Where the Monsters Go: “I don’t read horror comics”

The Lost Boys was the first rated-R movie I ever saw. As such I guess it was the first real horror movie I ever saw, too, but as it wasn’t particularly scary even when I first saw it–thrilling and exciting, yeah, and totally awesome in a more-violent-Ghostbusters sorta way, but not scary–I don’t tend to count it. Anyway, if you recall, two of the main characters were Edgar and Allen Frog, a couple of crazy pseudo-survivalist teenage brothers who helped run their parents comic shop. (Okay, that part was scary, but only because it’s so accurate a reflection on how most small comic shops are run.) Our hero Corey Haim’s response when the brothers Frog try to get him to read an old funnybook about vampires? “I don’t read horror comics.” Neither, really, do I–because I’ve yet to find one that’s particularly horrifying.

This is not to say that there aren’t plenty of disturbing comics. Renee French, Hans Rickheit, Dave Cooper, some of Dan Clowes’s work, Jim Woodring, the occasional sequence in Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles–all can be either revolting or haunting, and in some cases both, but none of them have gotten my heart racing or kept me up at night like the best horror films or straight literature have. What’s come closest to that level? There are some things in the Clive Barker comic compilations that Checker has been releasing that are very good (such as Klaus Janson’s adaptation of the masterful short story “In the Hills, the Cities”), but much of the power of those works is from the prose stories they’re based on. Charles Burns’s Black Hole is very, very good, and I’ve got a feeling it’s building toward something genuinely frightening, but it’s still incomplete and therefore tough to evaluate. The only comic-book image I can think of that was tough to endure looking at for long in the same way that, say, the twins from The Shining or the chalk-white demon face in The Exorcist are, is of all things a splash page from the Man-Thing/Lizard issue of Brian Michael Bendis’s Spider-Man spinoff series Ultimate Marvel Team-Up. Artist John Totleben created an image of the Man-Thing and the Lizard that lined up perfectly with my monumental horror-image theories. But that’s really all I can think of–not a good sign considering how many freaking comics I’ve read and how likely I am to seek out the nasty stuff.

So consider this a bleg for recommendations. Got any horror comics that are actually, you know, scary? You can send me your thoughts here. I’ve heard good things about the manga series Uzumaki–anything else? Here’s your chance to help a horror fan in need….