord with older readers and earning them fans on college campuses throughout the country. Not wanting to be left behind, the late ’60s saw DC attempt to woo some of that market by hiring fresh talent and introducing more contemporary issues into their books. The company also decided to cautiously re-enter the horror genre. The American social landscape had changed drastically since the foundation of the Comics Code Authority in 1954. The 1960s brought political and social unrest along with the sexual revolution, the women’s movement,…

JUST BECAUSE OLDER KIDS IN THE MID-1960S COULD DELVE INTO SPOOKY HORROR COMICS such as Creepy and Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery doesn’t mean they got to have all the fun. Lurking on a more accessible newsstand shelf, Dell Comics’ Melvin Monster may have been intended for youngsters, but its timeless warmth and wit – not to mention its spooky twists – place it among the best horror comics of its time. Originally created by revered artist and writer John Stanley in 1965, the entire nine-issue run of Melvin Monster was re-released in 2011 as part of Drawn & Quarterly’s John Stanley Library. “By the time Melvin came along, the 1960s monster craze was already in full swing,” notes cartoonist and comics historian Seth, who designed Drawn & Quarterly’s handsome…

MARVEL COMICS SPENT THE MAJORITY OF THE 1960S ESTABLISHING AND BUILDING their superhero universe, with little time devoted to other genres, including horror. To be fair, this had less to do with lack of interest on Marvel’s part and more with the constraints placed upon it by distributor Independent News Company, which was an offshoot of National Periodical Publications – the parent company of DC Comics. To strangle competition, Independent would only allow Marvel to distribute eight to twelve books per month, and since superheroes were racking up sales, it made sense for the company to focus on sure-sellers. But by 1969, Marvel had enough sales power to break away from Independent, and began to substantially expand its book range. It started exploring possibilities in other genres, including horror. Marvel…

IT’S TOUGH TO THINK OF ANOTHER ARTIST WORKING IN HORROR COMICS TODAY WHO’S HAD HIS FINGERS in as many first-rate four-colour pies as Bernie Wrightson. The former monster kid says the dark side of the medium is where he belongs. “Monsters are just a constant in my life, since I was six years old and saw Creature From the Black Lagoon with the 3-D glasses,” Wrightson says. “I fell in love with monsters, I couldn’t get enough of them. I was there every Friday or Saturday night for Shock Theater when they ran the old monster movies; I bought every issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland and read all the horror books. People in your life kind of come and go, you have relationships, you get divorced, you move on…

IN THE MID-1970S, NATIONAL LAMPOON PUBLISHER LEONARD MOGEL WAS IN PARIS TO LAUNCH the French version of his popular humour magazine when he stumbled upon a copy of Métal Hurlant (translated as “Howling Metal”). The French comics anthology had debuted in 1974 and was chock full of illustrated science fiction, horror and erotica stories, all geared to an adult audience. Realizing there was a dearth of such material in North America, Mogel licensed the property for English translation and American distribution. After a slight alteration to the name, Heavy Metal Magazine was launched in 1977. Labelled “The adult illustrated fantasy magazine,” Heavy Metal quickly established itself as one of the most influential publications in comics history. Warren Publishing had been churning out black-and-white, newsprint magazines nominally geared toward adults, such…

IN 1993, DC OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED ITS MATURE READERS IMPRINT, VERTIGO, UNDER the editorial guidance of Karen Berger. The label would continue to expand DC’s work in the realm of adult-oriented horror and fantasy, becoming a champion of creator-owned, mainstream projects. Vertigo was the culmination of nearly a decade of experimentation, growth and development. The imprint’s roots can be traced back as far as 1982 with the launch of Camelot 3000, which sees King Arthur and his reincarnated knights fighting off a futuristic alien invasion. Eager to experiment with the possibilities of the direct market, DC decided to distribute the twelve-part limited series solely to comic book stores, bypassing newsstands – and thus the Comics Code Authority – altogether. This gave writer Mike W. Barr and British artist Brian Bolland the…

REFLECTIONS KAZUO UMEZU They don’t call Kazuo Umezu the “Stephen King of Manga” for nuthin’. As Reflections, the first installment of his Scary Book horror anthology proves, he’s a masterful storyteller. The longer of the two tales here, “The Mirror,” details what happens when a girl’s evil reflection steps out of the mirror to methodically take over her life. This maddening descent into doppelgänger hell is well paced, save for some childish humour. The second story, “Demon of Vengeance,” a bloody tale of an armless warrior seeking revenge, showcases Kazuo’s talent for illustration, with its dramatic motion lines and detailed facial expressions. Essential reading. ISLAND IN-WAN YOUN AND KYUNG-IL YANG In this story of an island called Cheju, most of its inhabitants don’t know that it’s overrun with demons, and…

