10 Horror Comics to get you into the Halloween Spirit!

“Whats your favorite Scary Movie?” The iconic line from the mysterious killer in the 1996 movie “Scream” illustrated something important about the accessibility of the horror genre – in particular the movies. The characters and their stories are sufficient cultural touchstones that anyone watching “Scream” then (and most watching it today) would recognize the references being made by the characters and the meta-commentary on their own struggles against a masked killer.

Horror comics do not have quite the same cultural ubiquity as movies do, despite being a medium with a similarly rich history and depth of examples. For those brave souls curious about the world of horror in paper and ink, I have faithfully prepared this list of ten excellent examples to help you find your niche. This list is not a top ten list, but intended as a sampler plate for you to get into the Halloween Spirit. And while I don’t claim that this will be a list consisting only of “hidden gems” (in fact, most are either award winning in and of themselves, or by award winning creators) we will skip over some of the more obvious collections like “The Walking Dead” or “Tales from the Crypt.”

If any of these seem interesting to you, check them out as well as similar projects by their creators and publishers – and if some day a robotic voice asks you over the phone “What’s your favorite scary comic?” then maybe you’ll have an answer that keeps your neck intact.

#1 – Arkham Asylum, A Serious House on Serious Earth

Written by Grant Morrison, Art by Dave McKean
Published 1989 by DC Comics

For our first entry, we will lower ourselves into these dark and unseen waters by gentle degrees with a familiar character – the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, The World’s Greatest Detective. The Batman. Longtime comic fans, or fans of Batman in general, will already be familiar with Arkham Asylum, but it is a great way for those new to horror comics to explore the space among familiar faces.

Arkham Asylum was Grant Morrison’s first stab at the character, who was a well established superhero by that point. They were inspired by darker comics like Alan Moore’s Watchmen and wanted to create a story that was more focused on character emotion than a traditional adventure book. The result is a narrative where it is unclear whether the infamous inmates of Arkham Asylum are causing the chaos that breaks loose when they escape, or if the Asylum itself is driving those within its walls to madness.

Morrison’s psychological horror take on the inmates of Arkham Asylum is perhaps most famous for its inspiration of the 2009 video game of the same name. The game includes some of the narrative plot points of the Graphic Novel as side quests, but the tone of Morrison’s narrative and Dave McKean’s art style were not recreated in Rocksteady’s action adventure game.

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For more standout horror superhero books, check out The Immortal Hulk, Moon Knight: From The Dead, and the first 2 volumes of the perennial classic The Saga of Swamp Thing by Alan Moore.

#2 – Hack/Slash

Created by Tim Seeley (writer) and Stefano Caselli (artist)
Published 2004-2015, 2017-2018 by Devil’s Due Publishing (Now Image Comics)

What if slasher movie villains were a supernatural epidemic? And if they were, what if an unconventional “Final Girl” decided to take her slasher killing talent on the road? If this sounds like a fun concept to you, you might enjoy Hack/Slash!

In the campy horror world of Hack/Slash, people who die with sufficient rage and evil in their hearts can resurrect as supernatural killers they call “Slashers.” Cassie, whose childhood was overshadowed by her mother’s transformation into a slasher, travels the country finding and dispatching these creatures. Along the way she’s helped by her giant sidekick Vlad, a monstrous-on-the-outside, friendly-on-the-inside slasher hunter that Cassie initially mistakes for a slasher himself; as well as a demonic dog sent to find her from a hell dimension, and an always growing (except when it is tragically shrinking) network of survivors from the slashers she’s defeated.

Though the violence and villains of the series are often exaggerated in the trademark slasher style, the character stories are a lot more heartfelt. Cassie and Vlad both struggle with how they present themselves to the world and how it is at odds with how they wish to be perceived, and through the difficulty of processing their history while they pursue an endless stream of psychotic killers. The series mixes in comedic moments too, such as the discovery that Elvis Presely is living in a hell dimension to extend his life in exchange for serving as a lieutenant to the Lovecraftian entities living there.

Hack/Slash benefits from being read in order, so I would generally recommend those interested in cracking into it start by reading “Euthanized.” However, this really starts to kick off the whole story (including a four page spread about Cassie’s origin within the comic), so if you just want something a little more self-contained to give yourself a quick taste I recommend “Girls Gone Dead.” If you like it, you can follow it to its direct and wild sequel “Hack/Slash vs. Chucky”, one of the comics best crossover storylines.

