Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.

And look! There's even something going on on this page! Not just yakkity-yakkin' and stuff.

Thanks for sticking around so far, folks. Still got a pretty substantial chunk of story to go. And things look to be heating up in Drytown, so buckle in.

Art by Gervasio and Jok. Written by Matt Maxwell.

I just realized that Collins' riding coat got ripped in the first chapter and it got patched sometime along the way.  You can see it real clear in panel 3.

I'd try to work up something exciting for the 100th page, but everytime I've tried to, real life has reached up and smacked me in the face.  That doesn't mean you shouldn't keep your eyes peeled, though.

Back on Wednesday.

Horror can be a tricky genre for comics. They can't engage in the same sort of "Boo!" surprises that, say, movies like Halloween can, mainly because the pictures are all laid out for you as you're reading. It's too easy for your eye to jump ahead and see that the big, bad monster is going to pop out of the casket three panels from now.

But if comics can't service that sort of immediate shock to the system (at least not very well) then where the medium does excel is in connoting dread, in prolonging tension, and in completely unnerving you. When done right, a good scary comic book can linger with you for a lot longer than your average Saw or Friday the 13th sequel.

With that in mind, JK Parkin and I came up with are six comics that at various points in our lives, had us checking under the bed or otherwise kept us awake all night. Be sure to add your own traumatic experiences in the comments section.

From 'Anatomy Lesson'

1. The Anatomy Lesson by Alan Moore, Stephen Bissett and John Totleben. Lots and lots has been said about Alan Moore and company's run on Swamp Thing, most of it well deserved. Certainly it was a game changer in terms of showing what kinds of comics could be produced within the mainstream, never mind launching Moore's career in the U.S.

What doesn't get talked about quite as much is how truly unsettling and scary some of those stories could be. The tale that kickstarted the whole thing, The Anatomy Lesson, in particular left a strong mark on me as a young reader, as poor Swampy is forced to confront the fact that everything he believed about himself was a complete lie. I wasn't used to such existential horror and the notion that such a realization could drive you murderously insane left me feeling a tad ... upset to say the leas. To this day, the phrase "He isn't Alec Holland. He never will be Alec Holland. He never was Alec Holland" combined with that image of the crazed monster running ever closer to the reader still rattles around in my brain.

2. An unnamed EC story by Jack Davis. This one requires a bit of explanation. One fall evening, back in say, sixth grade or so, two of my friends and I were hanging out at the local comic book shop. I started reading an EC reprint that was laying on one of the shelves. It was about a bunch of greedy real estate developers who knocked down a cemetery to pave it over as a highway. One night they're driving on the highway and the corpses rise up out of the asphalt and come after them. The next day they're found smooshed under the steamroller.

"What poppycock" I thought to myself, chuckling over the ridiculousness of the story as we headed home. But by that time it had gotten late. And dark. And it was a long walk home. And as my friends joked, I found myself watching the shadows, looking over my shoulders and generally feeling ill at ease. The years have passed, but I've never forgotten that story (though, tellingly, I've never tried to find it again) or the feeling I had walking home that night.

3. Creepshow by Stephen King and Bernie Wrightson. Let's be clear about this: I was a huge coward as a child (still am, really). Thus, when the George Romero/Stephen King EC-tribute film Creepshow came out, I knew there was no way I was going to try to go see it. I could barely look at Bernie Wrightson's comic adaptation! Which, of course, didn't mean that I didn't try to look at it mind you. I usually just kept sneaking glances and then quickly stuffing it back on the shelf. Usually when I came to that final story about the guy who gets eaten alive by cockroaches.

The great, long, red-legged scissorman

4. Doom Patrol by Grant Morrison and Richard Case. When Chris initially asked me to do this, the plan was that I was going to talk about The Walking Dead. Probably the issue where we meet the cannibals and get to see their handiwork , or legwork, as the case may be. But while talking to some friends about scary comicsr, I remembered Doom Patrol, particularly that very first arc that Morrison did when he took over, and in particular the Scissormen.