NO DECADE IS AS CONTROVERSIAL, DEBATED, LOVED AND REVILED WITHIN THE COMICS industry as the 1990s. If the ’80s were about building new markets, experimenting and pushing the envelope creatively, then the ’90s were about cashing in on that new awareness by any means possible. And cash-in they did – at least for the early part of the decade, which saw record sales and an increasing number of comic book stores. It is estimated that by 1993 there were approximately 10,000 comic stores in the US alone, up from a reported 800 worldwide in 1979. There are many factors cited for this tremendous growth, including the boom in the collectors market. Whatever the reason, the audience was huge, and comics companies were more than happy to churn out constant product…

AS ZOMBIE APOCALYPSES GO, THE SCENE IS NOT UNFAMILIAR: IN THE ONCE-BUSY DOWNTOWN core of a blighted urban landscape, a horde of ravenous ghouls pounces on its latest victim. Within moments, Magnus, the “fresh meat,” disappears under the rabid pack and is swiftly ripped to shreds. On the sidelines, a brief altercation: one zombie, unaware his stomach is riven and spilling guts (not his own), doesn’t take it well when another proceeds to steal his food, right out of the fissure. The rest of the horde, sated for now, disperses, and many of the zombies sit down to rest. One starts to examine his bloody hands and clothes. “Dear God – what have we become?!” asks Spider-Man. He sees the Hulk clutching his split stomach, Thor gnawing on the stolen…

THE RISE OF THE RAVENOUS DEAD IS ONE OF THE MOST REMARKABLE POP CULTURE PHENOMENA to rear its head since vampires became big business decades ago. In addition to movies, television shows, books, video games and merchandise of all shapes and sizes, zombies have also overrun the comics industry. It’s fair to say there are more comics featuring the living dead currently on the market than any other monster. At the top of the heap is The Walking Dead, whose contribution to zombie lore in print and on screen can’t be overemphasized. However, it would be a mistake to dismiss the remaining crop of zombie comics as cheap imitators, cashing-in on a trend. First, this ignores the high quality of many of these comics. But also, as influential as The…

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO THE COMICS INDUSTRY AS IT STRUGGLED TO ATTAIN LEGITIMACY. In an effort to appeal to adult audiences, creators spent the last three decades pushing boundaries and delving into mature, often controversial territory. From superheroes and fantasy to science fiction and horror, no genre has been left untouched as publishers continue to proclaim that “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore!” But in the wake of all that four-colour carnage, younger readers have been seemingly tossed to the curb, left to find solace in the pages of supermarket Archie digests and the occasional issue of The Simpsons’ Treehouse of Horror. It could be argued that, in order for modern comics to maintain their current level of creativity and maturity, the sacrifice of the children’s market was an…

YOU HEAR A LOT OF NEGATIVITY ABOUT THE COMICS INDUSTRY THESE DAYS: LOW SALES, LACK of readership, repetitive storylines, etc. And some of that may be true for mainstream superhero publications, but as far as horror comics are concerned, things have never been better. There’s a tremendous amount of noteworthy material currently being produced, both by established publishers and independent creators. So much, in fact, that there were plenty more titles I would have loved to cover in the preceding pages, but I just didn’t have the room. So if there’s a book or two you love that didn’t make the cut, my apologies, and take my word, it really is no reflection on quality – just my inability to write about every single horror book out there. Equally as…

FOR MANY, FILMS SUCH AS TIM BURTON’S BATMAN (1989) AND CHRISTOPHER NOLAN’S The Dark Knight (2008) came as something of a revelation. Those movies served to dispel popular notions of the Caped Crusader as a gadget-happy, wisecracking crimebuster. Suddenly Gotham City was darker, grittier and a lot more horrific. While this was nothing new to those who had been reading his comic exploits on a regular basis, the emergence of the Dark Knight was a shock for viewers who were familiar with the character solely through Adam West’s 1960s TV interpretation. While Burton in particular had been clearly influenced by such seminal ’80s books as Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, the retro design of his first Batman film indicates he was also turning…

NO INCIDENT WAS MORE DAMAGING TO THE NORTH AMERICAN COMICS INDUSTRY than the publication of Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. Written by psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham, the book essentially blamed comics for illiteracy, juvenile delinquency and even “sexual deviancy.” The effects were immediate and far-reaching, placing a stranglehold on the industry that took decades to shake loose. No genre was safe, but horror comics bore the brunt of the impact. The controversy didn’t just spring from a vacuum, however. The post-World War II era was a very prosperous time for America, but also one of great inner turmoil. Americans were striving for the idealism of the nuclear family, yet there was a strong air of paranoia in the country threatening to undermine this dream. People were seeing communists on…

