The Dark Horse Book of Hauntings

Here’s a book Dark Horse put out back in 2003, and it’s  still in print, so it won’t even be any trouble for you to find it.

Like the title says, it’s a book full of stories about hauntings and ghosts of all kinds. It’s a classy piece of work, hardcover, beautifully put-together, with an unusual mix of stories and storytelling styles.

We start out with what’s probably the strongest story in the book — “Gone” by Mike Richardson and P. Craig Russell. It’s about a couple of kids daring each other to go into the local deserted old house. When one of them finally takes the dare, he doesn’t come back out. It’s a deeply creepy, eerie story, and it’ll stick with you for a long time. There’s also a great Hellboy story by Mike Mignola, with Big Red stumbling into an unusual haunting; the very first “Beasts of Burden” tale by Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, featuring a haunted doghouse; a story by Randy Stradley and Paul Chadwick in which a ghost and an odor haunt a teenager; and an interesting tale by Uli Oesterle about a haunted tattoo.

And there’s more in here than just comics. There’s an old turn-of-the-century ghost story called “Thurnley Abbey” by Perceval Landon. I’ve been a fan of these old ghost stories for years — the language is always a bit archaic and the storytelling style is about as non-modern as you can get, but dang, those guys knew how to tell a good ghost yarn back then. There’s also an interview with L.L. Dreller, a seance medium. I’ve got not much to say about that one — I don’t believe in such things, but I do think it’s an interesting addition to the book.

Verdict: Thumbs up. You’ve got Beasts of Burden, Hellboy, the previously-mentioned and awesomely spooky “Gone,” and much more. You’ve got the old story by Perceval Landon. The whole thing is just packed full of excellent ghost stories.

I said before that this is a classy book — for one thing, it’s hardcover, and there ain’t nothing like hardcover to class up the joint. But the design of the book itself just makes it feel like they really went all out to make a book anyone would feel proud of. They definitely went out of their way to evoke older ghost story books — the illustrations by Gary Gianni of Landon’s old ghost story take the style of old magazine illustrations, the frontispiece of the book is an illustration by Gustave Dore from “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and several of the stories seem to be based on classic Victorian ghost tales.

It’s great reading for Halloween. Heck it’s great reading for any time at all. Go pick it up.

Today’s Cool Links:

• An old BBC adaptation of M.R. James’ classic ghost story “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come for You, My Lad.'” Quiet, low-key, very spooky.
• Heck, you wanna watch a bunch of old horror flicks? Roger Ebert has ten complete ones on his website for you. Just click play and enjoy some of the classics.
• The genius of “Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein“
• Joshua Hoffine’s horror photography is to die for.
• I know, I know, every time Kate Beaton posts new comics, I put a link here. But who cares — this time, she’s drawing Dracula cartoons.

Uzumaki

Uzumaki is a horror manga by an artist named Junji Ito. It’s set in a small town called Kurôzu-cho, and our lead characters are a pretty high school girl named Kirie and her bookish older boyfriend Shuichi. What’s it about?

Bear with me here, okay?

The book is about the horror of spirals.

I know how it sounds, so let’s talk a bit more about it. We start out in the first chapter with Shuichi’s father strangely obsessed with spiral shapes of all kinds. He collects spirals, sits in alleyways staring at spiral shapes on walls, and generally behaves really, really strangely. His family wisely tells him to cut it out, and he responds by learning how to make his own spirals — by spinning his eyes in opposite directions and by doing this to his tongue.

You can just imagine how well that goes over. He later commits suicide by climbing into a wooden tub and contorting his entire body into a spiral. Shuichi’s mother acquires her own obsession with spirals after the funeral, but instead she’s utterly terrified of all spirals, including the ones inside her own body.

Later elements in the stories include a classmate’s horrifying spiral scar, a boy who is run over by a car and ends up wrapped in a spiral around the front wheel, people who slowly transform into giant snails, and a gang of pregnant women in the hospital who have begun using hand drills to kill patients so they can drink their blood.

Yeah, Kurôzu-cho is a really messed-up place.

What seems like a completely innocuous image ramps up quickly from something you notice in ferns or snail shells or eddys in water into something that you see almost everywhere and that grows more and more ominous as time goes by.

