5 Spooky Summer Comics
Halloween is still a few months away, but summer is the best time for late-night reading binges, and what better to read in the dark than some horror comics? Luckily for all of the horror-loving boils and ghouls out there, there are plenty of spooky series on the stands this summer.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina – Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa (W), Robert Hack (A)
Like Afterlife with Archie, Sabrina takes familiar family-friendly characters and places them in a straight-horror context. The witches in this story are dangerous, even monstrous, and Sabrina’s desire to explore her mortal heritage places her and the people around her in a precarious position. Her witch family isn’t funny or cutesy though; her aunts are shadowy and foreboding creatures who feast on human flesh (they look a lot more like Scott Snyder and Jock’s Wytches than the friendly faces on the old TV show). Hack’s painterly artwork is eerie and misty, a perfect match for Aguirre-Sacasa’s building tension. For a little Halloween in August, this is the book to check out.
Five Ghosts – Frank J. Barbiere (W), Chris Mooneyham (A), Lauren Affe (C)
Five Ghosts is a loving homage to pulp adventure comics, concerning a thief named Fabian Gray who has been possessed by the spirits of 5 literary characters/archetypes whose various powers he can harness. One of those spirits is a vampire, and this most recent arc has brought him to the forefront for a retro horror story. Gray meets up with Van Helsing and some other literary folks to fight vampires and other various monsters. The comic is never especially scary, but it’s atmospheric, largely thanks to Affe’s moody colour work and Mooneyham’s art, which perfectly evokes pulp comics while maintaining a modern sensibility. Monster battles, internal struggles, relationships tested and lost – what more do you need?
Harrow County – Cullen Bunn (W), Tyler Crook (A)
The final book on the list that’s set in the past, Harrow County makes a good companion piece to Sabrina. Emmy feels connected to the woods around her farmhouse and the “haints” she is sure reside there. She might be more connected than she realizes, leading to questions of identity and monstrosity mixed in with the spookems. This is prime Southern Gothic, both in Bunn’s idiosyncratic script and Crook’s painted art. It’s undoubtedly a horror comic, but it’s humans who may be the real monsters.
Southern Cross – Becky Cloonan (W), Andy Belanger (A), Lee Loughridge (C)
Moving onto the distant future, Southern Cross is a sci-fi/horror mash-up. Alex Braith is taking a trip to Titan to solve the mystery of her sister’s death. The ship is filled with mysterious characters who know more than they’re letting on, blending an Agatha Christie-style story with a futuristic environment. The eponymous Southern Cross ship is enormous and full of shadowy corridors, laying a sense of dread over the proceedings. Loughridge’s atmospheric colours enhance Belanger’s detailed, inky linework, while Cloonan writes the almost all of the characters as gruff and enigmatic. Fans of horror in space should give this one a shot.
Wolf – Ales Kot (W), Matt Taylor (A), Lee Loughridge (C)
There’s only been one issue so far of Wolf, I’m already sold. The double-sized debut introduces us to the rich world of Antoine Wolfe, a world where crime lords bribe and blackmail the supernaturally gifted and monsters deal with mundane human problems, like rent disputes. While the current Constantine series shows promise, Wolf is the Vertigo Hellblazer series’ spiritual successor. Kot’s script is R-rated, politically charged, and shows that humans can be more monstrous than supernatural beings. Lee Loughridge is on this book too, demonstrating adeptness with the horror genre, and Taylor isn’t afraid to slow the book down, throwing in some wordless pages and panels that lend a sense of normalcy to even the weirdest creatures. His character designs are perfect too; you can’t forget that you’re looking at monsters, but they’re outfitted in polo shirts and hoodies. The first issue ends on a great hook, so I have high hopes for this series.
There are many more books I could have mentioned, but these are some of my current favourites – what are yours?
