Superlatives
Welcome to Superlatives—the show where comics go head-to-head.
Every episode, we pick a Superlative Theme. For example, "Best Comic Character Death."
Two of our editors each nominate a comic they think deserves the title, then step into the ring to make their case.
When the arguments are done, our moderator delivers the final verdict—deciding which comic walks away with this episode’s superlative.
Superlatives
Best Horror Issue
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The terrifying, the spooky, the unknown...which comic issue makes the hairs on the back of your neck raise? Ice Cream Man and Black Hole go head to head.
Welcome to Superlatives, the show where comics go head to head. Every episode we pick a superlative theme. This week its best horror issue. Two of our editors each nominate a comic they think deserves the title, then step into the ring to make their case. When the arguments are done, our moderator, me, delivers the final verdict, deciding which comic walks away with this episode's superlative.
SPEAKER_00That's just how Jake always talks. Yeah. The question was, how is your day, man?
SPEAKER_02Well, let's introduce our players. To my right, Ellen Boner. Ellen.
SPEAKER_03Hi, I'm Ellen. I'm an associate editor here at IDW. I'm also the games manager at IDW, working on books like The Godzilla role-playing game.
SPEAKER_02Will that games experience give her a heads up against our other player, Jake Williams? Hey, I'm Jake Williams. I work at IDW. And I'm Jake Thomas. I also work at IDW. And I'm the judge, jury, and executioner for this episode. What are we talking about? We're talking about horror. We're talking about best horror issue. Thank you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Oh, insane.
SPEAKER_02That's how connected we are here.
SPEAKER_00Incredible. Are you guys a fan of horror in general? Do you watch a lot of horror things? I'm a huge horror fan. Big horror fan.
SPEAKER_03Great pick, then. Great pick for.
SPEAKER_00I could tell that about you.
SPEAKER_02Constantly walking fake blood dripping down my mouth.
SPEAKER_00Hello, friend. You know, I had, when I was younger, I was like deathly afraid of horror movies to the degree that I was afraid I'd be at a friend's house at like a sleepover and they'd like put a horror movie on. Like I was afraid of that happening. Like just in the abstract, nervous that could occur. And then, you know, there was a friend eventually in high school that made me watch paranormal activity, and I was like, okay, I can handle this. Like, this isn't this isn't too bad. I I think I was so afraid of paranormal activity in particular, because they had that huge ad campaign that it was like, watching this is gonna ruin your life. And then one of like kind of the mean kids in school, he was kind of like like bully adjacent, but not like a bully. Um, we kind of I think my school is too small for a bully. I think it would just be too much of like a why you're being mean to one other kid.
unknownWhat are you doing?
SPEAKER_00But uh, but one of the kids that was kind of like tougher, he watched Paranormal Activity and told us all he slept with the lights on for like two weeks. Like and he said he had like a knife under his pillow, slept with all the lights on. So I was like, I don't think I can handle it if that's what it did, if it did that to you. Eventually watched it, thought it was fine, went through a period where I was like seeing every horror movie that would come out. And then I realized I was like just more scared of things during that time period. Like I think it infected my brain. I was just made you jumpy, skittish, yeah. So I have not watched as many recently, and I feel less afraid of the night.
SPEAKER_03I I really like horror, but I am also very sporadic and picky. Um, I don't I think really I'll just come out and say it. I'm an elitist. I like a little prestige horror. I like a weird foreign film horror.
SPEAKER_00People really turned on this take. You're gonna get some negative comments. Really turned on the idea of elevated horror. They don't like that term.
SPEAKER_03Here's the thing. I I wouldn't, I have never even heard that term before. I think all horror is great for everyone, but for me, I'm saying my personal taste is like, and I still like I just my my thing is I struggle with um gore and like jump scare horror. Like I find that too unsettling to watch. Like it's actually just because it is so scary because it's trying to be scary, even though it's like you know, big box. Like we went and saw um Final Destination, that doesn't work.
SPEAKER_00I'm just gonna keep trying that the episode.
SPEAKER_03I once heard a fact that people are more jumpy if they feel guilty about something, and I'm a very jumpy person.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's just like, yeah, it's like a common movie trope where the guy who's like done something wrong. It's like, what was that? Yeah, two creams and my coffee, please.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, but I like we saw Final Destination in theaters, whatever the most recent one, Legacy or Myth, the one that is like going across multiple time periods. And it was the first time I'd seen a movie like that. And I had to leave the theater because it was too scary for me, because the gore is too much. But I really like like a slow burn, psychological, emotional drama, horror. Like I'm I'm into that sort of stuff. Like one of my favorite horror movies was the original Let the Right One in. Um, so I don't, I it's not my me saying those are better. I'm just saying my personal taste tends to lend me toward you gotta look for it.
SPEAKER_00I could be totally wrong about this. It feels like we have like a new type of horror movie that's sprung up in the past like 20 years, which is like the horror blockbuster, like the really glossy horror blockbuster that kind of came with like the uh I'm forgetting all the names. So there's the one that starts with the I and the ones that start with the C kind of horror movies. There's uh Conjuring, the Conjuring franchise and the Insidious franchise. Thank you, producer Raina. I feel like those two kind of kicked off this wave of like really glossy, blockbustery horror movies. But where before that, you know, one thing that's cool about horror is it's a genre that for like upstart filmmakers get into, where you can make something really kind of like lo-fi horror. And even like the Sam Raimi, like Evil Dead stuff, right? Like even that stuff that can be get get more popular as it goes, kind of had this like grungy vibe to it. And if you watch like the older slasher movies, you know, those things can get a little bit glossier as you go, especially once you hit like Scream, which is kind of like a big budget reproduction kind of parodying the ones that came before. But it definitely had this kind of like B movie vibe to it for a long time. I think it's newer now that we have these like multi, multi, multi-million dollar horror movies that are these like temp pole franchises.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, there was the time in the 70s where you would have things like The Omen or uh, you know, The Exorcist, which were pretty prestige.