The Scissormen, y'see, come from a lovely little poem about a boy who won't stop sucking his thumbs, so a tailor shows up with a large pair of scissors to cut them off.

The door flew open, in he ran,
The great, long, red-legged scissorman.
Oh! children, see! the tailor's come
And caught our little Suck-a-Thumb.

I was reading Doom Patrol before Morrison started his magnificent run on the book, and while "Crawling from the Wreckage" was a refreshing change of pace, it was also kind of jarring ... they went from fighting goofy villains, participating in crossovers (Invasion) and adopting young heroes to train, to battling nightmarish creatures who speak oddly, made it rain fish and start offing people in the mental hospital where Cliff Steele meets Crazy Jane. It's all pretty nightmarish, right up to the scene where we see the Scissormen in action against Tempest, basically cutting him out of reality and taking him prisoner. The arc was a great introduction to what the team would go on to do with the book, and I still get a little creeped out at the thought of those big faceless red guys with scissors for hands. -- JK Parkin

5. The Drifting Classroom Vol. 3 by Kazuo Umezu. So in Drifting Classroom, there's this elementary school that mystically and inexplicably gets teleported forward in time to a bleak apocalyptic landscape filled with horrible monsters. Faced with this horror, the parents all go insane and kill each other, leaving the kids to fend for themselves, Lord of the Flies-like.

But the monsters aren't the worst part of the story. No, it's how the kids treat each other and how they react to their situation that's truly horrifying. Case in point is Vol. 3, where, as the older kids fight amongst themselves, the first graders decide they've had enough, climb to the roof screaming for their moms and dads, and then one of them decides he's going to try to turn into a bird and fly away. AND THEN HE DOES IT.

Please don't ask me if the kid makes it. I'm still traumatized by the incident.

6. The Bully by Junji Ito. I've saved the best for last. Most of Ito's horror manga have a delicate black comic touch, doling out just enough humor to balance out the bleak awfulness of whatever situation the Ito's victims find themselves in.

Not this one. And there's no supernatural elements here either. The Bully is about a mean little girl who constantly picks on a younger boy at the local playground, upping the ante constantly until he actually gets badly hurt. Years pass and the children, now grown up, meet again, fall in love, get married and have a son. Then one day, the husband mysteriously disappears. The wife struggles on as a single mom until she suddenly realizes that he never loved her, that this was his revenge upon her for the terrible treatment he received from her as a child. And then she starts to smile. And she goes to put her make up on ...

(remember to read right to left)

And I'll stop there. I wouldn't dream of spoiling that final image except to say it still haunts my dreams.

Part of an illustration by Alex Sheikman

For his one-a-day sketch series on his blog, Robotika creator Alex Sheikman drew a terrific illustration based on Strangeways, the Western-horror series by Matt Maxwell and Luis Guragna. The second graphic novel in the series, The Thirsty, is being serialized online right here at Robot 6.

To see the full illustration, visit Sheikman's blog.

We all do it. One of the things that makes Horror such a powerful genre is that it forces us to face mortality and other things that usually make us uncomfortable. We squirm our way through the experience and emerge - we feel - stronger and better prepared for having endured it. It's a coping mechanism. But we also laugh. There's a reason that another word for "blood" is "humor."

I recently wrote a comic about a vampire cow (you'll be hearing more about that some other time), so I've been thinking about funny horror comics a bit. What are some of the ways that we try to merge the things that frighten us with the things that make us laugh? Here are six examples; my favorites of the Humorous Horror sub-genre.

Charles Addams

The Work of Charles Addams

Charles Addams' hilariously macabre strips may not have been the first time humor and horror were married, but they're arguably the most successful example of it. The Addams Family cartoons being the most famous, obviously. Addams avoided depicting truly evil characters and events, choosing instead to poke fun at death (or just plain misery) and our fear of it. His characters celebrate misfortune and mortality, but they do it without meanness of spirit. Rather than laughing at our pain, they invite us to join them in the joke. Once we do - and with Addams, we always do - we realize that there is something funny about these oh-so-powerful fears we have, even if we can't figure out exactly what that is.

