As a horror fan working in an art form synonymous with action-adventure, I'm fascinated with the crossover between those two genres -- the monster starring in an action story, as in the old Swamp Thing comics or Hellboy, or the adventure hero plunged into a scary and mysterious world, the best example of which I see in Robert E. Howard's Conan and Solomon Kane stories. I prefer the purely scary stuff, whether deadly serious or blackly humorous, but my love of horror comics is inclusive. Last month's Horsepower focused on Buffy, the most heroic, action-packed of Dark Horse's horror-themed titles; is Buffy a horror comic? Or is it an action-adventure comic with monsters? This summer, Dark Horse explores that full range. One of our flagship books, Hellboy, returns with The Wild Hunt #5 in August. Hellboy faces off with the forces of darkness, led by the Queen of Blood, who seeks to wipe out mankind. It’s a pretty clear cut case of good guys versus bad guys -- full of monsters, on both sides, and all sorts of folklore. There’s some dark stuff, but is it scary? Or is Hellboy merely a superhero who happens to fight witches and monsters?
This summer, we begin collecting the great The Return of Labrazio storyline from last year's monthly The Goon series. Volumes 7 and 8, A Place of Heartache and Grief and Those That Is Damned come out in June and July. The first man the Goon ever killed is back from the dead, out for revenge, and it's no-holds-barred war. Zombies and gypsy curses spell doom and gloom for everyone, leading the Goon to abandon his totally irredeemable hometown. This is the most involved plotline in the ten years of The Goon -- still with healthy doses of humor, but darker than ever before.
On the lighter side, The Goon meets Dark Horse's newest license, Dethklok, the band from the popular Cartoon Network show Metalocalypse. This bizarre Frankenstein's monster of a crossover came about through a meeting of the minds of Eric Powell and Metalocalypse creator Brendon Small. Now their diametrically different characters are coming together in one nonsensical comic-book showdown. Scary.
Mike Mignola and I talked about this difference between action-adventure comics featuring monsters, and good old-fashioned horror comics, and we’re steering some Mignola titles into darker regions this summer. Witchfinder brings a mysterious figure out of the background of Hellboy comics: Edward Grey, an old-world, Victorian occult detective on a macabre case in London. In B.P.R.D.: War on Frogs #3, Liz Sherman’s at her worst, haunted by a mysterious occultist bent on using her as a weapon. Liz is a perfect hero for a horror comic, where the mood of the protagonist is the darkest part of all—the stakes are high for her, even though you know she’ll live. In July, we follow up B.P.R.D.: 1946 with more early tales. I've always had a problem with inserting army guys into a horror story, because the heroism and military tactics of the protagonists is in direct conflict with the horror mood. I prefer Ridley Scott's Alien to James Cameron's Aliens. But in 1947, Mignola & Co. deliver our most old-world horror tale yet, sending four new army guys into a very scary place, morally and mortally dangerous.
July also sees the relaunch of Creepy magazine! Creepy and its cousin Eerie are second only to the original EC Comics in the history of horror comics, and Dark Horse has been enjoying great sales of our hardcover reprints of that original material. Now it's time for new comics -- black and white, no less -- fully embracing that most mysterious and weird line of books. As it did in the past, Creepy will give you the best horror artists, old and new, from original Creepy artist Angelo Torres to Jason Alexander (Abe Sapien).
Pixu: The Mark of Evil, by Gabriel Bá, Fábio Moon, Becky Cloonan, and Vasilis Lolos, is thoroughly modern in execution, a completely original and unprecedented story, timeless in its ability to terrify. Mike Mignola called the storytelling here ". . . beautiful, creating a real sense of dread and supernatural menace. Smart, subtle and genuinely disturbing." And don't look for muscle-bound heroes or brawls with bug-eyed monsters. In a meeting yesterday, I was trying to sum up Pixu to some LA associates, and I couldn't do it. That should be music to the ears of aficionados of real horror. You know what I mean.
Whether a comic elicits an actual feeling of fear from me, or simply immerses me in a weird world full of horrible creatures and terrible deeds, horror comics give me a cathartic thrill and get my blood pumping in ways that the comforting world of colorful spandex and easily defined good and evil simply never has.
Scott Allie
Editor