SPEAKER_00That's kind of past what I'm talking about. Where that's kind of like uh like a prestigious director making like a big kind of like, but yeah, it certainly in the in a sense is blockbustery, but less the kind of like very glossy down the middle as you're just kind of like horror. But yeah, it seems like it used to be kind of the two ends of it, where it's like here's a very prestige, very like uh big name director made a movie that kind of was scary, or it was like we gave a teenager $20 and he made the slasher movie.
SPEAKER_03He stole a photo, like a film camera from his older brother and went out in the woods and the scariest thing you've ever seen.
SPEAKER_00Where now we have those like uh, you know, if you watch The Conjuring, and there are these movies that I think some horror purists don't love, which are very like uh jump scare focused. You know, there's a lot of like these really like high budget jump scares coming at you, which that's kind of the horror movies that I feel like I kind of kind of came of age watching was these kind of like higher budget, higher profile horror films with the post-paranormal activity, post-conjuring stuff.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think one of the first like R movies I ever saw was one of the original Final Destination, like Final Destination III or something like that. Um, and then some other horror movie, which I couldn't remember, that had all these CGI beatles eating people under throne.
SPEAKER_00I was thinking like Ringo. They're really scary.
SPEAKER_03It was my first. Um yeah, but I think horror, one thing I'm really excited to talk about today is like there's so many different flavors of horror, and I think they all have really different purposes. And I think there's a wide range of like horror adventure, gothic adventure, which is like playing on more classical horror themes. Like I like like uh like things that use Dracula but aren't really scary. So it's like technically horror because it's using a lineage horror character, but it's not meant to scare you or anything.
SPEAKER_00Flag on the plate, you stole my talking point. I told you in advance it was my talking point and you stole it. But uh, but yeah, so it's this thing we've been talking about. Show me the point. Which is this, like, this especially in horror comics, what is this idea of like, is it meant to scare you or not? Or does it just include imagery that we associate with horror? Like you could have a kid's humor book about a skeleton and a ghost. I wouldn't call that horror, but if you put that skeleton and a ghost in an action kind of like action thriller environment, people then kind of are like, is it horror? And I would say no, because it's not trying to scare you. And comics are like that. I think a lot of things in comics are classified as horror if a serial killer is involved, if a uh spooky person's involved, like you could do an action Dracula comic, which we're putting out, but I wouldn't necessarily call horror because I don't know if the purpose of that book is to scare you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly what I was thinking about with Operation Iron Coffin, where that is exactly what I would call a gothic adventure. So it's playing on like a gothic character like Godzilla, but just in an action drama setting. And like there's gore in it, there's scary stuff in it, but I don't think it's really meant to put you in a position of fear. And that's one thing I think is really interesting about horror as a genre in some of the subcategories, is it's one of the few genres that's trying to make you, the person experiencing it, feel not just empathy, but it's trying to actually scare you. Like in a weird way, it's not trying to be like if you watch a rom-com or read a romance novel, I don't know if that's really trying to make you be in love with the characters or feel love.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think I think it's I was like, I'm totally agreeing with you. But then I think when you hit romance, that's maybe one of the few genres that is doing it. But uh, I think that horror is like comedy where it's trying to like elicit such a physical reaction from you. You know, like if you're watching a horror movie, you might jump out of your seat, you might scream, you know. I I think it's one of the exact I think the scream and the laugh are kind of the two things where it is eliciting this vocal reaction that very few, you know, even if you are falling in love in a romance book, you might be saying, you're not gonna say that out loud. Like start responding to the character. But uh, I think one could argue romance is eliciting a physical reaction if they're doing their jobs correctly. But uh I think with horror and specifically in horror comics, I think comics are one of the hardest mediums to actually scare the reader. And I think so much of what is called a horror comic and can earn that title for various definitions, isn't always passing my kind of personal definition of it. Because, you know, with a comic book, I think horror, especially horror in a film, is utilizing the control it has over the audience. It's a captive audience watching a movie. You can't affect the flow of the film, you can't kind of glance forward and see if a jump scare is coming. You're just watching it. So the director has you in the palm of his hand and he can jerk you around to different things and show you a horrific image that you have to look at, you know, unless you have your hands up covering your eyes, but you're very much you have no control, which is a perfect place for horror. I think comic books as a medium give the reader more control than just about any other medium, right? So you can stay on a panel for as long as you want. You can kind of brush over a panel really quickly, you can kind of like flip ahead and see what's coming. The reader has so much control, it's hard to get ahead of them, I think, on a comic book. So I I really only had a comic book effectively jump scare me like one or two times. There's like, I think it is an issue of Department of Truth where kind of out of nowhere you like turn the page to this like horrific image like right up in your face.
SPEAKER_03Oh, yeah, with the actually use the demon from the basement, I think has a jump scare in that.
SPEAKER_00The I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm thinking of what you're thinking of, but there was a moment of like a trucker that stranded or something, and like you can see someone like they like effectively used like kind of visual techniques of like you see it on one page coming closer and closer to you, and then I think it like leaves the frame for a second, and then you turn the page, it's right in your face, you know. So it really is doing like the film language jump scare really effectively. Um, but other than that, I I really can count on one hand the amount of times I've been scared by a comic. I think today, you know, I'm I'm doing Ice Cream Man, which is a fantastic book written by W. Maxwell Prince. It is uh the art is done by Martin Martin Murazzo, and the colors are Chris O'Halloran. It's a fantastic comic. It's my favorite comic book that is dubbed a horror comic for a lot of reasons, but it's not a book that I'm always being left like scared by. Instead, it's just imbuing this insane sense of dread into me as I'm reading it, just making me feel like really kind of existentially bummed out as I'm reading it in a way. And sometimes it's scary and sometimes you're kind of freaked out, but that's not typically what they're like explicitly going for. And I talk about my issue specifically, there's a couple reasons that I chose it because there's a couple uh panels that I feel like are effectively kind of like enacting control over you and forcing you into one fixed location and kind of changing what you're seeing and playing with the imagery there. But yeah, I think that if I had had longer to really process and think about this, I would have loved to find a comic that like was going full in on scares to a way that you're like, I don't know if I can finish this, like with a horror movie, like you're you're desperately trying to look away, but the panels are too scary.
