There’s nothing like Halloween. The autumn air is crisp, the leaves crunch under your feet, kids are out trick-or-treating and you have an excuse to fill your yard with monsters. Well, in a normal year anyway.
But just because we can’t party or go out with the kiddos doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a good scare. So we here at Xavier Files gathered around the campfire, like the kids in “Are you Afraid of the Dark?” (Remember that show? No? Damn, I’m old), to share some of our favorite horror comics on the spookiest day of the year.
Matt’s (First) Pick: Locke & Key by Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez and Jay Fotos
After a tragedy befalls the patriarch of the Locke family, his wife and children move to the family’s ancestral home, Lovecraft, Massachusetts’ Keyhouse, for a fresh start. What the three Locke children discover is something out of their wildest dreams and darkest nightmares. The house contains magical keys that each have a special ability. One key can open a door to anywhere. One key can make you a giant. One key lets you leave your body and float around as a ghost. One key opens your head and lets you put knowledge in and take knowledge and parts of your personality out. And that’s barely scratching the surface. But what seems like wondrous fun becomes something darker as the kids and their friends are drawn into a conflict with an old enemy of the family, one who wishes to find one particular key to open a dark doorway to a place full of unspeakable horrors. A coming-of-age story filled with wonder, horror and real emotion, and beautifully illustrated, “Locke & Key” doesn’t disappoint from beginning to end.
Austin’s Pick: The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror
Even now, as The Simpsons continues to churn out episodes of wildly varying quality as the number of years it’s been on the air climbs well into middle age, the annual “Treehouse of Horror” Halloween episodes remain an annual highlight, and from 1995 to 2017, Bongo Comics joined in the tradition, churning out a yearly Treehouse of Horror anthology every September. Like the TV Treehouse episodes, these issues are divided into multiple, shorter stories, and like the TV episodes, the quality of each individual segment can vary wildly. But the overall experience was an always entertaining, occasionally horrifying and wildly experimental Halloween treat, featuring the work of a wide range of indie and mainstream writers, pencilers and cartoonists, encouraged to cut loose within the expansive world of The Simpsons.
Ian’s Pick: Vision by Julia Gfrőrer
Released just a few months ago, Vision is the latest from Gfrőrer at Fantagraphics. Vision is not scary in the immediate sense, but deftly accumulates dread and anxiety. Its characters are confined in an unrelenting grid of panels, and the scenes progress slowly, every moment in time drawn out and examined. The horror in Vision comes less from the demanding spectral figure that haunts the main character’s mirror and more from the painful and biting way Gfrőrer’s characters live their lives. Jealousy, lust and cataract couchings drive the story forward in a highly effective combination of body horror and 19th-century Spiritualism. By the time the book ends, I felt just as released as the characters, set free from the cursed world within Vision.
Zack’s Pick: Hellboy Library Edition Vol. 2: The Chained Coffin, The Right Hand of Doom, and Others by Mike Mignola
Mike Mignola’s Hellboy is a seminal work, of that there is no question. While the series as a whole has a mythic story that takes place across the planes of existence, this volume focuses on the smaller, quieter tales. This is a beautiful, oversized collection filled with one-shot stories, closer to a campfire ghost story than an action comic. The economy of storytelling Mignola uses here is masterful, his moody art and deep use of shadows convey sadness and dread in equal measure. This collection has vampires, werewolves, demons and zombies. Small, spooky stories that make the perfect companion for Halloween.
Forrest’s Pick: Harrow County Library Edition Vol. 1 by Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook
Taking place in the deeply secretive, understated and backwards fictional Southern Harrow County that writer Bunn clearly has a very deserved affinity for, watercolor-washed horror comic Harrow County starts as a kind of narrow, dark coming-of-age story about a young girl, Emmy Crawford, reconciling with her identity and family’s history (She may be the reincarnation of a supremely evil witch), but it quickly blossoms into something much broader and richer.
A sprawling narrative about secrets, shared trauma and the relationships between people and the land, Harrow County transforms, gradually and eerily, into a fully realized take on the ills and boons of community, especially the inherent danger of taking others’ hospitality for granted. The malaise of unexplored swamps and ruins, giant goat demons, skinless boys and literal witch burnings brought painstakingly to life by artist Tyler Crook help, too.
Will’s Pick: Winnebago Graveyard by Steve Niles, Alison Sampson, Stephanie Paitreau, Eiko Takayama and Aditya Bidikar
The horror of the Image Comics miniseries Winnebago Graveyard is the best sort of horror: dirty, fast, long on gore and short on exposition — the grindiest of grindhouse splatter shows. Dialogue is sparse. The mood is tense. The book is good. The story, though? Not complicated: Mom, stepdad and mom’s fussy teenage kid roll into a dusty tourist trap only to lose their Winnebago wheels shortly before everything goes to hell. The fun thing — the thing I love about this strange little book — is that we don’t get much of an explanation as to why this town is a hellmouth; the bad stuff just happens — and if that doesn’t speak to 2020, I don’t know what does. Winnebago Graveyard is the closest thing you’ll see to “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (with maybe a pinch of “Midsommar”) in a comic book, and in this genre, I can’t think of a higher compliment.
Matt’s (Final) Pick: Nailbiter by Joshua Williamson, Mike Henderson and Adam Guzowski
On the list of towns with a dark secret, the setting of so many great horror and suspense stories, Buckaroo, Oregon, the setting of Image Comics’ Nailbiter, belongs right near the top. Buckaroo is the birthplace of 16 of the country’s most vicious serial killers, called Buckaroo Butchers, and no one knows why. But when an FBI profiler disappears after saying he has discovered the reason, it’s up to a disgraced NSA agent, the local sheriff, the “weird girl” everyone expects to be the next Buckaroo Butcher and Edward Charles Warren, the most recent Butcher — known in the press as the Nailbiter, who was released from jail on a technicality — to learn the secrets of the town. The series is a tense mystery, slowly revealing bits of the mystery of Buckaroo while building a cast of interesting, quirky and horrifying characters. Artist Henderson is a master of horror comics, not only providing memorable designs for all 16 of the Butchers, but working with writer Williamson to do something comics rarely pull off: using page turns to create the equivalent of a film jump scare on multiple occasions. If you’re a fan of classic slasher movies, Nailbiter is a perfect spooky treat.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
