They've started a little bit later this year, but the fine folks at Study Group have once again pulled out all the stops and increased their content to provide their readers, old and new, with the best in horror comics posted to the web.
Called "Halloween Haunting 2" it's going on right now, across the main page. If you're the type that prefers to go straight to a tag, you can find all of the horror-themed comics here.
Despite the fact that they're starting a bit later, there's no shortage of comics. Here's a few that may entice you to take a few moments of your time to read:
- Rich Tommaso brings out "Blood King," a story of Vlad the Impaler, using his very distinctive line work to highlight the strong contrast between his start blacks and very vivid white space, an interesting choice given the horror subject. Another twist is that instead of focusing on his horror issues, Tommaso looks at his inner life and a struggling relationship. Touching at times, with some great use of abrupt scene changes, this was a lot of fun to read.
- Sam Alden checks in with a creepy story of a meadow that features a dancing man and a woman who becomes obsessed with the idea of the dancing man. Soon it infects her whole life, in a nice psychological horror short that Alden fills with some great patterns and repetitions that take advantage of his particular take on the craft. He does a great job with the narration, too, allowing us to go down the road of madness with the main character.
Art and story by Patrick Dean - Patrick Dean returns again this year for a short, funny tale where a city of monsters is flooded by a river of blood when a vampire gets careless and lets the dam break. It's a fun frenzy of creatures drawn in Dean's distinctive style, with a strong emphasis on humor in the scenes and dialogue. The color is a bit too bright on this one, but other than that, it's another great story from a guy that I really think should have a bigger following.
- In shorter work, Andrice Arp turns a love song into a marching scene of horror images done in silhouette style, adapting "Music to Watch Girls By."
- Those who enjoy things a bit more on the raw end of the comics spectrum will enjoy the really strange "Food Chain" by Sophie Goldstein, in which humanoid quadrupeds mate and frolic, only to be killed by slightly higher-level humans who are in turn exploited by an anthropologist, who turns their survival food into a high-priced dish. With visuals that will remind readers of Box Brown, using deceptively simple lines to create scraggly creatures and self-righteous society, Goldstein creates a world that's very rich without having extreme detail, along with a few images that are designed to shock.
Those are just a few of the comics you'll find with a horror bent at the ever-excellent Study Group. Why not check them out today (but probably not on your work computer)?