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For some similar campy horror stories, try “Stranger Things – Science Camp” by Jody Houser, “Freddy vs Jason vs Ash” by James Kuhoric, or “Jumpscare” by Cullen Bunn.

#3 – 30 Days of Night

Created by Steve Niles (Writer) and Ben Templesmith (Artist)
Published 2002 by IDW Publishing

There are a lot of horror comics associated with horror franchises – especially when you consider the large number of crossover and guest appearance titles that exist within the genre. However it is a much smaller number that can claim to have started their franchise – but 30 Days of Night did just that. Creator Steve Niles originally pitched this as a comic, and when he struggled to find a home, he adapted it into a script – which also sat unused until he presented it to IDW Publishing, who liked the script enough to ask him to pivot back to his original comic idea.

If you’ve seen the movie of the same name, then you know the general plot of the story – the town of Barrow, Alaska is cut off from the world during its annual month of polar darkness by a group of Vampires that systematically hunt and kill the unfortunate residents. But you cannot underestimate the effect that Ben Templesmith’s stylized terror has on the work. The panels filled with darkness make you lean in to see what is going on, only to recoil in horror when a splash of red or white jumps off the page.

The themes of isolation and survival in the face of inhumanly desperate odds are punctuated by the stylized ghoulish vampires hunting the streets of Barrow, and the comic touches a little more directly on the motivations and politics of the monsters themselves. The use of lettering to differentiate the inhuman nature of the vampires is also a convention unique to the comic format, creating a divide between human and monstrous characters that you watch transform in mid sentence as the victims cross that divide.

If you are looking for a dark horror filled with desperate emotion, 30 Days of Night is a good place to start.

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This mini series has a number of sequels to check out if you like it, and if you want more of Ben Templesmith’s distinctive and atmospheric cartooning in even wilder settings, check out “Groom Lake” by Chris Ryall or “The Squidder” written and drawn by Templesmith.

#4 – Uzamaki

Written by Junji Ito

Published 1998-1999 by Shogakukan (English publisher NA: Viz Media)

No list of horror comics would be complete without an entry from Junji Ito – and Uzamaki is perhaps one of his most iconic works. Set in a small rural Japanese town, the story follows two high school students as they witness their community succumb to a bizarre curse centered around spirals (the word Uzamaki means “Spiral” in Japanese.)

This work is an especially good introduction to the horror genre for fans of anime and manga as it subverts many of the themes common in those mediums. Spirals especially have a positive association in Japanese cartoons and manga, often used to denote a childlike blush. But Ito’s work puts a creeping body horror onto the spirals, having them appear in people’s flesh and burrow into them, or twisting their bodies into spiralized corpses that then petrify or attack other survivors.

Each chapter of Uzamaki increases the temperature of the horror up by a few degrees as the tension builds – Junji Ito has stated he takes his inspiration from Lovecraft in the way he uses creeping dread.

Though I won’t give away the story’s ending, I will warn that it has been divisive among fans. Whenever you present a set up as unique and strange as a ‘Cursed shape’ you will run into problems when you try to tie things up at the end. Some fans felt the eventual explanation for why the town was facing a spiral curse was nonsensical or anti-climactic. But over the last twenty plus years, the legacy of the story has largely overshadowed these disappointments. Enough so that there have been several movie and television adaptations of Uzamaki, and it is still considered one of Ito’s signature works.

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For more horror manga, you might try the rest of Junji Ito’s library. Alternatively, “Parasyte” by Hitoshi Iwaaki, or “Panorama of Hell” by Hideshi Hino are both also worth a read. You might also enjoy the Lovecraft adaptations of Gou Tenabe.

#5 – Monsters

By Barry Windsor-Smith

Published in 2021 by Fantagraphics

Barry Windsor-Smith is well known in the comic book community with a career spanning over 35 years. Though many know him from his time writing and illustrating for Conan the Barbarian, he is perhaps even better known for writing and illustrating the first “Weapon X” storyline for Marvel comics.

Monsters, his most recent work, shares a few themes with Weapon X – namely that of mad military scientists performing experiments on genetically altered humans and the predictably disastrous results. But where the Weapon X series couches these themes in a comfortable layer of comic book action and melodrama, Monsters lays them and other incredibly difficult concepts on painfully direct display.

