I have long been a fan of scary comic books. When I was a kid, if something proved too scary, I could shut the book fast. Then I could slowly pull back the page until I was ready to face my fear. Even then, a good writer and a good artist could hold me transfixed once I reopened to the moment that had scared me. The more I looked, the more I then needed to turn the page to find out what happened next.

Today, I want to take a look at two types of horror comics and give an example of each type. I’ll continue the discussion with two more types when my turn here at Threads that Bind rolls around again. These aren’t necessarily the only four types of horror comics, but they are common types and, I believe, fairly representative of horror comics. The examples I’ve picked are comics I’ve enjoyed and have provided me with lessons that I have applied to my writing. I think they’re worth seeking out and they may well provide a horror writer or artist some inspiration.

The Anthology Comic

The first type of horror comic I’ll look at is possibly the most familiar. Anthology comics are ones like Creepshow or, going back even further, Eerie and Creepy. Each issue will have one or more standalone stories. There may be an ongoing character who introduces each story, such as the Crypt Keeper in Creepshow or Uncle Creepy in Creepy. In just a few pages, you have to set up a character the audience can relate to, introduce the danger and then resolve it in a satisfying way.

One of my favorite examples of the anthology comic is Grimm Tales of Terror published by Zenescope Entertainment. Our hostess is Keres, Goddess of Death. Often, she appears as a character early in the story to help kick off the action. Generally, the stories introduce us to a character who rapidly finds themselves in a terrible situation. Sometimes they find themselves beset by monsters. Sometimes they find themselves beset by perfectly human bullies. Sometimes they find themselves embroiled in a situation they just don’t understand. Often there’s a twist or a pivot partway through the story that either reveals a new plot element or clarifies something you didn’t quite understand. This then sends you toward the story’s ending, which may give the story one last twist. Often Grimm Tales of Terror issues end with the villains getting their comeuppances. Although sometimes a villain will slip through Keres’ grasp to return in another issue.

What reading Grimm Tales of Terror and other horror comics has taught me is good short story structure. Remember that a comic tells most of its story through pictures with a few balloons for dialog and a few panels for narration. The comics have helped me identify my hero and their antagonist, draft them so that the audience will care about them, and then set them into a meaningful conflict quickly so you have time to explore that conflict in some interesting way and resolve it in such a way the reader is guaranteed to have an emotional response. It doesn’t matter whether the reader cringes or cheers, as long as that’s the reaction you intended!

Original Long-Form Story

If comic anthologies are the short story collections of the comic world, then original long-form stories are the novels. These are the series that can run anywhere from a few issues to a year telling one long narrative. Often a few issues are compiled into a graphic novel. Other times, a long-form story can be crafted as a so-called “original graphic novel” meaning the whole work appeared at once instead of being serialized. There are several good long-form horror comics. Since my interest tends to run along the lines of vampires, I’ll discuss a vampire comic by none other than novelist Stephen King.

Even though many of King’s works have been adapted for comics, the series American Vampire was the first time King actually scripted an original comic story. The first volume of American Vampire actually tells two stories. The lead story, written by Scott Snyder, introduces us to Pearl Jones, an aspiring actress in 1920s Hollywood. As the story opens, she’s pretty much just picked up small parts in films, but it looks like her luck may change when she’s invited to a party hosted by some of the players in the movie industry. It turns out these producers and directors are vampires and she’s there as part of the buffet. Somehow, she survives the initial assault and a mysterious stranger, who also proves to be a vampire, helps her become a vampire. The mysterious stranger is Skinner Sweet, a vampire who appears to have a grudge against the old European vampires who attacked Pearl.

The other story running through the issues is Skinner Sweet’s origin story penned by Stephen King. We meet Sweet as a human outlaw on a train. A Pinkerton agent is taking him to face justice. Sweet expects to be freed by his gang, but one of the men who paid the Pinkertons is a European vampire who wants Sweet dead so he can fulfill his plans. The vampire attacks Sweet and appears to kill him. Unknown to anyone, Sweet managed to drink some of the vampire’s blood. Sweet is buried, but eventually rises again years later. This segment is told through the eyes of a successful author who wrote a book based on Sweet’s story. For the most part, it worked. King did lean heavily on the tropes of the American west, plus tropes within his own writing, but he delivered a solid vampire origin story.

One important lesson I learned from American Vampire is good serial storytelling. Each issue is effectively a chapter (or two chapters, given that there are two parallel stories) and each chapter must both leave you satisfied with the direction the story is going and leave you wanting more. The two parallel stories are interesting in that they remind us that Skinner Sweet has a backstory, but you don’t actually need that backstory to understand the later narrative. A story doesn’t need to be frontloaded with several chapters of history. That doesn’t mean the history isn’t interesting, you might just want to save it for another story.

As it turns out, I’ve actually put some of these lessons into practice with a comic book of my own. I wrote the comic book Guinevere and the Stranger, which is an adaptation of a chapter from my novel Dragon’s Fall: Rise of the Scarlet Order Vampires.  I’ll discuss it a little more in my next installment, but if you’d like to learn more, visit: http://davidleesummers.com/Tales-of-the-Scarlet-Order.html

I’ll be back with more when my turn comes around again. In the meantime, I hope you have a frightfully good holiday!

[ADMIN’S NOTE: David will return with part II on January 30th]