Casper the Friendly Ghost

Casper, the Friendly Ghost

If we're going to argue about Charles Addams' being the most successful example of the humor-horror blend, Casper is the only real contender. It's a very different kind of humor from Addams, though. In fact, there's practically no horror to be found in it at all. The humor comes from Casper's rejection of horror and the disgust that instills in the "serious" spooks he encounters. According to Jerry Beck (in his intro to Dark Horse's collection of Casper stories), Harvey editor Sid Jacobson liked to remind people that Casper isn't the ghost of a dead boy. Rather, "a ghost is purely a fantasy being, like a giant, a witch, a pixie or a goblin." Harvey Comics created an Enchanted Forest full of these harmless Halloween characters like Casper, his tough cousin Spooky, Wendy the good little witch, and Nightmare the ghost-horse. And generations of kids read those comics and dreamed about going there.

The Cryptics

The Cryptics

Steve Niles and Ben Roman's mini-series about a group of monster kids is Casper with an edge. The wish-fulfillment is there, but there's a nostalgic angle to it that Casper doesn't have. The Cryptics don't live in an Enchanted Forest, they live in the suburbs and spend their time doing what most kids do: playing outside, teasing each other, and arguing with their parents about not wanting to eat their dog biscuits (or maybe that last one is just Wolfy). Roman's art is creepy and sarcastic, so there's a dark edge to the humor too that's different from Casper. But the scripts are all Niles having fun juxtaposing traditional horror characters with the life of a child. The result is a completely charming look at a group of kids who - while monstrous misfits - are lovably familiar.

Boneyard

Boneyard

Richard Moore takes a similar approach to The Cryptics by populating Boneyard with relateable, humorous monsters. But while The Cryptics is a Casper-like collection of short stories and gag strips, Moore's telling a longer, serialized story. The human hero is a young man named Michael who inherits a cemetery in a small town. When he goes to look it over, he learns that it's inhabited by a cute vampire and her ghoulish friends, and that the townsfolk want it torn down. They see the new owner as their opportunity to do that, but when Michael meets the boneyard's citizens, he's not so sure he wants to cooperate. The humor is mostly in the characters' personalities and the situation, but there's also a fair bit of drama as well. It's a lovely, too-often-overlooked book.

The Goon

The Goon

Most of the comics listed so far are more about the humor with some spooky elements thrown in for extra fun. The Goon is different because it allows actual horror to stand side-by-side with the jokes. It's sort of like Charles Addams that way, except that Eric Powell is more willing to allow real evil to creep into the stories. Most of the funny comes from the irreverent attitude that the Goon and his pal Frankie have about the monsters around them, or from the occasional ineptness of those monsters, but Powell never lets you get too comfortable. You may be laughing at this page, but chances are good that you'll be chilled by the next. It's a delicate balance, but Powell is its master.

Arsenic Lullabies

Arsenic Lullabies

Doug Paszkiewicz' anthology isn't concerned about balance. It marries humor and horror in much the same way that Addams did, but it's far more mean about it. It's no less funny, but you'll be horrified by your laughter as much as anything you read on the page. Arsenic Lullaby finds humor in Stillborn Sally baby dolls and Voodoo Joe's army of zombie fetuses (raised from the dumpsters behind the abortion clinic). It's vile and nasty and you are evil to laugh at it. But so am I.

A black cat crosses Seth's path

Lately, acclaimed cartoonist Seth has mostly been busy delighting us with his designs for Drawn & Quarterly's John Stanley Library. But with Halloween only a day away, the artist behind George Sprott and Wimbledon Green has decided to spook us instead. Seth has provided illustrations for a series of New York City ghost stories, reported by writer Lizzy Ratner in The New York Times. Created in ghostly blue and white, they're like the artiest, most tastefully drawn episode of Ghost Hunters ever.