It’s not perfect, of course — the chapter with the spiral hair is a bit underwhelming until the end, and as the town starts to decay after the typhoon, the story hits a lull for several chapters — but on the whole, it’s really intensely freaky stuff.

Junji Ito’s artwork is absolutely nightmarish, in all the good ways you want from a horror comic — every gory, bizarre, terrifying moment is there in all the gruesome detail you could dream of. And it all adds up to a climax that casts the village of Kurôzu-cho as a modern-day Japanese counterpart to H.P. Lovecraft’s Innsmouth, Massachusetts or Stephen King’s Derry, Maine.

“Uzumaki” is available in three volumes, starting with this one. Remember, Japanese manga reads, for Western readers, backwards — it takes a little doin’ to get used to reading a book from back to front and from right to left, but the brain-breaking horror in this story is definitely worth the trouble.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Could it be I’ve never ordered y’all to watch “The Cat with Hands“? Consider yourself so ordered. Four minutes of super-creepy fear for your pre-Halloween festivities.
• Neil Gaiman’s new idea: for Halloween, give your friends scary books.
• This guy calls himself the “Painter of Dark” and specializes in faux-Kincade paintings of haunted houses.
• John Seavey has his thoughts on the upcoming DC Universe Online game.

On this date, horror/fantasy/sci-fi writer H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890. It’s his 120th birthday! Yay!

For you non-horror fans (it’s a pretty sure bet that people who love horror already know who HPL is), Howard Phillips Lovecraft wrote mainly for the old pulp magazines like “Weird Tales” — he was an obscure writer when he died, but his influence has grown greatly over the decades. He’s now considered to be one of the most influential horror writers ever — only Edgar Allan Poe is more important.

Lovecraft’s specialty was what’s now called cosmic horror, in which the universe is a cold and utterly uncaring place, and humanity is a completely insignificant species, prone to being wiped out at any time by the monstrously alien deities that, for now, slumber near us.

Lovecraft’s Big Bad is definitely Cthulhu, an immense octopoid god that sleeps in an ancient sunken city somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. And a common thread through his stories is that anyone who learns the real truth about the universe — that we’re specks with outsized egos, that we could be wiped out by impossibly powerful creatures that can barely even notice us, that the cosmos operates in an utterly alien fashion that our science can’t even begin to explain — is doomed to madness, despair, and suicide.

And Lovecraft was able to make that intensely nihilistic vision work for readers. In fact, his Cthulhu Mythos has been picked up and carried forward by countless writers, fans, and critics who’ve written new stories about his concepts — and have created movies, music, art, games… and comics, too. Here are a few that’ve gotten at least some of their inspiration from Lovecraft…

So everyone celebrate with a Cthulhu cake and Nyarlathotep punch and Yog-Sothoth pie!

B.P.R.D.: 1947 #4

Jacob Stegner thinks he’s the only member of the team from the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense who’s left alive, after everyone else was killed by vampires, but he learns, from a mysterious old cat-controlling lady that’s not so — Simon Anders is still alive, but he’s in the clutches of Annaliese and Katharina Brezina, vampire sisters who officially died in 1701 after long years of debuchery and murder. Does Anders have any chance of survival against these monsters?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Good action and suspense, excellent dialogue, and fun artwork. And we get appearances by creepy Russian demon girl Varvara and much-less-creepy pancake-loving demon boy Hellboy. A nice little dose of pre-Halloween postwar scariness.

Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #7

Hellboy has been given the choice of two crowns to wear — he can become the actual-fer-realz True King of England, the last ancestor of King Arthur, or he can become the King of Demons, the Beast of the Apocalypse. His friend Alice has faith that he’s going to become the King of England and the savior of the world, but Hellboy has his doubts. In a dream, he battles his own demonic self and learns that taking either crown will eventually lead to him wearing both — and if he refuses, Nimue, the new Queen of the Witches, will be able to destroy the world on her own. Can Hellboy battle against fate and his own nature? Oh, and we also get a backup story about Sir Henry Hood, Witchfinder of the 1600s, and one of his battles against the Devil.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Lots of apocalyptic awesomeness. Lots of eerie, creepy stuff. Mike Mignola is playing his cards close to the vest, so I really can’t tell what he’s planning for the future? Is Hellboy going to become the Beast of the Apocalypse? Is the Hellboy-verse coming to an end?