Horror is a genre where difficult content is oftentimes expected, but I have to warn anyone picking up Monsters about the incredibly believable nature of the horror presented in the pages, either thinly veiled behind the science fiction of the plot – or not veiled at all. War and family trauma fill the stark edges of every frame till they drip over, and there is little of the fun ‘comic book camp’ that would normally be employed to take the edge off. Monsters can be a hard read, and emotionally exhausting – but equally compelling.

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“Razorblades, The Horror Magazine Book One.” with various authors including James Tynion IV, Steve Foxe and Ram V. This is also not for the faint of heart, this anthology features some truly haunting shorts that can be difficult to read as well.

#6 – Somna: A Bedtime Story

By Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay

Published in 2024 by DSTLRY

Somna is not a childhood bedtime story – though the reason it deserves an 18+ rating has more to do with eroticism than horror. Somna follows the story of Ingrid, the wife of a sexually repressed witch hunter in the 1600s. Over three issues, she navigates a waking mystery involving the execution of a local ‘witch’ and her sleeping explorations of her own sexuality at the (often roving) hands of some dark, unnamed entity.

One of the compelling aspects of this folk horror miniseries is the artistic shift between the two creators. Cloonan illustrates Ingrid’s waking story in a crisp, classic comic art style; her wide eyes bright as they take in the tidily bordered world around her that is growing darker by degrees. Lotay takes over the art when Ingrid falls asleep, and the scenes in which she meets her dark entity are emotionally delivered with warm colors and soft edges giving the art a nearly impressionistic quality. In some of the dream pages the panels are nearly undefined, letting your eye flow between story beats without the careful narrative construction that keeps comics flowing at their safe and predictable linear pace.

There are some valid criticisms that the story Somna chooses to tell is not one of sexual empowerment or even one of women’s liberation. The world Ingrid lives in is bleak, which makes the release found in her dreams even more a temptation to her despite her fear for the consequences. At the end of the day, the plot will tread ground that is very familiar to those who enjoy folk horror, but it’s still a fun ride along the way and a visually stunning graphic novel.

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Taking sexuality in a very different direction is “Black Hole” by Charles Burns, a surreal and haunting body horror tinged fable about a group of mutating teens budding sexuality.

#7 – Hellboy

Created by Mike Mignola
Published 1993 (and onward) by Dark Horse Comics

Though I had hopped to avoid the most widely known properties here, it is hard to give an honest sampler plate of horror comics without including Hellboy somewhere in the mix. At the same time, he’s difficult to place – because over the many iterations of Hellboy, some have been merely horror inspired, while others have brought those same horror elements to the forefront.

Most people are familiar with Hellboy from the live action movies – predominately the two Guillermo Del Toro installments (though I do think David Harbour deserves a pat on the back for his turn as Big Red – he did the best he could in a serious case of “wrong place, wrong time”). Those movies focus somewhat significantly on Hellboy as a superhero – a product of their time during the rise of superhero movies in the early 2000s. However, many of the comics turn us heavier into the horror elements of the character’s backstory and design, and Mignola does an amazing job in some of his turns with the character at taking elements of history and mythology and bringing out the scary in them.

One such series is “Wake the Devil”, published in five issues from June to October of 1996. While it includes a lot of the classic comic book twists and turns, the story still has some of the classic supernatural horror feel. The art is notable for its flat, dark lines – blacks and grays that make the appearance of Agent Hellboy’s red skin striking among them that make it feel like a horror film noir.

Another recommendation that most Hellboy fans will give you, if you’re looking for an even shorter introduction to the franchise, is “Pancakes.” The two-page story of how Hellboy cuts his ties with hell after tasting pancakes with syrup is a great example of the type of cheeky comedy the series is also known for. “Hellboy The Chained Coffin and Others” is the Hellboy anthology that features some of Mignola’s best pages and one of his most lauded stories is “The Corpse”, which was originally published 2 pages at a time as backend content for another comic, but that gives the story a rhythmic flow to the art and the action in a way that ultimately really serves this retelling of an Irish folktale.

If you like this, you might also like: Aside from Hellboy’s solo book, the BPRD series that features him actually ran longer and is the other mainline title in that universe. “The Girl From The Other Side “is a fairytale that matches the moody folklore inspired vibe of especially the Mignola drawn Hellboy comics, and “Harrow County” is another similar title.

