7 Spooktacular Comics to Read on Halloween

As I sit  huddled in my off-brand Snuggie in this slushy rural Pennsylvanian field, awaiting the arrival of that elusive Great Pumkin, I think of you. Dear reader. Sweet Babboo.

Hopped up on Mike’n’Ikes and snack-size One Hundred Thousand Dollar bars intended for costumed children, you’re  likely bundles of demonic energy with little outlet save for street crime and general tomfoolery. You need something to read and to stoke your innate, primordial fears.

Luckily–though chillingly–I’ve managed to access a WiFi signal branded “Malachai,” the source of which is not readily apparent. I will ask the man in the burlap hood, should he finally decide to dismount the scarecrow post in the neighboring cornfield. But until then, I share thirteen spine-tingling tales available for download on Graphicly.

 

 

The Walking Dead

By Robert Kirman, Tony Moore and Charles Adlard

You may have heard about this one, and it’s likely as ubiquitous on spooky comics lists as pulverized candy corn will be to the crevices of car upholstery in weeks to come. But it’s also the standard-bearer for pulse-pounding survival horror in this or any medium, mostly outrunning the undead hordes well past the typical expiration date. Which is probably something else it has in common with candy corn, come to think of it. Get caught up with past volumes or enjoy recent issues.

 

 

Hack/Slash

By Tim Seeley

This love letter to the slasher genre could only be more appropriate were each word balloon pieced together from mis-matched magazine trimmings. Seeley and his crew of artists know that the human circulatory system is an elegant solution to so many of our biological processes. But it’s hardly the only way for blood to travel. Not for the anemic, but a sure bet for friends of Freddie, Jason, and Michael M.

 

 

Moon Lake

By Dan Fogler

Speaking of ol’ Jason, there’s just something about a lakeside retreat at dusk that inspires dread. Maybe it’s the call of the loon. Or the animated corpse lurking in the murky deep. Or maybe it’s that swollen, omnipresent moon. The kind of moon that heralds the emergence of werebears. Loup-garou is terrifying enough, but those sniveling hellhounds have nothing on Ursus-lunar. They’re not interested in pic-i-nic baskets. All they want is to play tetherball with your skull and pay homage to Old Faithful with your jugular.

 

 

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser

By Christopher Monfette, Mark Pacella

Love hurts and Cenobites. Step right up and try your hand at the Puzzle Box. There’s no jelly beans in there. No Butterfingers. Just unending eternal suffering. For fans of alternative alternative medicine, for whom acupuncture simply isn’t enough and Chinese finger traps have lost their luster.

 

 

Dracula Vs. Robin Hood Vs. Jekyll & Hyde

By Chris Bunting, J.L. Czerniawski

Literary feuds rarely reach these heights. The sinister joy in this epic throw-down isn’t in learning of the last monster standing. But in how they ended up in the same battle royale in the first place. Slings, arrows and terrible transformations await in this brand new showdown between legends living and legends undead.

 

 

Harker

By Tony Lee, Neil Van Antwerpen, Peter-David Douglas

Dracula, He Wrote. Jonathan Harker is still piecing together his life in the wake of Dracula’s demise, but in this sequel to the immortal classic, there’s little time for clotting. The Count–now dust in the London breeze–is gone but hardly forgotten, least of all by his last remaining bride. And Van Helsing’s seen no fury like a vampire scorned.

 

 

Echoes

By Joshua Hale Fialkov, Rahsan Ekedal

We save the best for last, as Fialkov and Ekedal’s tale of serial murder and mental frailty is a modern classic, brimming with paranoia and the kind of suspense that would’ve left even Hitchock sweating (though to be fair, so would tying his shoes). A father’s death-bead confession of unholy digression. A box in a basement. A mound of moldering dolls, each linked eternally with countless lost girls. And the kind of betrayal only possible by something so fragile as a mind.