SPEAKER_03It's too much. Yeah, I I agree. I think uh the power of comics is that they can't force you to go forward, but once you've seen it, you can't unsee it. So so much of it has to do with the visual, so much of it has to do with like the top book I'm talking about today, Black Hole by Charles Burns. That book is a book that I first read like six or seven years ago. And then I've thought about it a lot since. It like sticks with you. I think that's sort of the the the tone of horror, like really effective horror in comics is that it just lingers. It like really gets its little fingers into your brain and hooks in. Um I'm really excited because I think these are they're different books, but they're also similar in some interesting ways that I can't wait to kind of get into.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think one thing about uh to to compare it to like literature to like prose, I think that one thing that prose has is I think it gets into your brain even more, right? Where like as you're reading it, it's really like incepting you with imagery, where in some way the fact that you know that's conjuring an image in your brain, which can be really scary if it's a scary image. It's not scary at all. That's pretty scary.
SPEAKER_03How do we get in there? I don't want it to be.
SPEAKER_00I don't want that out of my brain. But when you're reading a comic book, I think the art almost serves to separate you in some ways. Like I think they can draw a really scary picture, but I can close my eyes. I don't want to look at that if I want to. But I do think the the there's this inherent separation of the art style, of the rendering there that's going on. Where again, I so I think it's like while it can hook in and can stay for a while, there's just something different than what prose is able to do. I think I've been more scared by prose than I've been scared by comics in my life.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it's making you conjure that for yourself. And like you're not just seeing. Like a lot of time in terms of like the text, theoretically, the dialogue would be auditory. And we don't often look at the sort of things that pros might sometimes do where they're living in all the senses and speaking like highly metaphorically about how something might feel, where pros they have to do that, they have to tell you how the character is feeling through like their internal dialogue and stuff. We can't just look at them on the page.
SPEAKER_00So it it it does a good job of like really getting into your psyche in a you know, talking about the sound of it all, like that is horror film's kind of most effective tool in making the viewer scared is the sound. I mean, they've often like taken kind of like horror kind of like audio scapes and mapped it on to like a funny movie, and it's like, oh, this looks the scene is scary now because it has this kind of like eerie music playing in the background and creepy sound effects that are happening. And similarly, you can re-edit a horror scene and add in kind of like silly little Looney Tune stuff, and it's suddenly not as scary anymore. So comic not being in control of that aspect is another kind of like tool removed from the arsenal. And I do think we should start to build back up things comics can do, but I think it's like honestly, it's more interesting to start with stripped away, because I do think they start comics inter horror kind of backfooted, even though like horror has been such a long time uh genre in comics, right? Going back to EC stuff or all like the pre-comics code stuff. And I think probably were desensitized to a lot of like horror imagery. Where I think back then, if you're a kid reading comics, that's one of the only places you can see a like grotesque monster. You know, you're not seeing that. Yeah, it's movies probably weren't as effective, especially back then. Like if we're talking like mid-20th century, the movies weren't as effective at uh projecting like uh real horrific imagery on the screen. They didn't have the technology yet to do something like that. So the scariest thing you might have ever seen might have been a drawing in a comic book, right? Where now that we've seen every possible image in existence, I think we're desensitized to that. And we've had movies that really make these things feel real in a way that a comic isn't able to do.
SPEAKER_03And another thing, talking about sound, another big thing that comics can do to some extent, but movies haven't spades is movement, obviously. And movement, I think, is so much a part of what makes horror. Like, how often have you watched a character actor in a horror movie and it's the way they moved? Yeah. Right? It's the way everything was so like moving around them, and they were the one still thing in the image. Like these are things that it's really fascinating to specifically to talk about these two, because I think these two comics in particular are still and silent. They feel quiet and they feel very, very like little still images, which is something that is true for these artists on in like all the things they do. They have this sense of like pristine stillness that is very unsettling. Whereas like most comics across the spectrum are always trying to be like, make it look dynamic, make it look look it's like it's moving. This it's like just a little like a snapshot of these moments of staged characters that look really unsettling.
