Halloween Horror Comic Book Haul 2016

I must be sick. Halloween is my favourite time of year. There’s nothing better than carving pumpkins, squirting fake blood all over the place, and crawling under the covers to scare yourself silly with a stack of terrifying stories.

This year, I’ve focused mainly on reading horror comic books for Halloween. It’s a realm I have only recently explored but now I’m hooked. Trust me, these comic books ain’t for kids. If traditional spooky stories just don’t do it for you, or you’re looking for a way to break into the comic book horror genre, these are the scary comic books I recommend.

You will need…

A nightlight
A therapist
A bag of clean underwear and bed sheets
And a willingness to never be the same again…

Here is…

My Horror Comic Book Haul for Halloween 2016

This fright-tastic comic book feast consists of…

Gyo by Junji Ito
Suicide Club by Usamaru Furuya
Ajin: Demi-Human by Gamon Sakurai
Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez
American Vampire by Scott Snyder, Rafael Albuquerque, and Stephen King

Sure, it’s not the biggest comic book haul in the world. But come on, guys. There’s a limit to how many times I can crap my pants and lose hours of sleep this month. Plus several of these are fiendishly addictive long-running series.

So, without further a-BOO, let’s get into the individual reviews of these awesome horror comic books.

Locke & Key Review

Locke & Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez is perhaps my favourite comic book on this list. And that’s saying something because it’s a damn good list. In fact, Locke & Key might be one of my favourite comic books ever.

The story is basically about a family with a dark past that move into mansion filled with doors that transform anyone who walks through them into ghosts. The mansion is also home to an evil creature hell-bent on collecting the keys to these doors.

Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodríguez are a comic book collaboration made in heaven (or hell?). The story is so perfectly formed and the illustrations are so fully realised… and yet, I can’t imagine them being separated. It’s kinda like how Coke is awesome and ice cream is also awesome… But an ice-cream float is a whole other level of awesomeness.

Reading Locke & Key was also a hands-on, real world author marketing example for me because it reinforced the power of this well-known adage:

The best form of marketing is to write the best book you possibly can. Then write another one.

I had never read a Joe Hill book before Locke & Key. I was also not expecting to be so blown away by this comic. But I read the first volume of Locke & Key from cover to cover and stayed up way past my bedtime. Then I was left with an uncontrollable thirst for MORE!!!

So I immediately ordered the next volumes. But I couldn’t wait for them. So I downloaded Heart-Shaped Box (Hill’s novel) to my Kindle and stayed up reading that (spoiler: it’s awesome and super scary).

I also went searching for more work by Rodríguez but I couldn’t find much of a back catalogue. Señor Rodríguez, if you’re reading this, please do more stuff!

One thing that most stood out about Locke & Key (aside from the compelling story and the gorgeous artwork) was the dark sense of humour constantly running beneath the surface. This humour is only possible due to the complimentary writing and art of Hill and Rodríguez.

In Locke & Key, you get many panels like the following:

Rodríguez clearly understands how to use stillness and quiet to ramp up comedic effect while also emphasising tragic situations that everyone is all too familiar with.

Rodríguez uses this repeated panel technique over and over again throughout the book to expertly evoke mood, humour, and heartache.

Another fantastic part of Locke & Key that sets it apart from other comic books of its kind, is its ability to masterfully play with our expectations and juxtapose intense violence with gentle comedy.

Take this scene for instance:

Right after this happens, the killer grabs the guard’s gun and takes aim at another dude running away. You would expect to see the guy’s head explode as a bullet blasts through his brain, right? Wrong… We get this comedic treat instead:

Locke & Key is everything a good horror comic book should be. Screw Netflix (for a few days at least). Forget refreshing your Facebook feed. Clear out your calendar and take advantage of your sick days. Locke & Key is comic book crack and you will eat it up.

You can buy Locke & Key here.

Ajin: Demi-Human Review

I’ve been reading a lot of manga recently. It’s been my goal this year to improve my Japanese reading ability and manga has been a great way to help that. You can read my thoughts on manga as a tool for learning Japanese here:

Is reading manga a good way to improve your Japanese?

So I thought I’d kill three birds with one stone by reading some horror manga. Improve my Japanese, read a good story, get a good scare. Win-win-win.

But I didn’t expect to be gripped this hard by a horror manga. Ajin by Gamon Sakurai is one of the best manga I’ve ever read. It’s one of the most bingeable stories I’ve read in a very long time. It’s a series of 8 and I’m halfway through. It feels like I’ve hitched myself onto a runaway train and I’m having a blast.

