By Matt Hershberger
It is officially spooky season, which means it’s time to read and watch stuff that scares you silly. We’ve been expanding out our comics section for the past few years, and it turns out, a lot of the best comics are actually pretty scary!
What you’ll find below is a curated list of some of the best horror comics on the shelves at the Red Bank Public Library. Click the links and it’ll take you to the book’s catalog page, where you can place a hold on it!
The Walking Dead
Before it was a long running TV show, The Walking Dead was a hit comic book that ran for an astounding 193 issues. We have every single issue of this seminal zombie story on our shelves!
Gideon Falls
Gideon Falls is one of the biggest hit horror comics of the past few years — it centers around the mysterious Black Barn, an ominous building that appears in both the city and in the eponymous town, and which seems to bring death and madness in its wake.
Hellboy
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy remains one of the most beautifully drawn horror comics of all time. It follows Hellboy, a demon who was resurrected by the Nazis and Rasputin to rain terror down upon the world, but who was rescued by American scientists, and now spends his time battling the forces of darkness while grappling with his own destiny as the bringer of the apocalypse. The series is funny and scary and beautifully drawn, and it pulls on everything from old myths like Baba Yaga to the works of H.P. Lovecraft and John Carpenter.
Batman: The Long Halloween
Now considered one of the greatest Batman storylines of all time, The Long Halloween follows the Caped Crusader as he hunts a villain who kills people only on the holidays. It features some of the best of Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery. We also have a ton of the other great Batman stories on our shelves, including The Dark Knight Returns, Knightfall, and The Killing Joke.
Through the Woods
Em Carroll went viral over ten years ago with her stellar webcomic His Face All Red (which is still up at that link). Through the Woods is a collection of her spookier webcomics, including His Face All Red. We also have her book When I Arrived at the Castle, which is a PG-13 (at least) story about a werewolf and a vampire.
Infidel
Named to NPR’s “100 Favorite Horror Stories,” Infidel is a deeply creepy story about violent ghost that’s stalking a building that was recently bombed by a terrorist. When a Muslim girl moves in, she finds that the ghost has taken a particular disliking to her.
Fangs
Sarah Andersen is famous for her “Sarah’s Scribbles” comics, and Fangs holds on to her trademark cute style, but, you know, with bloodsucking and dismemberment thrown in. It’s a love story between a vampire and her werewolf boyfriend, and is perfect if you want something that’s a bit spooky, but is mostly just cute.
Something is Killing the Children
I mean, it’s there in the title. After a series of brutal child murders in a small town, monster hunter Erica Slaughter shows up to deal with the problem, which is not, as the townspeople first believe, a serial killer, but something much more dangerous.
Victor LaValle’s Destroyer
Victor LaValle is one of the best horror writers of the 21st century so far — Destroyer is his first dip into comics. It’s basically a retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but with a twist: the mad scientist is a mother whose son was gunned down by the police.
Saga of the Swamp Thing
Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing is one of the best runs in the history of comics, and while it touches on big issues like environmentalism and the nature of evil, at its core, it’s a monster-of-the-week serial. We’ve got the entire run on our shelves.
Dracula, Motherf**ker!
Alex de Campi’s take on Dracula is set in 1970’s Los Angeles, when an aging movie star decides to resurrect the world’s most famous vampire so she can stay young forever. This one’s a quick read, but the art is stunning.
Baltimore
Our second Mike Mignola entry on this list — Baltimore is set in an alternative universe where WWI ended because of a sudden plague of vampires. Lord Henry Baltimore, who inadvertently set off the plague, hunts the new evil — from vampires to gigantic spiders to killer crabs — to try and bring an end to the darkness that’s enveloping the European continent.
Revival
In Revival, a small town in rural Wisconsin finds that everyone who was killed on January 1st has come back to life on January 2nd. For detective Dana Cypress, it gives her an interesting opportunity: Her sister was murdered on January 1st, and now that she’s back, they can start to solve her murder. It’s an interesting take on the zombie trend, and the entire series is on our shelves.
John Constantine: Hellblazer
John Constantine is a working class warlock who seems to be on everyone’s bad side, from the local toughs to the Prince of Darkness. This reboot of the Constantine series is fantastic — it’s spooky, funny, smart, and sometimes, totally devastating. This is an ongoing series, we have the first two books on our shelves.
Anthony Bourdain’s Hungry Ghosts
Shortly before he died, Anthony Bourdain helped put together this anthology of food-based horror stories, based on the Buddhist idea of “hungry ghosts,” insatiable spirits who met unhappy ends. It includes recipes written by Bourdain himself.
Locke & Key
Locke & Key is another of the most popular new horror series to come out in comics in recent years — written by Joe Hill (the son of Stephen King), it tells the story of a family who move into an ancestral house after the death of their father, and discover that there is a spirit there who has a violent and unhealthy interest in the secrets in their house.
Bttm Fdrs
When two young hipsters move into a down-on-its-luck neighborhood to take advantage of the cheap rent, they discover that they are not entirely welcome — gentrification aside, something in the converted warehouse that they moved into seems not entirely right.
From Hell
When comics writer Alan Moore started writing about the famous Jack the Ripper murders, he decided the less interesting question was “who did this?” and that instead, we could choose to ask, “what kind of society could have produced this monster?” What he wrote is one of the best comics of all time, a sprawling conspiracy-laden epic in which no one is innocent.