(Via Peggy Burns at the D&Q blog.)

Tom Neely's The Blot

What do you think of when you think of horror comics? Vintage EC shockers, black-clad Vertigo occult titles, weird and wild manga, modern-day success stories like 30 Days of Night and Hack/Slash, or the mother of all zombie comics The Walking Dead? For my money, the most reliably disturbing and disquieting work in the genre over recent years has come from artists who produce what you'd consider to be "alternative comics." These alt-horror cartoonists may not even think of themselves as horror-comics creators at all, eschewing as most of them do the rhythms and staples of conventional horror fiction. But by deploying altcomix' usual emphasis on tone and emotional effect in service of dark and macabre imagery, their comics haunt me all the more.

So for my contribution to Robot 666's daily horror-centric lists this week, I'm singing the praises of six talented alt-horror cartoonists. I could have listed quite a few more, mind you--some real giants of the field, including Gilbert Hernandez, Jaime Hernandez, Charles Burns, Jim Woodring, and Alan Moore & Eddie Campbell have done tremendous work in this area. But for me right now, these were the six who demanded the spotlight.

"Brazil Quali" by Renee French

Renee French: You can make reasonably accurate comparisons to David Lynch with at least four of the six people on this list, but French may be the cartoonist whose work demands one the most. In particular, her frequently deformed (more like unformed) characters and hazy, dreamlike, soft-focus pencils recall Lynch's unnerving debut Eraserhead with its dust-mote cinematography and mewling infant thing. French's most recent books, The Ticking and Micrographica (both from Top Shelf), move away from the more direct body horror of her earlier collection Marbles in my Underpants. But they maintain a tone of quietly frightening vulnerability--like peeling up a floorboard to find some kind of fuzzy gray fungus pulsing beneath, or probing the soft spot on a baby's skull. And every so often, the work she's been posting on a daily basis to her blog will deliver a knockout blow of yikes-ness. [Buy French's comics at Top Shelf]

Benjamin Marra's Night Business

Benjamin Marra: "Discovered" by the Comics Comics crew and canonized as part of the "New Action" pseudo-movement of alt-genre comics, Marra is typically seen in the tradition of late-nite grindhouse '80s-indy-comic trash. And certainly his comics are steeped in enough Grand Theft Auto: Vice City-style thugs, babes, and '80s iconography to merit that outlook. But Marra says the most direct inspiration for his retro-thriller series Night Business was a fateful video-store binge on the '70s Italian slasher-horror genre known as giallo. Largely dispensing with plot in favor of gratuitous nudity and brutal yet artfully staged murders, these cult films--pioneered by directors Mario Bava and Dario Argento and boasting titles like Strip Nude for Your Killer and Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key--have found a true artistic heir in Marra, who's blended their seedy sensuality and gruesome gore with the vibe of forgotten '70s and '80s American genre comics into a truly singular comics experience. [Buy Marra's comics at his website]

an outtake from Hans Rickheit's The Squirrel Machine

Hans Rickheit: I could be wrong, but I feel like Rickheit is less interested in scaring you than any other artist on this list. It just so happens that his "normal" is grotesque and harrowing to the rest of us. His characters--in his Xeric-winning erotic-horror graphic novel Chloe, in his minicomic anthology series Chrome Fetus, and in his massive Fantagraphics hardcover The Squirrel Machine--explore strange, complex, semi-mechanical environments, discovering fleshy orifices, hideous hybrids, and strange secret dwellings where uncomfortably intimate activities are performed. His comics frequently end simply by showing us what his characters have discovered in their explorations, as though the act of seeing what they see is climactic and irrevocable. Couple it with a unique turn-of-the-century aesthetic (nobody use the s-word!) and you get comics that are sort of like if David Cronenberg tried to do Videodrome in the 1900s. [Buy Rickheit's comics at Fantagraphics and at his website]