Ajin follows the story of a high school student called Kei Nagai who, after being hit by a truck, discovers that he is one of a very small and persecuted minority of beings that cannot die.

Terrified (and rightly so) of what will happen to him when humanity discovers what he is, Kei flees from his town in search of others like him. But the humans are following….

They want to conduct perverse experiments on him and other ajin in which they kill them over and over again in painfully horrific ways all in the name of research.

Nazi undertones? Check…
Humanity as the evil villain? Check…
Nauseating, heart-pounding tension that compels you to blast through the whole series in a weekend? Check.

Ajin is relatively thin on character development but the pace and plot is extraordinary. If you’re a fan of Philip K. Dick or Ray Bradbury but also like a hefty dose of Quentin Tarantino and Kinji Fukasaku, you will love Ajin.

You can buy Ajin here.

Gyo Review

So you watched Jaws and you thought… ‘Okay, it’s not safe to go in the water. But at least I’m safe on land.’

Think again.

Gyo is a seinen manga by one of Japan’s master horror manga artists, Junji Ito. This 2-volume manga is gross-out horror at it’s finest. If you like stories that make you feel physically sick to your stomach, you won’t want to miss Gyo.

The story follows a couple called Tadashi and Kaori, as they fight against an onslaught of fish with legs that have come onto the land and started killing people.

Don’t expect much in the way of in-depth character studies, but do expect a story that’s built on a ludicrous premise yet still manages to creep you out.

It begins with the smell of decaying fish pervading wherever Tadashi and Kaori go. The smell builds and builds and becomes all-consuming until they discover the source.

Your first reaction will be to laugh. When the fish first scuttle out of the ocean, it’s a comical picture and one that surely can’t actually be terrifying. Gross? Sure. Weird? Yeah. But legitimately scary?

But things very quickly go the way of The Birds and turn from hysterical to horrific. You begin to get shivers all over your body as the tension and the stakes ratchet up.

If you’re looking for gross-out, suspense, chills, and just plain freakiness from the master of Japanese manga horror, Junji Ito, check out Gyo.

You can buy Gyo here.

American Vampire Review

Who doesn’t love a good vampire story?

Well, American Vampire isn’t a good vampire story. It’s a GREAT vampire story.

You know you’re in for a wild ride when you read Stephen King’s introduction, ‘Suck On This’:

Here’s what vampires shouldn’t be: pallid detectives who drink Bloody Marys and only work at night; lovelorn southern gentlemen; anorexic teenage girls; boy-toys with big dewy eyes.

What should they be?

Killers, honey. Stone cold killers who never get enough of that tasty Type-A. Bad boys and girls. Hunters. In other words, Midnight America. Red, white and blue, accent on the red.

The story was created by Scott Snyder of Marvel and DC Comics fame. Each volume of American Vampire is shared by Snyder and Stephen King telling the story, first one then the other, and the whole thing is tied together by Rafael Albuquerque’s stunning artwork.

American Vampire is primarily a badass celebration of the expanse of American history. It’s an epic that sees the evolution of vampire outlaw Skinner Sweet from the 19th century American West through to the 1920s silent film era and the war-ravished era of the 1940s.

I suspect that I won’t get the full benefit of just how awesome American Vampire is until I’ve read the entire series and I have the whole epic spread out behind me. Volume 1 kicked off with a bang and the origin story has been firmly established leaving us gasping for more. I have a feeling that this series is just going to get better and better.

If you’re sick of sparkly teen bloodsuckers and are in desperate need of a vamp with real bite – an American vamp to boot – then American Vampire is going to whisk you away in a river of blood.

You can buy American Vampire here.

Suicide Club Review

Suicide Club or Jisatsu Saakuru (自殺サークル) is another horror comic straight out of Japan. I’ve only just picked this one up now and have read the first few panels but they have already confirmed something I have known for a while…. Japan does many things well and “disturbing” is one of those things.

This manga is about a wave of mass suicides sweeping Japan right after this scene where 54 teenage girls in Tokyo hold hands and leap into the path of an oncoming subway train:

This is one of the rare occasions where I’m actually nervous about what I’m going to read. I have a relatively serious phobia surrounding train stations. I don’t like standing anywhere near the edge of a station platform and can’t even look when the train is approaching because my mind fills with the prospect of falling on the tracks. So this opening panel really hit me where it hurts.

Upon searching, it seems that there isn’t an English translation of this manga. Correct me if I’m wrong. I can’t seem to find one. So, if you really want nightmares, you might have to learn some Japanese or make do with the film version.