SPEAKER_00It's funny to imagine. Like, I think obviously the artists are intending that, but it's funny to imagine the artist hearing this and be like, hey, wait a second. What the heck? Um, but no, I completely agree because that's part of you know what tools do comics have in their arsenal, right? And I think we'll just kind of casually now transition to talking about the issues themselves. But I think that both Black Hole and Ice Cream Man, they are rendering a world that is unsettling every panel of it, right? Just every single image you're being seen, you're be you're being shown has some sort of like, God, that's an odd person. That's a strange-looking person. They've created this world that you have to live in with them that is just, yeah, it's an art style thing, right? It's just every aspect of this world that you have to like step into is a little bit strange, a little fuzzy, a little bit unscraft. Or a little too clean line. A little bit too clean line. They're both are very clean line comics, which I think does create sort of like an uncanny valley effect in some ways, you know? It makes just like even a normal looking human in the ice cream man universe kind of has a little bit of like a strangeness to them, you know, has something that's a little unsettling about them. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So yeah, so you know, talking about Ice Cream Man. So the reason I picked this issue, well, let me talk about the series for a second. So Ice Cream Man is this anthology series where every single issue is a completely different cast of characters, right? It's an anthology where each issue is its own little episode of the book. And it's tied together by this kind of like it the clown-esque figure, a sort of like a dark, like uh Rod Serling, that's his name, right? Rod Serling, where it is uh this character known as the ice cream man that is in some of the issues, is not in some of the issues, is kind of around the edges of a lot of the comic. And this character is kind of like manipulating people's lives and bringing this kind of like fantastical horror element into the worlds they're living in. And what's really fun about this comic, I think, in kind of a classic comics way, is like you truly never know what you're getting into in each issue of the book. And that's what's so exciting where we live in kind of a decompressed comic world where like, you know, Spider-Man's going to be fighting the same villain and dealing with the same problems for multiple issues at a time. So, like if you're mid-arc, you kind of have a sense of what that next comic's gonna be, but Ice Cream Man keeps you on the toe, your toes constantly. You never know what's coming, and more interestingly than that, you never know what form they're going to tell you the story in. So this book has, you know, an early issue that's like a palindrome that you can read front to back or back to front. You know, it has an issue that's just kind of like randomly in Spanish. Um, it has issues that are like uh full splash pages the entire time. It has one issue that's meant to seem like a like a tutorial that it's kind of taking you through. Uh, and that's ramped all the way up to they have an issue now, an issue of the book that it is a deck of playing cards, and each card has one panel on it, and you just like one by one kind of like deal out the issue.
SPEAKER_03Uh one of my favorite issues is the one that it's um a collect it's it's written to look like a book of monsters, like a monster uh etymology is it etymology book or uh maybe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I don't mean that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. But there's this book, and I I accidentally left that single issue on an airplane. Yeah. And I feel really mad for whoever was like going through night, because what a terrible thing is.
SPEAKER_00It's like a bestiary, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's like a bestiary. Like they find I really love the idea of somebody like finding that in the background. It's like you're taking a lot of it.
SPEAKER_00It feels like and that's what a fun thing about a horror book in general is like feeling like a magical item, like feeling like you found something from like a different universe, you know? I think that can be the power of a physical product, right? Where it can feel really magical. I remember that uh um uh man, I'm forgetting his name. Uh the WTF podcast Mark uh Mark Marin. Jeez, wow. I feel like being a podcast on a podcast is like being two beers deep. What is all We call is gone. Come on, the person that I've said probably a thousand times. But Mark Marion was during his interview with Neil Gaiman, was talking about Sandman. And Mark was describing a time of his life where he found Sandman and was so kind of strung out on drugs at the time that he was like, Yeah, man, I thought it was real. I think that's a really fun thing that like it can feel like a relic from like a different universe if you do the product right, which I think Sandman does the product really well. Uh it's a really excellent little issue that you get that really feels like something special or mystical or hor horrific, you know. And at its worst, when it's the at its scariest, I'm kind of like, I don't know if I want this in my house. You know?
SPEAKER_03Can can you tell us what is the exact issue you picked and tell us what happens now?
SPEAKER_00Issue 18. Um, it's called, I think, Watch as it all recedes. And this issue finds a man on his deathbed as he's starting to lose all of his memories. And the part of the issue that I thought was most effective for horror for actually trying to scare you, is that a lot of the issue is shown from his perspective, kind of a fixed perspective, as you're like uh his POV uh looking down at his feet on his bed. And you see his children come in to talk to him, you see like the nurse coming to talk to him. And in these panels, never typically not the focal point, at least not the first time, which I think is the most effective bit of horror in this, is like you see the nurse, and over the nurse's shoulder is this like horrific gremlin face that, like, I think because of the way they do it, where like you kind of see the panel first and notice the gremlin second. Depending on how your brain works, it's looking at that panel, it could be a jump scare where you're like, yes, my brain's registering nurse. Oh, what is that? You know, and it's kind of an effective bit of horror, kind of like hiding the scare within the panel, making the person feel safe, and then you notice the second. How long has it been watching the end of it? Yeah. So I think there's some really effective work where you know Martine effectively takes control of the reader by forcing them into this fixed perspective and then changing what they're being shown from this location, maybe lulling them into a fence, uh a false sense of security, and then suddenly they're like, oh wait, no, in that panel there's this thing. That's so scary, you know? So that's kind of why I picked this issue specifically, is I think it uses that little uh game really well to actually have a couple moments that I think do lean into just fear.
SPEAKER_03I'd be really interested to look through the art again and just Ice Cream Man in general, and most of these horror issues is how often they are like bringing the camera so close that you can't even see the full figure. Like I think there are quite a few panels in this where it's like the person's head is slightly cut off because they're like not fitting within the box of the main character's perspective. So I don't know. I think there's only a couple times we see like a full shot of the goblin every other time, it's like right up on the frame, it feels like, or really far away, so you can't see it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, so then the issue just kind of follows him as he's kind of diving back into his memories. And this little gremlin is kind of like as he's trying to remember, it also utilizes kind of like a uh kind of like uh untrustworthy narration where the narrator is kind of forgetting words and they're trying to piece together what they're saying. So they use the wrong word for something, or there might be missing words inside of a caption box. So it's kind of a really effective thing when you have like that unreliable narrator that's kind of like uh you don't even feel safe with the person telling you the story, I think is an effective thing.
SPEAKER_03I thought the narration was really, really impressive. I thought the way that he managed probably better than your book, even, right?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, probably like she admits it. Game over.
SPEAKER_03Um but the way that it would like break across the panel, so it would like stop at the middle, like stop mid-sentence after a word, and then restart on the next panel on the next page two words back. And you it really makes you have that sense of like restarting your sentence, trying to remember where you were at. It really is reflective of if you've ever talked to somebody who's dealing with memory loss, like that sense of them trying to catch up to like where was I and like grabbing onto phrases. And I thought that was really effectively done.