from Al Columbia's Pim and Francie

Al Columbia: Really there's nothing I can say about Columbia that hasn't already been said (better than I'd say it) by Robot 6's Chris Mautner in his "Collect This Now!" piece on Columbia's early works earlier this week. I'll simply add that maybe my favorite thing about Columbia's comics--many of which can now be found in his new Fantagraphics hardcover Pim and Francie--is how they look like the product of some doomed and demented animation studio. It's as though a team of expert craftsmen became trapped in their office sometime during the Depression and were forgotten about for decades, reduced to inbreeding, feeding on their own dead, and making human sacrifices to the mimeograph machine, and when the authorities finally stumbled across their charnel-house lair, this stuff is what they were working on in the darkness. And though Columbia's recent comeback has proven him capable of creeping us out without recourse to old-timey imagery (cf. his scenes-from-a-murder-scene strip "5:45 A.M." in MOME Vol. 11), the work for which he is best known smartly takes advantage of its seeming vintage pedigree. As anyone who's ever found themselves alone in an empty room with very old dolls, their eyes staring endlessly, time can make monsters out of almost anything. [Buy Columbia's comics at Fantagraphics]

"Skinwalker" by Tom Neely

Tom Neely: Neely's another artist who specializes in character designs that recall classic cartooning from Popeye to Steamboat Willie, but unlike Columbia, that's not where he pulls the horror from. Instead, his knob-kneed, button-eyed characters find themselves adrift in imagery seemingly pulled from some black netherdimension. Sometimes Lovecraftian in scope, other times feeling more like the best heavy-metal album art never drawn, Neely's monsters--wolfmen, ravens and dogs, killers, and particularly the title, uh, thing from his self-published graphic novel The Blot--are all clearly rooted in the mental state of artist, character, and audience alike. They're exterior expressions of something scary within, a fear that in the face of the monstrousness of ourselves or others, we really are as helpless as Neely's frail everymen and everywomen. PS: He can do straight-out horror-comic homages like nobody's business, too. [Buy Neely's work at his website]

from Josh Simmons's House

Josh Simmons: Whoa. Simmons is one of a very few comics creators still capable of shocking. His best-known claim to fame is House, a stark, largely silent work of survival horror that makes tremendous and relentless use of its crumbling, sprawling titular environment, and really put alt-horror on the comics map again. But as harsh as that book gets, it still can't prepare you for the utterly uncompromising, searingly angry horror he's been producing for anthologies and self-published minicomics. His Ignatz-nominated MOME strip "Jesus Christ" recasts the second coming as an anatomically-correct, genocidal giant-monster attack. His minicomic In a Land of Magic swerves from goofy fantasy-world parody to gut-churning sexual violence. His Kramers Ergot 7 contribution "Night of the Jibblers" is reminiscent of Clive Barker at his early best, transgressive splatterpunk that punishes the innocent and feeds on obscenity. His unauthorized Batman mini makes the Dark Knight darker than he's ever been, stripping away his heroism and recasting him as a sullenly psychopathic mutilator of the homeless. And his magnum opus, Cockbone, is a pornographically explicit story of incest and mutation without a glimmer of joy or hope in its pages. Simmons is doing serious, dangerous work. [Buy Simmons's comics at Fantagraphics]

Written by Matt Maxwell. Art by Gervasio and Jok.

Wonder how long the residents of Drytown are going to let this makeover continue, anyways?

Comics, too, have an established history of the examiners of the unknown, from Doctor Occult to John Constantine to the denizens of the Hellboy universe (the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, Lobster Johnson, Sir Edward Grey, et al).

For this list highlighting some of the medium's greats, I wanted to avoid the more popular, or more obvious, choices, such as Doctor Strange, Doctor Thirteen, Batman or the aforementioned Hellboy and Constantine. Most of them get plenty of ink as it is.