Crossed #7

You remember the Crossed, right? They’re normal humans who’ve contracted some sort of disease that turns them into gleefully sadistic, psychotic killers, and the only way to tell them apart from normal people is the bloody red cross-shaped rash that develops over their faces. Our small pack of survivors are on the run from the band of Crossed freaks from a couple issues back, who’ve managed to track them across a thousand miles of desert. They try to put as much distance between the Crossed as they can, but they get ambushed while forging a river — one of their number gets a minor gunshot wound, they all get a scare — and Patrick, Cindy’s young son, gets washed down the river. Luckily, they’re able to wipe out some of the Crossed pack and find Patrick — but this issue still has a downer ending.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Brutal. As I’ve said before, don’t read this if you’ve got kids who can get their hands on it, don’t read it if you’ve got anything against monstrously grim horror, and don’t read it if you hate stories that don’t have happy endings. But for everyone else, read it, read it, read it. This may be the best pure horror you’ll find in a comic book.

On this day in 1888, the body of Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper, was found.

That’s as good an excuse as any for us to talk about “From Hell.”

“From Hell” was written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Eddie Campbell. It was originally published spread out across several different magazines, but eventually compiled into a single book in 1999. It’s a gigantic book — almost 600 pages.

It’s about Jack the Ripper, of course. It’s a fictionalized account, obviously, following Inspector Frederick Abberline as he investigates the killings, a group of Whitechapel prostitutes as they slowly realize that they — very specifically, in fact — are being stalked by the killer, and it follows Sir William Gull, royal physician to Queen Victoria and the man behind the gory murders.

Oops, was that a spoiler? No, believe it or not, it isn’t. We know almost from the beginning that Gull is Saucy Jack. This isn’t a whodunit. It’s a whydunit.

I think “From Hell” is my favorite of Moore comics — better than “Watchmen,” “V for Vendetta,” or “The Killing Joke.” I got into it because I’ve always been a horror fan — in fact, I’m the only person in my immediate or extended family who cares for horror, which makes me, well, the only person in my family who likes horror. Anyway, as a horror nut, serial killer stories, and especially stories about Old Leather-Apron, have always appealed to me. And “From Hell” ladles on buckets of horror. Not just gore — and there is a lot of gore, and I mean a lot — but suspense, paranoia, psychological chills. It’s a very scary, creepy story about the best known but most mysterious serial killer in history, and horror fans will absolutely love it.

But on top of that, I’d developed a taste for conspiratorial fiction and stuff about secret societies — books like Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson’s “Illuminatus!” trilogy, Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum,” and the more demented style of modern conspiracy theories. And “From Hell” actually manages to scratch that itch, too, because it’s crammed full of conspiracies, esotericism, sacred geography, secret history, weird stuff both subtle and spectacular. In the story, Gull manages to make mystical connections with poet/painter William Blake and 20th century serial killers like Peter Sutcliffe. He sees visions of Adolf Hitler and WWII and even sees the 1990s — he even claims to have created all of it himself, through the murders.

None of it seems like it should have any place in a story about Jack the Ripper, but once it’s introduced, it seems to make perfect sense. I get irritated by Moore’s obsessions from time to time, but it really is a testament to his strength as a writer that he can shoehorn all these unconnected elements into a single story, and it all works.

The full collected edition also includes a gigantic appendix detailing, almost page by page, which elements of the story were based on fact, which were invented, and which were conjecture or theory, and it all closes with an illustrated essay called “Dance of the Gull Catchers,” which distills the entire history of Ripperology, its movers and shakers, and its leading theories and fixations down into a dozen or so pages. And it makes sense, and it’s entertaining. Heck, I remember laughing out loud when Moore made the Jack the Ripper/Cattle Mutilators connection, partly because it was completely mad, and partly because, holy macaroni, it had that perfect conspiracy-theory frission that feels so good to us conspiracy fanboys.

“From Hell” is a near-perfect mix of horror, detective drama, and conspiracy theories. I wish the movie (which I’ve never managed to see) hadn’t put so many people off of the comic, because it’s one of Alan Moore’s best and most ambitious stories.

You can probably find it at your local comic shop right now. Go pick it up.

