Have a spooky Christmas
Word Balloons #1246: Some holiday-season comics bring chills for reasons besides the temperature
Since it’s both Friday the 13th and the middle of the holiday season, I’m going to recommend a few spooky/holiday mashup comics for this week’s column.
The Christmas season being spooky isn’t entirely a new phenomenon. In Victorian England, telling spooky stories around the fireplace in winter and especially on Christmas Eve was common.
Writers Jordan Hart and Chris Ryall had that tradition in mind with this December’s “Dread the Halls” horror anthology.
“The Victorians showed us horror pairs quite well with the holidays through their fireside ghost stories,” said Jordan Hart in a news release. “Dread the Halls honors this tradition with four festive tales of terror, each with individual narrative and visual styles. Chris and I wanted to make a stocking stuffer for any comic or horror fan. And thanks to mind-blowing covers, the issue doubles as a dreadful piece of holiday décor too.”
The extra-length one-shot collection contains four tales of terror, with interior art by Lee Ferguson (“Gone Fishing”), Jimmy Kucaj (“Krampus Hunters”), Walter Pax (“Northerners”), and Fabio Veras (“Dead Notes”).
“Dread the Halls is our gift to everyone who might expect to see their name on Santa's Naughty List, although anyone on the ‘Nice List’ who like their holiday season to have some added spice is invited to partake, too,” said Chris Ryall in a news release. “As a comic reader, I’ve always loved comic-book stories that fuse elements of Halloween and Christmas together in sweet and scary ways, and that’s what we set out to do here as well."
The revived EC Comics from Oni Press is also getting into the holiday tradition with spooky tales with “Shiver SuspenStories.” The 56-page one shot features yuletide carnage from writers Jason Aaron (Thor) and Ben H. Winters (CBS' Tracker), plus artists Kano (Gotham Central) and Peter Krause (Irredeemable). Cover artists include Darick Robertson and Adam Hughes; the one-shot went on sale this week.
For a back-issue bonus, seek out “Elvira’s House of Mystery Special” from 1987, with a cover by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez and a pinup by Paul Gulacy. Elvira stars in an updated “Christmas Carol” story, and additional tales in the issue feature twisted holiday hijinks.
Matthew Price, matthew@matthewlprice.com, has written about the comics industry for more than two decades. He is the co-owner of Speeding Bullet Comics in Norman.