A Taste Of Terror: Graphic Novels And Horror Comics

By Laura Thomas

October has long been associated with horror movies, Halloween outings, scary music and more, but what about graphic novels? Horror comics are a popular genre of graphic novels that have been popular since the 1940s. They have managed to survive to this day, despite the Senate subcommittee hearings of the 1950s that saw the end of many other genres of comics. In the last ten years or so, horror comics have exploded in the market with one-off graphic novels and ongoing comic book series. So strong is their hold that many movies are being produced based on these graphic novels and comics, and they are often greeted with great success at the box office.

Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse
IDW Publishing

With more and more horror comics and graphic novels becoming popular in recent years, it can be hard to decide which ones to choose. One graphic novel may seem intriguing and horrifying, but may turn out to be a lackluster romp with little imagination. A good horror graphic novel needs to be inventive, with elements of creepiness, suspense, or flat out scares. Of course, without scary art that matches the themes of the story, a horror graphic novel can easily fall flat even if the story is genuinely terrifying.

Some artists have the ability to make even a mundane story look like something that crawled out of your worst nightmares. Ben Templesmith is one of the best horror graphic novel artists around for that reason. His work has the ability to make even ordinary situations look frightening, and he makes the scary situations truly come to life. Probably best known for his work on 30 Days of Night, his other graphic novels are just as popular among comic book fans. Templesmith wrote and illustrated what is possibly his best work, Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse, a comedy/horror story nominated for an International Horror Guild Award.

Wormwood started off as a serial story in LO-FI Magazine and IDW Publishing picked up the story and put it into graphic novel format. It tells the story of an alcoholic worm who has gained control of a corpse. The worm then uses the corpse to carry out a series of bizarre and rather grotesque adventures. Wormwood the worm is quite the drunk, carrying on with a group of supernatural pole-dancers while still finding time to fight monsters. Wormwood combines elements of comedy and horror, and together with the creepy artwork, it is a great story to read on a cool October night while munching on Halloween candy.

Lenore
Slave Labor Graphics

As seen in Wormwood, not all “horror” graphic novels need to be explicitly scary to fit into the horror genre. No book is a better example of this than Lenore by Roman Dirge. Named for Edgar Allen Poe’s tragic character, Lenore is “the cute little dead girl.” Her three graphic novels, Noogies, Wedgies, and Cooties, collect the first 12 issues of the Lenore comic books. The short stories in this series are mostly ridiculous ones that deal with dead animals, dead kids, and Lenore accidentally killing kitties and other fluffy critters while hanging out with her equally weird friends (who also try to stay out of her way).

Bizarrely cute and absurd, Lenore has a huge cult following online, one big enough that even though Slave Labor Graphics dropped the series, Titan Books saw a goldmine and picked it up for a new run which started in August of this year. As an interesting side note, series creator Roman Dirge has a second career as a magician.

Freaks of the Heartland
Dark Horse

Of course, not all horror books have elements of comedy, even though humor does pop up from time to time. Many have a more solemn side, and might even turn out to be quite emotionally touching. Freaks of the Heartland, a graphic novel from Steve Niles (a horror graphic novel master) and Greg Ruth is one such example. It is a tender tale about Trevor, a young boy from an isolated farm town whose baby brother is an oversized freak forced to live chained up in the family’s barn.

When Trevor learns that not only does his father mean to kill his little brother but also that his brother isn’t the only such freak in town, he sets out to free all the freaks who dwell there. Freaks of the Heartland is quite scary, but not because of the physically monstrous denizens of a small town. There are demons that live inside the everyday folks. Plus, anything set in an isolated backwoods Middle American farm town is inherently scary.

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