Even I am sometimes amazed by some of the awful comics they’ll make. Case in point:

That, my friends, is one great big bushel of crazy. And not the good crazy, either.

(You can read about this nightmare-inducing thing in more detail here.)

This weekend, I was really, really wishing I lived in the U.K. I learned about a show that airs on the BBC that I really, really wish I could watch — but you can’t even watch episodes on the BBC’s website if you live on this side of the Atlantic.

“Being Human” is a horror/drama/comedy about three housemates — Mitchell is a vampire, George is a werewolf, and Annie is a ghost. Mitchell’s a bit of a playa, but he’s on the outs with the rest of the local vampire population because he’s trying to quit drinking blood. George is a completely awkward geek who had to quit his job and flee his family when he found out he turned into a monster every full moon. Annie is extremely insecure and nervous about even leaving the house she died in because she worries she’ll fade away. And while it does have comedic elements, there’s a good bloody splash of horror, too, and it really seems like a very dark show, especially considering the local vampires’ plans for the human population and George’s painful, bone-cracking transformations.

In other words, this show was made for me.

There was a pilot episode on the BBC last February that got so much positive response from viewers that they decided to give it a full season, although they also replaced most of the cast members. You can see the pilot episode on YouTube, along with a few trailers and the highly recommended and very spooky “prequels” for the three main characters.

Anyway, it sucks that I won’t be able to see any more of this show ’til the BBC releases it on DVD in the US. But when they do, bam, I’m snagging this one, job or no job.

What’s that ya say? Tomorrow’s Halloween? Well, by gum, let’s dig up some nice monstery comics and see how they look?

Hellboy: In the Chapel of Moloch

Hey, Mike Mignola is back writing and drawing Hellboy again! The technical term for this is: “totally sweet.” Hellboy investigates a case where an artist of middling talent takes up residence in a spooky church and sculpts up a honkin’ huge statue of a demon called Moloch. And the statue actually bleeds when you cut it! Turns out the church was the headquarters, centuries ago, of a Moloch-worshiping cult, and the forces of Hell still have influence here. Will Hellboy go for a simple, quiet exorcism? Or a great deal of smashing and breaking and shooting?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Man, it’s great to see Mignola drawing Hellboy again. He ain’t lost a trick, either — this is spooky, moody, eerie — and yeah, very action-packed stuff. And the writing remains top-notch. Mignola drags up all kinds of creepy historical and semi-historical tidbits to help move the story along. A cult that roasted babies alive? A saint who fought in the Crusades even though he’d been decapitated? Ooky, and fun. More please, Mr. Mignola.

Monster-Size Hulk

Four different stories as Hulk fights… MOOOONSTERRRRS! We get one where Hulk takes on Frankenstein’s Monster, possibly even returning him to standard Marvel continuity. The second story features Werewolf by Night. The third one is a short little two-page comedy starring Marvel’s classic giant monsters. The last one is neat — mostly text by Peter David, with a couple of illustrations, as the Hulk takes on Dracula himself.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I loved the one with Frankenstein, and I thought the story with Dracula was outstanding. This is the Dracula from Marvel’s classic ’70s series “Tomb of Dracula” with a ruthless, megalomaniacal, grandstanding Count Dracula — a character I’ve long enjoyed.

Marvel Adventures: The Hulk #13

Marvel’s all-ages books all seem to be exceptionally good, and this one is a lot of fun. The Hulk tangles with the Living Pharaoh, and he’s managed to enslave most of Marvel’s heroes by turning them into mummies! And they’re pretty creepy mummies, too! Can Hulk, Rick Jones, and their pet monkey (Um, what?) figure out a way to stop the Pharaoh in time?

Verdict: Thumbs up. I’m impressed that they managed to make what’s basically a kids’ version of “Marvel Zombies.” Yes, it’s a little scary, but still fun.

The Goon #29

Skinny is back from the dead as Mr. Wicker — he’s basically a wood-covered, burning zombie. Yeah, takes all kinds. And the orphans get a new playmate — Merle the Werewolf’s son, Roscoe the Werepup. Roscoe claims to be able to fart and whistle at the same time — we’ll see if this amazing talent eventually becomes useful.