SPEAKER_00Uh, do you want to tell us about black hole?
SPEAKER_03Yes. So Black Hole is a book by Charles Burns, written and illustrated. Uh, it originally came out some crazy dates to throw out. It is a 12-issue miniseries that came out in single issues between 1995 and 2005.
SPEAKER_01Whoa.
SPEAKER_03So it came out over the course of a decade. Um, and I tried as much as I could to find like publication history. Like I wanted to find the actual dates for when the single issues came out. And it was really hard to kind of parse that. But what I was able to find is that the first four issues were originally published by Kitchen Sink Press. And then it was later picked up picked up by Fantagraphics who republished the first four issues and then published the rest of it. And then the collection that you see here was actually by Pantheon Books that collected the full thing. So it is a story set in the 1970s in the suburbs of Seattle, following a group of young teens as a disease called the bug has gone around. It is a sexually transmitted disease. Really, if you want to like a quick my quick comp for what this book feels like, it is it follows meets requiem for a dream. Like that is kind of like what the book feels like.
SPEAKER_00I'm setting things to combine.
SPEAKER_03Big bummer. Big bummer. Um and it's a story following.
SPEAKER_00I wonder if these guys know they're allowed to write about happy things. You know, you can have like just like a fun little like you got cartoon bear.
SPEAKER_03Uh I'm Martin Marasma at one time. I think the first time I met him at Comic Con, which I think you were there too. We went up and said hi, and like he was talking about his art, and he's like, Yeah, I'd love to like draw some happy stuff. But people keep hiring me for this sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00I love the idea of him like drawing something and us being like it and be like, oh, that's a beautiful picture. Like, we're scared by that. Martin, you've scared us. He scared us so deeply. It's like a fun no. Not scary.
SPEAKER_03He's drawing like a happy little guy, and I'm like, that's the scariest one I've ever seen. Um, yeah, so Black Hole um follows a story of essentially like kind of two main protagonists, but four central characters as they are dealing with this disease, becoming isolated from their peers, eventually living like out in the woods in isolation, leaving their families behind. Um, but all the while some someone or something has started killing teenagers out in the woods who have been infected by this sexually transmitted disease, the bug. And it plays out over the course. It's unclear how long the story takes place. Like it could be as short as I imagine, like a summer, like one school year, or it might be like five years. Like it is kind of unclear exactly the length of the thing.
SPEAKER_00It kind of jumps around too.
SPEAKER_03It does jump up, it does jump around. It's very unsettling, uh unsettling. It's also like incredibly psychedelic, which I think is such an unsettling thing to do in visuals of comic books, especially in black and white. Because if you haven't seen the art of this, you can see from the front cover, it's like this very harsh black-white line art that is incredibly intense to look at. And that's how the entire interior of the book is as well. There's no color, there's no gray, it's only ever pure black and white. And it really just winds you in deeper and deeper. There's these incredible sequences of because a lot of the panel structure is very just rectangular, square, very straight lines, but then they play with very simple squiggly lines to talk about, like in retrospective, those are all done with a squiggly line outline. And then there are these incredible sequences of pages where the panels are swirling together and intercutting all of this different imagery, um, which is really, really horrific and shocking as it comes together. Like one of the first sequences in issue one is um a sequence with like a frog in a dissection lab. And like the image of the frog it's a little gross, um, split open on the table as then compared to like the gash in the bottom of the foot, and then this girl whose back is ripped open, and then something else too that I can't remember off the top of my head. But it's there's a lot of parallel imagery, there's a lot of symmetry. Um, similar to Ice Cream Man, the the style is very still. The the faces are very like almost porcelain doll-esque for the the non-infected characters, and some of the infected characters don't have bizarre mutations either. Because as they get this bug, the characters begin to develop these intense mute like body horror mutations. Somebody has like a s a tail, somebody else has webbed fingers, somebody sheds all of their skin, somebody has a mouth on the bottom of on like on his collarbone. Um, so there's a wide range, and I think one thing that's really effective about like the cleanliness of Charles Burns' art style is that all of the people who aren't infected, they seem almost there's something really distancing about them because they're there's their style is so clean and put together and symmetrical with like key differences, right? Like some characters have a mole or slightly different hairstyle, but they're very clean. And then the mutated characters, in a way, to me, feel more human because they are so gro like they're completely like grotesque in different ways, but there's something that's really like organic about the way they look, which is really interesting.
SPEAKER_00Yeah? Yeah, and bring that up in therapy this week. And somehow the gross ones I thought were human. That's what the books are.
SPEAKER_01That's disgusting. I loved it.
SPEAKER_00But uh one thing about that book too is you know, when you talk about just like cartooning, right? It is simplifying a form to like uh just a few lines and it's leaving the brain to kind of fill in the rest. And I think one thing that it does really effectively is like, you know, you can't really when you first see like the slit in the guy's neck, you're not like that's a mouth. You're like, that's a freaky little thing. And my brain's kind of like conjuring different images of like what that might be representing. So, in that way, we were talking about what prose does. I think he effectively uses cartooning to draw something you can't fully tell what it is. And your brain is filling in the gaps and being kind of like forced into this collaboration with Charles Burns to help him render out the rest of his nightmare world that he's created. So I think you're kind of like, I'm kind of learning now through this discussion about what some of the tools are for a horror common. I think it's absolutely one of them, you know, like making bringing us 60% of the way there and leaving us to fill in the rest and that simplistic not it's not really a simplistic art style, but it's just, yeah, using kind of like simple lines or symbolism to kind of like imply something horrific going on. Uh, I think it's a really effective tool for body horror specifically, where we're left to kind of like, oh, that's not quite right. What's happening there? What is that? I don't know what that slit is, you know?