With that out of the way, here are six great paranormal investigators from comics (in no particular order, of course):

Dylan Dog

Dylan Dog

See that debonair fellow with the chiseled, Rupert Everett-esque features (Everett before that unfortunate facelift, in any case)? That's Dylan Dog, the forever-penniless "nightmare investigator" with a laundry list of neuroses -- acrophobia, claustrophobia and chiroptophobia, among them -- a fondness for the clarinet, a hefty Oedipus complex, and a father who may be the Devil. He's also the star of the bestselling Italian comic-book series. Created in 1986 by writer Tiziano Sclavi, Dylan is a former Scotland Yard detective who set out on his own after the death of his wife. Based out of his plush home at 7 Craven Road in London -- it's the house with the screaming doorbell, you can't miss it -- and aided by a sidekick who's either a Groucho Marx impersonator or the reincarnation of the comedian, Dylan waits for the next surreal case (and real paycheck) while he tinkers with a model ship that he never manages to complete.

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service

The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service

The next time you grumble about your job, realize that it could be much, much worse. Take, for instance, the members of the Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service (stars of the series of the same name by Eiji Otsuka and Housui Yamazaki). They're students at a Buddhist university who specialize in helping the spirits of the dead -- often those who have been gruesomely murdered -- to move on to their next incarnation. More often than not, that involves discovering the killer and then stepping aside while the restless spirit exacts its revenge. Luckily, the couriers are uniquely equipped for their occupations: There's the dowser who can locate the corpses, the psychic who can communicate with the dead, the computer expert, the licensed embalmer, and the medium who can channel a foul-mouthed alien intelligence via a hand puppet. Yeah, you read that last part right.

Agnes Quill

Agnes Quill

Like the Kurosagi crew, Dave Roman's plucky teenage detective makes a living by helping the departed resolve unfinished business so they can move on to the afterlife. Agnes also can see, and communicate with, ghosts, beginning with that of her grandfather, the famous detective Ages Quill. Based in a curiosity shop on the first floor of her inherited castle, Agnes prowls the streets, and catacombs, of Legerdemain -- it's a sprawling Victorian city built around an enormous cemetery -- tracking down criminals, dodging bullets, battling possessed teddy bears, and only occasionally getting paid.

Reiji Akiba

Reiji Akiba

Private detective Reiji Akiba, the star of Housui Yamazaki's series Mail, likes to take a direct approach to dispatching spirits. None of that touchy-feely "What's troubling you?" stuff. Akiba comes armed with Kagutsuchi, a sanctified gun that fires bullets that send the sinister specters to ... well, wherever they're supposed to go. Heaven, hell, the otherworld. He also enjoys a good incantation. For example: "Dead soul, tearing at the living half. With my gun I admonish you. I trace you and I track you. From egg ... to womb ... to grave." Poetry, that.

Courtney Crumrin

Courtney Crumrin

The odd little girl with the bat barrette isn't an investigator in the strictest sense of the word. No, she's just nosy. And stubborn. And probably too smart for her own good. Unfortunately, when you're the niece of a powerful and feared warlock and live in a neighborhood populated by witches, goblins and talking cats, those personality traits can lead to no end of trouble -- and mysteries. Ted Naifeh's headstrong heroine pursues a kidnapped infant into the subterranean Goblin Town, exposes a conspiracy within the Coven of Mystics, discovers the ghostly secret of her friend's mother, and even tries to help star-crossed (and full-moonstruck) lovers.