Verdict: Thumbs up again. This one has zombies, werewolves, wood monsters, and more. Great, if slightly crude, Halloween reading. But you wouldn’t want the Goon to be anything but.

Crossed #1

Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows’ much-anticipated horror series gets started, as a small group of people try to survive in a world that’s been wrecked by an epidemic of mass murder. This is a story similar to your typical flesh-eating zombie story, but instead of the walking dead, the problem is that something is causing people to become extremely enthusiastic homicidal maniacs. The only way to tell them from normal people, aside from their really happy and evil smiles, is the bloody red cross-shaped rash that forms on their faces. We follow the survivors briefly on their extremely dreary struggle to get through another day, we get a brief flashback to the first day of the plague, and we get what may be a moment of hope — can the Crossed by stopped by simple table salt?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Imagine the dreariest, most hopeless, most pessimistic zombie movie you’ve ever seen. Then make it even more depressing. That’s “Crossed” for ya. The story is extraordinarily violent — the Crossed get what looks like a sexual charge out of violent murder, so there’s tons and tons of gruesome slaughter going on here. Parents, more than any other horror comic out there, you shouldn’t be leaving this around for the kids to pick up — there’s hyperviolence, gore, cuss words, nudity, torture, and the graphic slaughter of a family. And yeah, I’m still giving it a thumbs up. For adult horror fans, this is a brilliantly crafted zombie story with a few twists. Mark my words, someone’s eventually going to make a very disturbing movie out of this someday.

B.P.R.D.: The Warning #4

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense is unable to do anything but watch as giant robots destroy Munchen, Germany. Abe Sapien and Johann Strauss take some soldiers back underground to try to figure out something about the subhuman savages who somehow managed to build the robots. The eventually find a chamber with some of the subhumans, two giant monsters, and some kind of huge engine. Abe kills one of the monsters with a rocket launcher, then Johann possesses it so he can kill the other one. Meanwhile, the other soldiers start planting explosives all over the giant engine. But will destroying the engine do anything to stop the crisis aboveground?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Wonderful pulpy goodness. And I love the idea of a dead, zombified giant monster eating another one — inventive, creepy, and goofy all at the same time.

Whooo dawg, the apartment is still cookin’ like an oven, and I feel like I been wrung out like a rag. The A/C is still dead, and taking cold showers and sleeping under fans didn’t really help me stay cool or sleep very well. So I don’t feel like reviewing any comics where happy things happen to happy people. I feel like reviewing comics where very, very, very bad things happen to people who weren’t very nice to begin with.

 

Crossed #0

A nice little prologue for Garth Ennis’ upcoming horror series. A pleasant evening out at the local diner suddenly turns into car crashes, plane crashes, a nuke, and bloody mass murder. This is basically a zombie story, except the butchers aren’t dead — they’re normal people who’ve caught some condition that turns them into gleefully psychotic killers. And the only way to tell them apart (aside from the severed body parts they tend to carry around and their evil, evil smiles) is the ugly red rash that forms a cross over their faces.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Mayhem and butchery? Gimme more o’ that. A nice claustrophobic, paranoid, ultra-violent beginning to the story. Can’t wait for the rest. Oh, and this is not a comic for kids. There is a great deal of violence and swearing and worse stuff that I’m not going to describe, because the head honchos here will protest. “You said you’d never use that word in combination with that word in describing that particular very rude act! Much less with a knife wound OR a kitten! For shame!” Fine, fine. Anyway, if you ain’t grown up enough to handle the rough stuff, don’t read it.

 

House of Mystery #4

Fig continues to try to adjust to her new life in the House of Mystery. She chats with a crazy ham enthusiast, fights with cranky Cress, and tries to beat up the house with a sledgehammer. Meanwhile, our spotlight story this issue is told by the punk witch princess Daphne — she tells about her flight from her witch-filled home dimension before the robotic invasion of the Thinking Man’s Army. To hide her properly, she, along with her bodyguard, a talking leopard named Floyd, gets teleported into a mundane world and deprived of her true name. To return home, all she has to do is kiss her true love and learn her true name. Unfortunately, she and Floyd have a great deal more fun just hacking up her boyfriends whenever they don’t make the cut.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The main story is a bit drab, but Daphne and Floyd are so fun and twisted and bloody and cynical, it pushes it straight over the top.