HORROR COMICS BEFORE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COMICS CODE AUTHORITY MIGHT HAVE been grisly, but Eerie Publications went over the top. The lurid magazines, which hit their stride in the 1960s and ’70s, mostly consisted of stories that were simply redrawn versions of previously published horror comics, but with one important innovation: gore by the gallons. Not to be confused with James Warren’s admittedly classier Creepy and Eerie magazines, Eerie Publications titles such as Tales From the Tomb and Weird lured readers in with graphic depictions of violent death and dismemberment – not to mention some top-notch art by creators who had nearly been put out of business by the Code. Since Eerie’s output technically fell into the magazine category, it skirted the restrictions of the Code altogether. Vertebrae could…

IN THE MID-TO-LATE 1960S, YOU COULDN’T PASS A NEWSSTAND WITHOUT BEING ASSAULTED BY the phantasmagorical, full-colour illustrations that graced the covers of horror magazines such as Creepy and Eerie. But in September of 1969, a new magazine hit the stands that featured a sexy, nearly nude temptress seductively beckoning any nearby male teenager to pick her up and leaf through her gore-soaked pages with the hope of perhaps uncovering a little more than the final outcome of each demented tale. The magazine, named after the vixen portrayed on its cover, was Vampirella, and it’s lasted, in one form or another, nearly five decades. Editor Forrest J Ackerman and publisher James Warren, who had tremendous success with their other publications Famous Monsters of Filmland and Monster World, hired a number of…

IT’S EASY TO EXAGGERATE WHEN YOU’RE A WRITER, BUT THERE IS REALLY NO WAY TO FULLY EXPLAIN ALAN MOORE’S pivotal role in comics history without succumbing to hyperbole. Quite simply, Moore is the most important figure to enter the industry in the latter quarter of the 20th century. Epics such as Miracleman, The Killing Joke, Watchmen and V For Vendetta continue to influence the way comics are made, and works such as From Hell and League of Extraordinary Gentlemen made a profound contribution to the horror genre. But it all started with a certain mossy monster. Swamp Thing had somewhat petered out after Len Wein and Bernie Wrightson’s epic ten-issue run in the early 1970s. Wein continued with the title after Wrightson’s departure, but the book never hit the heights…

LONG BEFORE THE WALKING DEAD HIT SHELVES IN 2003, THERE WAS ANOTHER BLACK-AND-WHITE ZOMBIE title that tore a gory swath through the indie comics world. When the harrowing, gruesome Deadworld launched in 1987, there was nothing even remotely like it. It begins with Mike and Dan, two drug dealers with hearts of gold, their girlfriends Donna and Chris, a precocious kid named Joey and his big brother John (the “leader”). As they struggle to survive in a world where the dead prey on the living, they’re relentlessly pursued by King Zombie, a sentient, scheming biker badass who literally wants to raise Hell on Earth. The comic was created by Stuart Kerr (The Realm, Oz) and Ralph Griffith (The Realm) for their Arrow Comics imprint, as a showcase for artist Vincent…

IT’S BEEN NEARLY A QUARTER-CENTURY SINCE TODD MCFARLANE BOLDLY DECIDED TO SPAWN HIS own supernatural anti-hero: Spawn, eponymous protagonist of the Image imprint’s flagship title (albeit not the publishing house’s top-seller for quite some time now). For many years, the character was a paragon of success, spawning (pun intended) several spinoff titles, a line of action figures that revolutionized the toy industry, an HBO animated series and a live-action feature film (and nearly two decades of talk of a sequel). It’s easy to forget, however, amidst all the paraphernalia and ebbs and flows in popularity, just how much of a game changer the character was. The skinny: anti-hero Al Simmons was a hitman for the American government who was framed and assassinated; at the moment of his death, a deal…

A DOLESCENCE, DISEASE, HORROR: TERMS THAT CAN EASILY SHARE ASSOCIATIVE OR METAPHORIC relationships in the everyday world. But in the waking nightmares of cartoonist Charles Burns, they are nothing short of synonyms. Over a decade in the telling, Black Hole is a twelve-part comic book serial released first by Kitchen Sink Press and later by Fantagraphics. Originally published from 1995 to 2005, it’s a remarkable work that, theoretically, stands as Burns’ final word on the concept of teen plague – a theme the artist has visited many times over his comics career. “I suppose it’s simply that I’ve always been fascinated with the transformations we go through in adolescence,” says the Pennsylvania-based artist, who professes to having lived an “average” teenhood before rising to prominence in the ’80s alternative comix…

IT’S BEEN A STRANGE, UNPREDICTABLE JOURNEY FOR THE WALKING DEAD. IT’S HARD TO imagine that anyone connected with Image Comics’ breakout hit series had any idea what they were getting into when the first issue hit stands in October 2003. Certainly not Rick Grimes, the title’s reluctant hero. In the comic’s opening pages, the small-town police officer is wounded in a shootout, only to awaken in a hospital to find that his Kentucky hometown, along with the rest of the country, has been overrun by zombies. Soon reunited with his wife and young son, Rick becomes the impromptu leader of a ragtag group of survivors who roam the American South in search of food, shelter and at least some semblance of stability. Over the course of the series, the zombie…

