Juliette’s Spooky Halloween Comics Recs!
Hi Cape & Cowl faithful! I’m Juliette and I used to work with Eitan and the Cape & Cowl team back in the good old days of 2019. And let me tell you, these days I really miss getting to recommend comics. So, to celebrate the BEST TIME OF YEAR, I convinced Eitan to let me write a guest blog! Woo hoo!!! Please enjoy.
I’m gonna get started with some of my favorite spoopy comics for younger readers. Grown ups, you can keep scrolling for your recs, although TBH you should probably check these out too!
The Witch Boy
Molly Ostertag
Aster’s family are all magical, with girls who grow up to be witches and boys who grow up to be shapeshifters. As Aster gets older, the family expects him to shapeshift and doesn’t understand why he’s drawn to spells. Will Aster be able to use his magic to save his family from the monster that’s started attacking?
This is great middle grade (aka ages 8-12ish) fantasy reading. It’s got good monsters, good magic, and a great message about accepting yourself as you are! Plus it’s just the first book in the series! Once you’ve read this, you can also pick up The Hidden Witch and The Midwinter Witch.
The Phantom Twin
Lisa Brown
This is a really touching ghost story about a young woman named Isabel who is a conjoined twin and part of a carnival freak show with her sister, Jane. When they attempt to become surgically separated, Jane dies and begins to haunt Isabel, who has to figure out what her new life with prosthetics and complicated independence looks like.
This graphic novel is really lovely and not as sad as I was expecting. There’s definitely some racist and ableist language to look out for, but it's a representation of the time and there are characters who question it. Officially it's YA, but I can definitely recommend this one for adults as well!
Anya’s Ghost
Vera Brosgol
Anya doesn’t fit in at her high school. Her family doesn’t come from the US, she’s awkward, and sometimes she and her one friend get in fights. So when she randomly falls down an abandoned well in the woods, the last thing Anya expects to find is a ghost to make friends with. She starts taking her new ghost friend to school, but pretty quickly it becomes clear that this ghost isn’t nearly as friendly as Anya thought!
This book is definitely YA, but I was super not prepared for how dark the ghost gets! It’s spooky and kind of messes with your mind. Out of all the younger reader comics I’m recommending, this is easily the scariest!
Gotham Academy
Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschel
Olive Silverlock came back to school a little different. Something happened over the summer and now she’s scared of bats and something’s going on with her mom? Whatever it is, she’s having trouble showing new student, Maps Mizoguchi, around the school and it doesn’t help that Gotham Academy is the creepiest, spookiest, most mystery-filled boarding school in Gotham City!
This series is GREAT! It’s technically a Batman-related comic, so for DC fans you’ll get a kick out of seeing which characters show up and how they’re related to the academy’s secrets. If you’re not a DC reader, no problem! This series stands on its own with a very Nancy Drew meets Harry Potter vibe that’s definitely welcoming to new readers. (Bonus, if you’re a Lumberjanes fan you’ll be happy to hear that they did rad a crossover story at one point!) Also, Maps is great!!!
Heads up, the recs get a little darker and more grown up from here on out, so give them a look before showing them to younger spooky fans. Read at your own peril… Except actually you should absolutely read them because they’re great! Let’s go!
Fangs
Sarah Andersen
A hella cute romance comic about a spooky supernatural couple! Elsie is a hundreds of years-old goth vampire looking for love. Jimmy is a sweet hipster werewolf. Together they work their way through normal relationship stuff, like dietary restrictions, full moon antics, and the occasional murder. It’s cute!
“Hang on a second,” I hear you say. “Isn’t Sarah Andersen the artist who does those deeply relatable Sarah’s Scribbles slice of life humor comics???” She sure is! Except now she’s turned her hand to more refined art style and definitely more of a slice of afterlife vibe. This book is also a beautiful hardcover, for those shelf nerds out there!
Harrow County
Cullen Bunn and Tyler Crook
There’s a tree on the hill on Emmy’s father’s farm, a tree with something wrong. When Emmy is called to the tree she discovers the story of a witch the townspeople hanged there. Now Emmy finds herself connected to the witch and the ghouls and haints of the forest. Rural Southern horror at its finest, complete with demons, multiple kinds of witchcraft, and a magical dead child whose skin Emmy carries around in a bag to talk to, while his skinless body wanders around doing her bidding. This is GOOD HORROR!
For real, when I first picked this series up I read five volumes in a week because I could not put it down! You can just start with the first paperback, Countless Haints, but I strongly recommend the oversized hardcover edition, because Tyler Crook’s watercolors in this series are some of the most beautiful comics pages I’ve ever seen. Especially when he goes all out on double page spreads! Just gorgeous!
Dracula, Motherf**ker
Alex de Campi, Erica Henderson
Vienna, 1889. Dracula’s brides decide they’ve had enough and nail him into his coffin.
Los Angeles, 1974. Someone lets him out. The brides aren’t happy. Hapless crime scene photographer, Quincy Harker, gets pulled into a violent, supernatural world of vampires like you’ve never seen.
Trust me, this is a DIFFERENT DRACULA. Dracula, Motherf**ker is exactly what you want a book with this title to be! It’s a wild ride through 70s LA that feels like the best kind of exploitation film. Erica Henderson reimagines vampires as real monsters through her vibrant colors and trippy designs. Alex de Campi asks why a monster so ancient takes brides so young. The whole thing is a stylish, violent, wild ride that you don’t want to miss out on!
Toil and Trouble
Mairghread Scott, Kelly and Nichole Matthews
The three weird sisters, Riata, Cait, and Smertae, have always been in Scotland, protecting the land and its people. When an argument between the three causes them to use men as pawns in shaping the fate of the land, the bloody future all depends on manipulating one mortal king: Macbeth.