#8 – Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees

By Patrick Horvath
Published in 2024 by IDW Publishing

Have you ever wondered what would have happened if one of the Berenstein Bears was secretly a serial killer? And if said friendly, pastel bear had to go on a Dexter-esque hunt for another serial killer that was threatening their carefully concealed trail? Probably not, but that just means that Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees is the serial killer comic book you didn’t know you needed.

The story of Beneath the Trees is contained neatly in six pastel-colored issues that have been collected into one graphic novel that at first glance looks like a collection of Richard Scarry art (More like Richard SCARY – Ok I’ll stop.) But reducing this work to the draw of its gimmick would be doing it a disservice – the writing does an excellent job of exploring the point of view of a serial killer. There’s no question that what Samantha does is horrible, but we’re still drawn in by the intricate storytelling and we’re invested in seeing whether she manages to find her rival killer.

If you like this, you may also like: “Weathercraft” by Jim Woodring is a wordless story that works as a surreal and at times grotesque parable of sorts about a set of anthropomorphic animal creatures depicted in meticulous 1930s cartoon style. “Feral” by Tony Fleecs follows the horror of indoor cats trapped outside during a rabies outbreak, treating their plight like a zombie survival story.

#9 – The Nasty

By John Lees (Writer) and Adam Cahoon (Artist)

Published in 2024 by Vault Comics

The Nasty pursues the fun meta-trope of a group of teens trying to create a horror movie, and getting more than they bargained for. This time the tongue-in-cheek references and horror movie lingo are couched in the 1980s, giving a nostalgic feel that reminds us of 80s teenage coming of age stories (or even “Clerks”) rather than the “kids on bikes” stories that were re-popularized with the rise of “Stranger Things”.

This supernatural slasher story relies on fun characters and an interesting (if not altogether unique) hook to keep the story going. The art is casual and fun, calling to mind other bright and soft edged “Teen Comics” like Archie or Scott Pilgrim, though still less cartoonish than those notable properties.

The dialogue can feel a little expository at times, and the plotline won’t require a lot of deep critical thought to follow – but that’s on-brand for the slasher genre, and “The Nasty” delivers a lot of the genre’s creep without going too far into the blood-splattered gore that slashers tend to lean towards.

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“My Favorite Thing Is Monsters” by Emil Ferris is another story featuring a youthful protagonist, this time a 10 year old monster girl who is trying to solve the mystery of a neighbor’s death in a haunted noir-lensed 1960s Chicago. While not strictly horror per se (and a love letter to a different era than the 80s), it’s very much for fans of the genre.

#10 – The Nice House on the Lake

By James Tynion IV (Writer) and Alvaro Martinez Bueno (Artist)
Published 2021 by DC Blacklabel (The sequel is currently being released by the newly relaunched Vertigo Comics, a DC imprint)

I will admit to this being one of my favorite horror projects, which is why I not only saved the last spot on my list for it but also refrained from including other well regarded post-apocalyptic comics to make sure that “The Nice House on the Lake” had room to fill that spot.

“The Nice House on the Lake” follows ten friends brought together by their mutual friend Walter for a relaxing lake house weekend. However, not long after they arrive and get comfortable Walter drops a confession on them – outside the area of the lake house the world has ended. They will be safe, they will be comfortable – but they can never leave, and everything and everyone they loved outside of those at this lake house weekend are gone.

The story slips back and forth between the present and the past, using flashbacks to establish Walter’s connection to each of the characters and their connections to each other. The story focuses on the characters themselves, and there’s quite a few of them to keep track of. However, the choices they make will have lasting consequences for them in this tiny haven in the end of the world.

Martinez Bueno’s art is modern but not constrained in style, with lots of bleeding lines and creative uses of color and light. The dread of the story is oftentimes pulled taught across the gentleness of the setting at a macro level – it really is a nice house on a very beautiful lake. However as we spiral in towards horrifying revelations and strained moments of the characters’ discoveries, the art spirals in with us to show the terrifying edges underneath this tranquil exterior.

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“Wytches” by Scott Snyder and Jock is a psychological supernatural horror story that centers around a girl and her parents as she becomes tormented by supernatural forces. The family dynamic is important in this one.