PERHAPS NO MAN UNDERSTANDS THE CONCEPT OF A LONG DAY’S JOURNEY INTO NIGHT QUITE THE way that Steve Niles does. A comics writer, screenwriter and entrepreneur who launched his own imprint and managed to secure a contract to adapt Clive Barker’s Books of Blood for Eclipse at the age of nineteen, Niles spent years trying to sell his own story, 30 Days of Night, after coming up with its core concept in the mid-’90s: put vampires in a place where the sun don’t shine (Alaska, that is). The original arc centres on the sheriff of a small Alaskan town that is beset by bloodsuckers as it enters a month-long polar night. In 2002, Niles’ tenacity paid off when 30 Days was published as a three-part comic miniseries by the then-upstart…

DESPITE IMAGE COMICS’ MASSIVE SUCCESS AND ITS UNQUESTIONABLE IMPORTANCE TO THE industry, the company saw a decline in popularity by the early 2000s. The disdain wasn’t so much for the publisher’s output as for what it represented: to many, Image had come to epitomize the aesthetic and excesses of the 1990s, which nearly sank the entire comics market. was founded in 1992 by a group of writers and artists that included Todd McFarlane, Erik Larsen, Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee, all of whom had become dissatisfied with working at Marvel and DC. At the heart of the malaise was the lack of ownership and proper remuneration for successful characters they created while under the companies’ employ. When Image Comics was formed, its primary mandate was that creators would retain full…

MUCH HAS CHANGED SINCE CLIVE BARKER’S GRISLY 1986 NOVELLA THE HELLBOUND HEART FIRST laid the foundation for the Hellraiser franchise. Barker’s story, along with the movie adaptation he wrote and directed in 1987, helped spin the horror genre in a wicked new direction. Numerous sequels followed, but without Barker’s involvement; it would be almost a quarter of a century before he would pen another Hellraiser tale. When he finally returned to the brutal world of inter-dimensional soul harvester Pinhead, it wasn’t in prose or film. In 2011, Barker teamed with co-writer Christopher Monfette to create a Hellraiser comic book miniseries for BOOM! Studios. Recalibrating the franchise presented a considerable challenge, though: how do you re-energize a property that had wandered into the creative no man’s land of cut-rate sequels and…

DEATH HAS FINALLY COME FOR ARCHIE ANDREWS. AFTER MORE THAN 70 YEARS OF HIGH-SCHOOL dances and malt-shop dates, 2014 went down as the year “America’s typical teenager” couldn’t escape the Grim Reaper. In the penultimate issue of Life with Archie, released in July 2014, an adult Archie was shot to death while protecting his friend, openly gay gun-control advocate Kevin Keller, from a would-be assassin. Meanwhile, in an alternate timeline, the teenaged Archie and his pals spent the entire year fending off ravenous hordes of zombies in Afterlife with Archie. Archibald Andrews, whose trademark look is largely credited to original artist Bob Montana and an eventual revamp by former pinup artist Dan De-Carlo, made his first appearance in the December 1941 issue of a comic book series called Pep –…

LIKE THE 1980S, RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN A BOOM IN INDEPENDENT COMICS, ESPECIALLY within the horror genre. The main difference, however, is that creators now have more avenues to get their works into the hands of readers. Even during the height of the indie scene in the ’80s, there were limited options when it came to publication and distribution. Creators could either sell their comics to an existing publisher and increase their chances of proper distribution, or opt for the D.I.Y. route: find a printing house, produce their own books and use guerrilla tactics to get their titles into circulation, such as hand-delivering them to shops. The Internet, however, has drastically altered the scene and offered writers and artists an affordable opportunity to reach mass audiences. Arguably the easiest way…

THIS BOOK WOULD NOT HAVE BEEN POSSIBLE WITHOUT THE BLOOD, SWEAT AND TEARS – BUT MOSTLY BLOOD – of many people, including Rodrigo Gudiño, April Snellings, Vanessa Furtado, Andrew Wright, Dave Alexander, Monica S. Kuebler, Andrea Subissati, Evan Millar, Paul Corupe, Sam Costello, Last Chance Lance, Joseph O’Brien, John W. Bowen, Don Hutchison, James Grainger and James Schmidtke. Extra special thanks to Dr. Travis Langley, Gary Butler, Steve Banes, Derek Rook, Sarah Michelle, Michael Moreci, Bruce Brown, Rob Anderson, John-Paul Kamath, Thom Burgess, Steph Dumais, Dave Kelly, Chris Rogers and Mark Furniss. And to every writer, artist, editor, publisher and anyone else involved in the creation of comics, horror or otherwise, thank you for your years of inspiration, dreams and nightmares. December 2015…