Over the last few weeks, 31 Days of Horror: The Most Terrifying Comic Book Covers Ever Published has showcased seven horrifically wonderful images in two separate columns.
If you missed those particular entries, you can find them both here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).
Today is October 31. Halloween. The raison d’etra for these columns and our month-long celebration of all things that are pop culture horror. Let’s dive in, then, to the third and final column in this series that details the most frightening comic book cover images.
Swamp Thing #5 (August 1973) Cover art by Bernie Wrightson; Published by DC Comics
This column has already highlighted a Swamp Thing cover in Part 1. The fan favourite, if cult classic, muck-encrusted monster has a long history of ferociously terrifying images gracing the covers of various monthly comic book issues.
Still, this particular image from the cover of Swamp Thing #5, devised by the co-creator of the character is perhaps, Swamp Thing at its most wild and ferociously powerful.
Bernie Wrightson is a wonderfully accomplished illustrator and a legend in the pantheon of comic book artists. His acclaimed vision of the swamp monster is the most well known amongst fans of both comic books and comic book horror. His Swamp Thing is an image of a hulking mass of knotted vine and mossy muscle, all taunt power, full of elemental anger.
On the cover, Wrightson has drafted an explosive scene that echoes Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – another story that the master artist is so well known for illustrating. Here is Swamp Thing, long hunted and finally driven atop rocky peaks by a pitchfork and torch-waving mass of rural townsfolk, determined to rid their lives of the beast. Their placement on the page draws the viewer’s gaze ever upward, a taunt spring coiled tighter and tighter still, leading towards the monster’s right arm. His muscular appendage is outstretched, his hand curled into a tight fist, seen at the apex of a deliberate and ferocious pummeling. On the right of the image, Wrightson has echoed the action and foretold it’s expected ending with a wonderfully placed trunk of a dead tree. Heightening the horrific excitement is the image of a beautiful woman, tied to that tree, screaming for release, or, perhaps, understanding. Is the monster hero or victim?
We see ourselves in this feral image of monster and man. We see ourselves, forcing our own hand against whatever it might be that we disagree with, be they politics or people. Here, misplaced hatred and fear is brought to a violent end at the hands of the all-powerful monster who gathers its strength and destroys those who interfere with its existence!
We too know our inevitable end, our own might, whatever it may be, useless against the awesomeness of uncompromising death.
Taboo #5 (Fall 1991) Cover art by Jeff Jones; Published by Tundra Press/Spiderbaby Grafix & Publications
Taboo was an anthology comic book series that featured both standalone and continuing stories from a long list of notable writers and artists. Each issue clocked at over 100 pages in length, full of horror and fantasy and underground tales. Conceived and edited by Steve Bissette (famed artist of the 1980’s revamped version of Swamp Thing for DC Comics), Taboo strove to push the comic book medium into new directions, often succeeding brilliantly.
The cover for Taboo #5 was painted by acclaimed artist, Jeffrey Catherine Jones, perhaps best known for her fantasy, science fiction and horror book cover work. Still, her paintings of the human form, landscapes and skies prompted many, including the famed fantasy painter, Frank Frazetta, to call her one of the finest painters of the twentieth century.
Produced in oil and titled “Bogman”, the harrowing image conveys a curled up and emaciated figure lacking dignity, huddled in the darkest corner of the frame. His weak arms are painfully thin, his knuckles broken and sore, his pale and yellowing skin is fallow, his hair withered and his nose rotted. It’s an image that elicits disgust and it’s no wonder we want to avert our gaze.
Still, under the masterful hand of Jones who brings surprising gravity to the painting, the depressive Bogman is full of wonderful linework that ebbs and flows and brings so much movement and emotional complexity to the despondently cowed figure. With feet and toes that stretch and seize and with one hand that clasps its face as if to hold back sorrow while another miserably clutches at a gasping chest, the artist has forced us to acknowledge what we had wanted to dismiss. Jones has made us pity the monstrously pitiless.
In doing so, we reminisce our own experiences with the unhoused, the sick and the dejected, finally realizing the baggage we ourselves carry along with our very own monstrous Bogman personas.
Harrow County #14 (July 2016) Cover art by Tyler Crook; Published by Dark Horse Comics
What a wonderful series Harrow County was. We here at Biff Bam Pop! wrote extensively on the southern gothic horror comic book tale, including a column that featured during the 31 Days of Horror 2016 edition.
The cover for Harrow County #14, painted by series artist Tyler Crook, is a personal favourite. It not only encapsulates the prevailing menace within the singular issue, but of the entire comic book series itself. Its imagery stands out from all others on the newsstand rack, resonating with viewers, proving that horror doesn’t have to be schemed in blacks, shades of red or rotting greens.
No, lighter-coloured images can linger in the brain and in the soul, haunting an individual years after first being witnessed.
The colours here are wistful and dreamy with swirling sandy yellows and cool, mossy greens that blow dryly around a pretty Emmy, the main protagonist of Harrow County. There’s a sense of drought that permeates the scene and betrays her youthful essence, a weathering that deliberately scratches away at life. Emmy is alone here, forlornly centered on the page, plaintively looking ahead, unaware of the gathering death behind her. Using the juxtaposition of complementary colous in the blue of Emmy’s billowing dress and the orange and yellows of swirling clouds, Crook has deftly created a visual vibration in the page, a psychological disturbance emphasized in the figurative skull forming in the background sky. It’s a wonderful trick between the science of colour theory and age-old symbolism, adding to the haunting gravitas of the scene.
Death can never be escaped. We can only just perceive its gathering gloom, somewhere down the dusty road of our lives. The image here is a melancholy and horrifying look at our future and, even more so, a frightening visage of our beloved children’s future.
That concludes this year’s iteration of 31 Days of Horror: The Most Terrifying Comic Book Covers Ever Published.
Enjoy your own personal scares this Halloween evening. Perhaps, we’ll be back again this time next year, highlighting more riveting covers of historical comic book publications for all of you wonderfully horror-stricken viewers!
