HORROR COMICS

CREEPY COMICS

FROM SUPERNATURAL TO STRANGE TALES AND JUDGE DEATH, THIS YEAR’S SPOOKY SEASON COMICS ARE SCARIER THAN EVER

WORDS: STEPHEN JEWELL

BAD GIRLS

These comedy horror queens have got their knockers, but we’re delighted to see the pair of them

As the host of ’80s TV series Movie Macabre With Elvira, the Mistress of the Dark is the perfect candidate to usher in this spooky season’s offering of scary comics. She’s teaming up with DC Comics’ own Maid of Mischief Harley Quinn in a new six-parter from Dynamite Entertainment, Harley Quinn X Elvira. It’s co-written by long-running Harley scripters Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner, with the latter sharing art duties with Juan Samu.

Covers for Harley Quinn X Elvira and Supernatural.

“Elvira and Harley are quite different in many ways,” says Palmiotti. “Harley is driven by her instincts and emotions the minute they pop into her overworking brain, and reacts a bit too quickly to just about everything.

“Whereas Elvira is hyper-aware of herself and how she wants people to see her, and looks at things from a point of view that comes from experience and a side dish of humour. Harley is more spontaneous than Elvira, and that gets her in more trouble than both of them can handle.”

With Elvira’s show threatened by a corporate takeover, she joins with Harley to throw a huge Halloween party. “We kick off in Harley’s Coney Island stomping ground and we also step into Elvira’s world,” continues Palmiotti. “Think coast-to-coast TV stations, late night horror hosting and a reality that’s just grounded enough for the two characters to meet. By issue three, we swing by some of Elvira’s old haunts and stir up a little mischief on the other side of the globe.”

Dynamite Entertainment is also bringing Supernatural, which ran for 15 seasons from 2005 to 2020, back to comics. The new series is by writer Greg Pak and artist Eder Messias, and focuses on the Winchester brothers’ more accessible early adventures.

“The show gets into incredibly fun but also pretty complicated mythology and demonology in later seasons that might be a lot for new readers to wrap their heads around,” explains Pak, whose stories are set immediately after the conclusion of season one. “So it felt like a great move to start the comic series during the kind of monster-of-the-week era.”