The Marquis

Vol de Galle, The Marquis

On a list populated by characters who fight tooth and nail with the undead, handle mutilated corpses and even steal the decapitated head of a grotesque goblin (oh, Miss Crumrin!), Vol de Galle is easily the most troubling, disturbing and, perhaps, even disturbed entry. The protagonist of Guy Davis' action-horror series The Marquis, de Galle is a former Catholic Inquisitor in Venisalle, a fictional snow-covered land resembling 18th-century France, where the Church and a rigid class structure cast long shadows over everyday life. Seemingly blessed by the saints, de Galle possesses the ability to detect the demons who, disguised as humans, have escaped Hell to prey on his countrymen. Donning a black mask and costume, and wielding a sword and a pair of machine gun-style pistols, de Galle becomes The Marquis, the dark protector of Venisalle and destroyer of demons. That, or he's a madman suffering from delusions and hallucinations who has murdered countless (mostly) innocent people. Take your pick.

Now that's creepy.

Evenfall is full of moments like those. Phoebe is dealing with the death of her mother, and she has had to drop out of school to run her mother’s business. She is depressed, she drinks too much, and lashes out at those around her. And then, as she is clearing out a clogged drain in the basement of a rental property, a hand reaches out and grabs her by the ankle, dragging her into an alternate world. For all of book 1, she slides back and forth between normal life and a twisted nightmare world. These dreamlike episodes are night terrors that walk in the day: Phoebe hurtles through space, escapes from grasping claws, relives her mother's last illness, and almost forgets her sadness as she fights to survive. It’s great stuff, a powerful literary portrayal of depression and loss, with the supernatural elements reinforcing the feeling of unreality that depression brings on. The story moves in more of a straightforward fantasy direction in book 2, and then the comic ends abruptly. Even without a resolution, though, book 1 is good reading for the dreamlike atmosphere it evokes.

Warren Pleece’s episodic Montague Terrace is series of very short stories about the varied denizens of the titular building: A sinister puppeteer who controls the world, a washed-up folkie who dreams of humiliating his former manager, a floundering magician who is comforted by his taking magic rabbit (who has demons of his own). Pleece uses a subtler blend of everyday scenes and dreamlike twists than Stathis; his people are tired and shabby, but while there is drama in every piece. My favorite story so far is "Codename Babushka," in which a swindler picks the wrong old lady as his mark. Pleece's clean-lined art is easy to read, but like a good magician, he uses that clarity to mislead the reader. The series has been on hiatus but is due back soon; I’m looking forward to the next group of stories.

I put off looking at Split Lip for a long time because I figured if the name grossed me out, I probably wouldn’t like the comic. And indeed, the lurid red-and-black website signals that we are in a very different corner of the story universe than the quiet grayness of Montague Terrace. The stories are more like classic horror tales, with a fascination with death and disappearance: A man gets sucked through the looking glass, a grave-robbing doctor finds the tables turned on him, a murderous pair of bank robbers catches a ride… on the train to hell. All the stories are written by Sam Costello but they are illustrated by a variety of artists, so the style changes from one episode to the next. As in Montague Terrace, some are a little puzzling or leave loose ends dangling, but all are creepily enjoyable.

Like Evenfall, Cameron Stewart's Sin Titulo starts with a dream sequence, and it has that dreamlike quality in that the narrator is constantly grasping for something that is always just out of reach. The narrator, in this case, is Alex, a young man who goes to visit his grandfather in a nursing home and discovers that the old man has died. Everything is just a little bit off, though—when he asks about a photo of his grandfather with a strange woman, the staff becomes suddenly evasive and things go wobbling off in an odd direction. Curious, Alex follows an orderly after work, starting a chain of events that quickly spirals out of control. The story is part thriller but part mind game, as Alex pops in and out of dreams, recalls buried memories of his unhappy family, loses his moorings to everyday life and winds up a fugitive, running after a few wisps—a dream about a tree on a beach, the woman in sunglasses. In the most recent episode, the story takes a sharp turn into pure horror, so maybe Stewart will start showing his cards a bit more.

With the exception of Split Lip, none of these comics is classic horror, but the possibility they open up—that there are strange forces lurking beneath the veneer of everyday things—is far more disturbing, in its own way, than any zombie or vampire. When you can't tell if you're awake or dreaming any more, when surfaces dissolve and certainties become riddles—that's the scariest time of all.