SPEAKER_03I don't know what that is. I don't know what color that is. Like, there's so many moments throughout the book where he describes like the color or the scent, or it's day or night. And that really brings you into it, it's like, oh, right. And you're like, you bring that color to the scene. But yeah, there's this really specific description later, which uh so the issues specifically that I referenced for this might are a dream girl and Rick the Dick, which are I honestly don't know what issue they would have been in because I couldn't find that exact count. But to me, that's where this rubber really hits the road where you're seeing these characters who have had like either had their lives ripped apart or ripped their own lives apart and started living on the fringes of society. And there's a lot of drug use in the book as well, which obviously plays into it. There's a huge, there's a really wild sequence where somebody is on acid with like these swirling lines, which I think just to digress, like surrealist black and white is really fascinating because so often that is like technicolor wild rainbows when you see that sort of art. Um, but in these later issues, it follows these characters where this sort of group of teens who have been living out in the woods have kind of found sanctuary in a house that has been left abandoned. Um, and one of the guys who let them into the house, one of the main characters, uh Keith, has gone out of the garage and he's kind of talking about the last few days and how he's like doesn't have a control over the fact these people, who are essentially like homeless, they don't have anywhere else to go, are staying in the house that he's supposed to be watching while those people are on vacation. He's just out in the garage talking about like everything that got here. And toward the end of the issue, you go in and he realizes that one of the people who's been living in this group, who is kind of the leader, this guy named Dave, who is always like portrayed as like kind of soft-spoken, a little awkward, kind of quiet, has killed everybody else. He has gone through and shot anyone he could find. And then the next issue, Rick the Dick, which I find terrifying, um, is kind of finally showing you like what Dave's whole deal is. That Dave used to be like this really lonely, um, isolated nerd, essentially at the school who was bullied. And he and his friend, Dave, and his friend Rick. So Dave is the main guy who shot everyone. Rick is the other guy. And they like all you know about them is they were like nerds. They were in chess club, they were ugly. Like the other characters literally talk about them as like they were these outsiders. And Dave has kind of like taken Rick under his wing and has like been bringing him food while they're living in the wilderness and having Rick like kill the other people that are getting out of line. Um and you watch as Dave, there's this horrifying sequence where he's in like uh a Kentucky fried chicken ordering, like ordering at the counter, and these people come up behind you, these normies come up behind him and are like, he's got this. I don't know how to describe it, his face is sort of like bulbous and folded over in like a he almost looks dog like, but it's all like flesh, sort of folded over in strange like ripples. He is a goddess hood up, he's ordering the counter, and he's very soft-spoken, very quiet, very still, talking about the stillness. Is that, and the guy behind him is like, yeah, get out of here, you're scaring everyone. And he's like, No, I just want my fried chicken, like I don't want to cause a problem. And the guy's like, No, you get out of here. And Dave just pulls a gun and he's like, I'm not leaving without my chicken. And it's like, it's so scary. And then he like gives this horrifying but very like so minimalistly done speech where he like spits in that guy's mouth and is like, you're one of us now. That's all it takes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And he just like walks out. It's horrifying. And it's like, I think so many people, when they do think about horror, they think about that, they think about that. And I think what both of these books do really well is like, what if we just slow it down for a second? What if I wasn't screaming? What if I wasn't running? What if I was just sitting here and telling you something really, really horrible and making making I've thought this out all so clearly. I'm not rushing through any of it. And I think that's really it's it's really fascinating.
SPEAKER_00I think it's really well it's funny you talk about the guy with his face folded over because that's something that like in this comic is almost PG, where like if you were to render that out fully or show a realistic depiction of that, it'd be like just so horrific. If he did such a hard R, which I know they did eventually make this in the Preacher TV show, and I can't really picture it, but like I think of like Ars face from Preacher, where it's like his head is supposed to look like, you know, an asshole. Uh, which adds like the drawing is just like some lines, but if you have to render that out fully in a in a TV show, it's suddenly like, oh my gosh, what are we doing here?
SPEAKER_03And also part of it is like it goes over the line in the wrong direction. It's not always necessarily scarier. It comes, it becomes like weird.
SPEAKER_00You don't need to, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Which I want to compliment Ice Cream Man because I think the the coloring is so perfect to keep it in that sense of like stillness. It's not trying to like, it does add all this depth and dimension, but it's not overdoing it. It's a very both of these books have a very practiced and restrained hand, which is I think part of what makes them so effective and makes you stick with it. I remember the first time I saw Ice Cream Man on the Shelf, I was like years and years and years ago, I was too nervous to pick it up because I was like, I think this is gonna really freak me out. Like I think this art is gonna really freak me out.
SPEAKER_00I mean, you can see it from both of them, and this is just the the cover of the volume two Sunday edition, but from both of the covers we have right now, they they are just kind of good encapsulations of the book's similarities where it's just two normal human faces, but they're just scary. They both have these kind of stretched out, unsettling smiles, you know. Uh, and that's the thing, too, is they're both smiling at you, but they're both so clearly the cover of horror books, even though you couldn't quite detail exactly what's making it so unsettling. I mean, for her, it's pretty obviously that they rendered all the teeth. We're both in, they rendered all the teeth, which is an easy way to render all the teeth.
SPEAKER_01That's the big trend.
SPEAKER_00Such a funny little similarity they have.
SPEAKER_03Every time I look at Charles Byrne's art, I'm like, how that the shiny hair effect he does, and it's just black and white, and it's I can't believe it. It's the most shocking and impressive thing to me that he gets these like it looks like a glossy head of hair. It's so impressive. It's like I don't know, I you can do crazy things with art.
