Horror comics (Re-)Enter the Mainstream
They've been huge on KickStarter, now horror makes a big splash at Oni and Ghost Machine
🦸 COMIC BOOKS
EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 and HYDE STREET #1
Still playing catch up from San Diego Comic-Con and all the amazing comics I found there.
GOOD NEWS: Horror Comics have gone mainstream!
Horror comic have been HUGE on Kickstarter for a while, and it looks as if mainstream comics are starting to pay attention.
(Does this mean the other Kickstarter trends: public domain characters (especially Chthulu/fairy tales)? queer representation? NSFW variant covers?) are now poised to cross over into the mainstream? 🤔🤔🤔)
I attended Oni Press’s panel for its relaunch of EC Comics, starting with EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 which has become Oni’s best selling single issue ever. And panel attendees got a free first issue with an ultra-rare variant cover by Richard Corben.
I don’t usually go for all this variant cover stuff, but I do like free and I love Richard Corben.
And as I noted earlier, Oni/EC is premiering three new horror hosts, including one, The Grave-Digger who shares a namesake with a horror host from MY short comic with Don Nguyen in the NIGHTMARE THEATER 3-D anthology.
But that’s not all, I snagged a preview of HYDE STREET, an upcoming horror anthology from Image Comic’s new imprint GHOST MACHINE. Or, well, I think it’s horror anthology. It had a delightfully nasty story starring Pranky, The World’s Most Dangerous [Boy] Scout. It’s hard to tell how much it will be a loosely connected anthology from the one story in the preview, but it’s indebtedness to the old EC format (wherein a supernatural host narrates as well-deserved poetic justice is served to some poor sap) is evident.
Indeed, reading all these horror anthologies got me thinking how much modern horror comics owe, even 70 years later, to the format and conventions spearheaded by EC Comics, and wondering why that is.
Partly, having these comics banned in the 1950s anti-comics hysteria pretty much guaranteed horror fans would remember them with a rose-colored patina of nostalgia, while preventing horror comics from evolving over the decades as other comic genres did. A pity, too, can you imagine how EC would have dealt with the emerging counter-culture of the 60s and 70s? Honestly, I can’t but I bet it would have been absolutely wild.
Heck, maybe if horror comics had been allowed to continue, they would have grown stale and died out. (Remember, romance and Western comics were also hugely successful in the 1940s.) But I doubt it. One, the comics were good. Even reading them today, their subversive power is undiminished. And two, the format and conventions they spearheaded still endure today, because, well, they work.
Having a “host” introduce stories gives disparate stories a sense of connectedness, as well as characters that entices fans to return for the next issue, which I imagine is a concern for comics with no serialized elements.
So, you may ask, are you using the coincidence of you and EC/Oni sharing a horror host to try to finagle an “in” to pitch for the company. For now, no comment…
And P.S.
Pardon me while I get all Dad, but a few days ago I made this meme and now I’m sharing it any chance I get.
🤔But What Do You Think?🤔
Are Horror Comics the “Next Big Thing,” or just a flash in the pan?
Does the reliance on an EC format show a lack of originality, or just acknowledging a paradigm that works?
Should I never, ever share a meme I made again, at least until I pick up some actual Photoshop skills?