This is a gorgeous retelling of Macbeth from the witches’ perspective, but you don’t have to be a Shakespeare nerd to love this book. This is witchcraft and spirits and elemental magic done really well. It doesn’t depend on the “when shall we three meet again” of it all, but if you love the play as I do, there’s plenty to pick up on and enjoy while you get your witch fix. Bonus points for absolutely stellar character designs from Kelly and Nichole Matthews!
Locke & Key
Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez
When the Locke family experiences a violent tragedy, they move back to the old family mansion in New England to start over. At first it’s okay. The kids go to new schools and at home they start finding beautiful old keys that give them magical abilities. Little do they know that the source of their trouble is on the property in the form of a malevolent being who wants something the Locke family has and will do anything to get it!
This is easily one of the best horror comics ever. Full stop. It’s scary and magical and takes you by surprise. You may have seen the Netflix show adaptation, but let me tell you, that’s the light, easy, cheerful version. The real thing is darker, with scarier monsters and much more upsetting human violence mixed in. Joe Hill is an excellent horror writer and Gabriel Rodriguez creates a haunted house that isn’t really a haunted house, but maybe something worse.
Cat Eyed Boy
Kazuo Umezu
When the cat eyed boy is born to cat demons, they abandon him for looking too human. Out of place, not fitting into human or demon worlds, the cat eyed boy wanders from village to village, discovering monsters more powerful than him and tricking his way out of danger… if he can.
This manga is beautiful! The monsters in each chapter feel like some combination of traditional demons and the campy Universal Movie Monsters. You really feel for cat eyed boy, who mostly only talks to cats, which is just relatable content right there, but he’s also not about to become the savior of humans because he still knows he’s a monster. It gets scary!
When I Arrived at the Castle
Emily Carrol
She has made it to the ominous castle. Like many before her, she has traveled through the woods and up the hill to see the countess. And like many before her, she’s not prepared for what she will find.
This monster story is like a dark and beautiful vision, full of shadows and twisting hallways. Emily Carroll creates a queer gothic horror, full of sexuality, nightmares, magic, and body horror. It’s stunning and creepy and really gets under your skin.
Something is Killing the Children
James Tynion IV, Werther Dell’Edera, Miquel Muerto
In the town of Archer’s Peak, something is happening to the children. They keep disappearing and some of them were found brutally murdered and dismembered. James, the one survivor of his friends’ gruesome deaths, knows more about what happened than he’s able to say because adults just won’t believe what he saw. That is until a mysterious woman comes to town and takes him at his word. Her name is Erica Slaughter and she kills monsters.
This horror comic is CREEPY! It’s got that pacing that get a tingle going under your skin and makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. It’s all about the fear that children can’t make adults believe them, which feels so real. The monsters are scary, the desperation of this community is real. This is seriously good horror!
Uzumaki
Junji Ito
Kurozu-cho, a quiet coastal town, has a problem. It’s haunted… by spirals. This isn’t a normal ghost haunting with some angry spirit. This is a town haunted by the fundamental shape of the universe. It’s the spiral in a natural shape, a spiral of obsession, a spiral taking over bodies and dragging people into a whirlpool of madness.
Junji Ito is the master of horror manga for a reason! Spirals might not sound scary, but I promise you, they’re terrifying. I definitely would not recommend this book for people with real trypophobia, but for the rest of us it’s worth the scares!
The Low, Low Woods
Carmen Maria Machado, Dani, Tamra Bonvillain
The mining town of Shudder-to-Think has been hacking rock out of the earth for years, but rock isn’t all that’s coming up. Strange things happen to the people in this town, people who lose their memories and wind up with missing time. Now two friends, El and Vee, are missing memories and want to find out what’s wrong with their town and what the grotesque creatures in the forests are.
This is some good teens in supernatural trouble drama. The story takes place in the early 90s and the characters are as interested in getting out of their small town after graduation as they are in figuring out why the deer in the forest have extra faces and plants growing out of their antlers. Beautiful, beautiful art and really great storytelling!
Nailbiter
Joshua Williamson, Mike Henderson, Adam Guzowski
Buckaroo, Oregon is infamous for being the birthplace of SIXTEEN different serial killers, but otherwise it’s a pretty normal town. Still, people can’t help but wonder what about this town breeds the scariest, most creative, and most prolific killers. That’s what NSA agent Nicholas Finch plans to find out when he arrives in town. His arrival just happens to coincide with the return of hometown boy Edward Warren, aka the Nailbiter, coming back after mysteriously avoiding conviction for a series of grisly murders.
I avoided this series for years because, as someone with a nail chewing habit herself (I know, it’s bad), the idea of a serial killer who stalks people with chewed nails, imprisons them in a basement until their nails grow back, and then chews off their fingers before killing them… let’s say it felt a little too close to home. But dang, oh dang, I’m so glad I finally found it. This series is GOOD! It’s got some creepy psychological goodness and lots of fun along the way, whether it’s the serial killer themed gift shop set up by the locals or the Buckaroo native who stalks catcallers and sews their lips shut. See? Good times!
Afterlife with Archie
Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, Francesco Francavilla
When Jughead’s dog is hit by a car, he turns to Sabrina to resurrect him. Things don’t go exactly to plan and now Riverdale is overrun with zombies. It’s not cute, it’s not fun, it’s not wholesome. What it is is violent and f*cked up!
Before The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina and the TV show Riverdale, this was the series that started it all. It came out of nowhere and was so much darker than anyone expected from an Archie book. Yes, it has all those familiar teens, but this comic feels more like The Walking Dead plus a little Game of Thrones than the wacky adventures Archie and the gang usually get into. With grim and ghastly art by the phenomenal Francavilla, this is not a comic to share with your kids.