SPEAKER_00Drawings incredible. Jake, what do you think about our comic books?
SPEAKER_02Uh I mean, I think they're both fantastic. I am great, great picks. Um I wanted to put out that, you know, you brought up something that I'd wanted to discuss, yeah, which is the idea that um I think horror kind of lives best in the unknown. Uh to me, that's what makes a horror thing. When you're talking about the definition of horror, the thing that separates a horror from like a thriller or an action adventure or something like that, to me, is that it's grappling with these unknown questions and just kind of letting things live in this world of something beyond normal or beyond explainable, which is why I like in the horror fan community, there are things that are big questions for people. One of the big questions is like that comes up a lot is is Jaws a horror movie? And Jaws my favorite movie of all time. I love Jaws. And I argue that Jaws is a horror movie because there is something otherworldly about this shark. Like they're not just out there fighting a shark. There's something beyond. It's not acting natural, it's not doing what a shark normally does in its hunting patterns or whatever. And there's something about that that is also forcing these characters to look at nature and look at the world and how they interact with it. It goes beyond this question of here's this thing that is out there eating people, uh, to like again, like a man in a world that is hostile. It just takes on this bigger thing. Um and I think that both of these uh comics do a great job of dealing with that because um they are somewhat restrained, like they are uh uh looking at these questions as sort of questions and wanting you, the reader, to fill in a lot of this information, which is why I think uh uh it is hard for comics to do horror because you get a lot of information or you can, you know, like it's very easy to kind of fill things out for people, uh as opposed to just pure prose where you are filling in a lot of information or that kind of thing. Um and one of the other things that I loved about both of these choices, is something that I get frustrated with with a lot of horror, um, is I think with a lot of horror, especially nowadays, you are not really getting what the person who made it is afraid of. You're getting what horror things that person likes. You're watching someone's horror movie, you're reading someone's horror novel, and you're going, oh, this guy likes this thing. Oh, this guy was inspired by X. They're not inspired by their fear as much, which I think is what makes a great horror story is when you can read it and you go, oh, like this guy's afraid of something. Yeah. There's a real fear that this person is wrestling with. And I think in Ice Cream Man, it's great because that fear of losing your mental capacity, losing your ability to speak and communicate. I think that's something everyone wrestles with. I thought it was great that you could not remember Mark Marin's name.
SPEAKER_01The gremlins in there. He's a new podcast memory.
SPEAKER_02But, you know, like, and I think it really beautifully examines that. You know, it paints it in a way that when you read it, you're reading him losing the words, and you're trying to fill in the words too. You're reading and saying, like, oh, he's he said, oh, that's what it is. You know, you're you're there with him in a way that I think is really kind of brilliant. And with Charles Burns and Black Hole, like sex is scary. The image that you were trying to remember that you could not when they have the you know, the frog scene. Yeah, yeah. And this is just the image. It's a woman covering her, I believe it's a woman covering her genitals, her private parts.
SPEAKER_03It's very sexual.
SPEAKER_02And there's it's a very sexual book, but then like it it, you know, when I read it, I was a much younger person, and it reminded me of how much sex is scary when you're young, and especially if you grew up post-AIDS crisis. Yeah, which this book would have been like it's very scary. Um, and this book wrestles with that in that Jaws way of building it out where it's not just, oh no, there's a disease floating around, but it's a disease that grows beyond a simple lesion or whatever it is, uh uh uh it feels almost biblical in this very like small town kind of way. Um so yeah, I think you know, both of them are so effective in that horror of not necessarily jump scare horror, but uh uh uh emotional, almost existential. Horror. Which I that was one of the questions that I wanted to ask you both as you've picked these titles. How did they resonate with you as readers? Did you find a personal connection to the fear in these, or were you looking at it more as a um like a style exercise? Again, like, oh, you've managed to make this an evocative horror story.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that I definitely share in the dread of Ice Cream Man. I think that like Ice Cream Man's view of the world is not a view that I typically share. I don't think I'm someone that's typically struggling with that kind of like existential like dread of everything around me, right? Where reading Ice Cream Man sometimes feels like someone who does view the world that way, like grabbing me and forcing me to view the world through this very like. I mean, it has moments of levity, it has moments of bright. He he will sometimes try to be like, but everything will turn out fine or can or love's nice. But like it just that that feels like little like gasps through just like such a deep cynicism about the world and such a deep, like we're all here and then we die mentality that Ice Cream Man seems to have. Like, Ice Cream Man quite frequently will put someone's entire life um on display in the 20 pages, right? And that has this effect of making life feel so small, so trivial. Oftentimes these people are shown through just like the four worst moments of their lives, right? So it's like this guy who's like, I was a kid and then I found love. And then for a reason that I cannot explain and I don't understand, I was not nice to my family. I just was mean. And like it's him being like thinking back of these memories, being like, I wanted to be nice. All I want was to be happy. Why was I so cold there? Why was I so mean to her? Which is definitely something that that I'm reading that and like having that experience of like, you know, moments that you've been the same, moments that you've reacted like angrily or cold when you're like, what am I upset about? What am I doing? Why am I not just like if I would just smile and be happy, this would be like a nice moment. But for some reason, there's some gremlin in your brain that's making you be like, I'm upset right now and I'm gonna be mean and cold to people around me for no real reason. It's just gonna make my life worse and theirs. So this person on his deathbed looking back at his life that he can't even remember anymore and being like, Yeah, let's see, I was a kid and then I was a bad father and now I'm dying. And it's such a simplification of life. It's so sad. It's it's it's it's horrific, you know. Uh it is a book that like trying to read it alone at night, like it's too much just just dread, just a way it recontextualizes your own life in a way you have to like kind of like claw back and be like, no, I'm not sad, Martin. Martin and W. It's your real name, W. I think life's pretty good. I smile more often than I'm sad. So keep this shit. I'm sorry you feel bad. But but that's to say yes. It definitely does grab me and show me that vision of the world.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think for me, yes, but not in the way I expected. I I do not remember when I first read it. I think when I first read it, it was mainly just, oh my gosh, what did I just read? All those spooky sex images are so scary. Um, but the second read the this most recent reading before this podcast was really jumping out to me as a very key fear that I have, let's get personal, is that a momentary mistake or misjudgment will ruin your entire life, which I think is like a very core part of black hole, especially in um the second issue, which is which I think is the second issue, which focuses on our second protagonist, Chris, um, the who has this guy that she really likes and she thinks he's really cute. And they hit it off at a party and they start hooking up in a graveyard. And he's like, Hey, Chris, I have to tell you something. And Chris thinks he's about to tell her about the fact that he has a girlfriend.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And she's like, No, no, no, I know it's okay. And he's like, You know? And she's like, Yeah, I know. They proceed to have sex and then she sees that he has the bug, that he has this mouth on his clavicle, and like mid-sex realizes this. And it's this thing of like, well, it's already too late. Your life is already ruined. Like, or that's kind of the question of the book is does does a momentary mistake have to ruin your life? And we kind of see these two.
