Stuff and Things: You Scared Yet?

This week for those who missed it I did a wee guest spot on The Big Fkin’ Horror Podcast and talked a good bit about horror movie characters and various other things.

Expanding on that theme I thought I’d talk about horror in comics this week and maybe find out if you find them as entertaining/scary as the movies.

It’s a tricky one to discuss in a column I generally try to keep short and sweet (very sweet bro) so as not to bore you, but the more I think about it the more I realize there’s way more horror comics out there than you would first think (unless that’s specifically your thing I guess) so quick roundup of the better known “classic titles”.Back before the late fifties most all comics were horror titles which apparently rustled a lot of folks jimmys and resulted in the Comics Code (fun fact) but back in those days they laced up the boots pretty tight and as a result, a lot of horror titles vanished only to be replaced with sci-fi or suspense tales.

Fast forward to the 70’s and the Comics Code Authority loosened up their regulations a bit and horror comics came back strong.
Marvel publised their famous monster stories (Tomb of Dracula, Morbius, Werewolf by night, Tales of the Zombie etc) DC put out theirs (Swamp Thing, Scary Tales, Secrets of Haunted House etc) and there was a large movement of underground cartoonists releasing books influenced by the Tales From The Crypt comics of the 50’s.

That’s a brief history of horror in comics so now you know there’s a deep history for you to dig into if you want to go looking. Fast forward to now and we can see horror has a HUGE influence in comics. Almost every second title you pick up nowadays is a horror title from Zombies (Walking Dead, Marvel Zombies) to Vampires (American Vampire, 30 Days of Night) to supernatural spooky shit (Locke and Key) there’s a deep pool to dive into.

Lets not forget that almost all our favourite horror icons have had spinoff comics. Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, Pinhead…..the list is endless, they’ve even crossed over at points (Freddy vsJason vs Ash anyone?) and if that’s not enough, we have famous horror writers turning their pen to comics (George Romero has an upcoming project for Marvel and Clive Barker recently wrote a new Hellraiser series) so there’s plenty to get scared/excited about.

While personally I have never found horror comics as scary as the movies or even books, I still do find them HIGHLY ENTERTAINING and love seeing some of my favourite characters make appearances in print but what do YOU think?

Fan of horror in comics? If not why? and what horrors are your favourite?

As always sound off in the comments, but until next week,
(In Crypt Keeper Voice) Good fright! Boils and Ghouls!

(J).