SPEAKER_00So if it gives you weird freaky mutations, then yes. It gives you weird freaky mutations. If it makes you shed your skin constantly, then yeah.
unknownProbably.
SPEAKER_03Well, and that's kind of the thing we see between Chris and Keith is Chris, it does kind of go on to in a way, it does kind of slowly tear her life apart. She like loses her family. The the boy she had a crush on gets murdered, like she ends up on her own and alone. And like, we hope that she's moving toward recovery. And then the other protagonist, Keith, who very knowingly contracts this disease, like goes on to have potentially a happy life. He's like on the road with a woman he likes, and it seems like they're happy, but there's still this sense of like that is something that's very relatable to me, especially around questions of like when I was a kid and thinking about all the scary adult things I would have eventually have to do, and that like things might get ruined, or like if you mess up your taxes, you're going to jail. If you accidentally like you fall asleep at the wheel and you kill someone in a car accident. Like, I think this book really addresses that sort of fear. Um, and that's something I can really understand. Boom.
SPEAKER_01I don't know how much.
SPEAKER_03Um, but I would say actually, on the flip side of what you're saying, uh Jake Thomas, about fear is the like the not knowing. I think part of what fear can also be is really effectively saying the knowing. Like we as the reader know it and the re and the characters don't. Like this is a great book for that too, because as I was talking about with that scene where Chris contracts the disease, we the reader already know that guy has it. And we're watching her unknowingly get into this situation. And then later in the book, when Keith uh is like approaching somebody to have sex with them, and also we know that person's sick. He knows it too. But there is this sense of like, you as the reader are like, I know what's gonna happen to you if you do this. Like, and there's a funny, the very opening sequence of the book is Keith in biology class saying, like, I feel like I got a vision of the past and I knew what was gonna happen. And like that is kind of the book. Yeah. It's like it's saying this one moment is going to control the destiny of the rest of your life. And that I don't think that's like the message. It's saying, like, is that true? Yeah, is that what happens?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. But it's scary to apply that in your own life. Yeah, yeah. I also I liked uh I liked it, it made sense for that book, but I love taking any any horror victim that lives at the end of the book and being like, I hope they're moving towards recovery. I hope they're on a path to recovery.
SPEAKER_03She's floating in the ocean. She says I could stay out here forever, and it's like maybe she drowns. Like, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I hope she's moving towards recovery. Had you read Ice Cream Man before?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I'd read a couple issues. I had not read that issue in particular, I don't think, which again was why I was very curious why you chose that one out of all of them, you know. Um, but I've really enjoyed it. I've wanted to read more, so I was thrilled to have an excuse. Um, and that's my copy of Black Hole, so I've read Black Hole before.
SPEAKER_01Um, you've got not to buy us, not D bias.
SPEAKER_02It is tough because uh like you know, Black Hole was uh a very meaningful book for me when I read it. It was, you know, one of those comics that um caused me to really get excited about what comics can do because again, his art, the way he crafts a story, uh is just extraordinary and um I again just explodes the medium in a really fun way. Um I really loved this issue of Ice Cream Man. Uh again, I I think you know it it uses all the the parts of comics in a fun way to the point of like letting the lettering speak for the story, letting the coloring speak for the story. Like it's uh amongst the issues of that book that I've read, I did feel like that was a standout, like I a really, really extraordinary issue. Um I I have tried to remove my personal bias, but perhaps it still lingers. I I have to choose black hole. Uh a brilliant piece of work that I do think is just one of the standout comics of the movie.
SPEAKER_00You know what's really scary, kids? The system.
SPEAKER_02And it's rigged against you.
SPEAKER_00Wow. And you can never really win.
SPEAKER_02All right, ice cream man. Um but this was great. Again, as a big horror nut, I was thrilled to have this conversation and have an excuse to reread and read some great horror comics. Uh so thank you guys. Uh I'm again. Can you excuse me for a second?
unknownYou can't do this to me.
SPEAKER_02You're experiencing your own personal horror right now. Uh thanks, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Uh this is what lost fit. Wow. First one.
SPEAKER_03You look are you okay? You look red, you look kind of delirious.
SPEAKER_02You're having visions of your past slash future? I d uh what w one, I I won.
SPEAKER_00I won. I picked black hole. Uh well. Any closing thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_03Uh I feel like I deserve this. I'm glad to see you fall. Hey, thanks for listening. If you liked hearing our thoughts on other comics, you should check out our comics, available at any local comic book store or online at idwpublishing.com.