THOUGHT BUBBLE MONTH 2024! One of the two covers to this flipbook-style issue of This Comic is Haunted #4 – the supernatural-themed anthology from The77 Publications – is niche in a peculiarly British way. It’s a seriously creepy horror riff on the old UK television test card. A cultural reference that would be dated for most Brit readers by now but one that feels very at home here given that the various 77 Publishing projects are so firmly tied to a certain nostalgic period of British weekly comics publishing. (Covers are by Simon Hall and James Fletcher).
This Comic is Haunted #4, unsurprisingly enough, was released to tie into Halloween. It’s a bumper-sized issue which, for the purposes of this piece, I read back-to-back with its predecessors. Each edition features a mix of ongoing and complete-in-one stories. The obvious thing to note here is that to a degree the very format it is trying to emulate works, to a degree, against This Comic is Haunted. Serialised stories of just a handful of pages at a time are a tricky proposition in holding the readers’ attention when there’s such a gap between issues (#3 was released for Winter 2023, #4 for Winter 2024). But that’s a perhaps unavoidable reality of small press and micropublishing.
Logistics aside, there’s a lot to enjoy in #4. Of the done-in-one tales ‘The Harsh Truth of the Camera Eye’ (below), written by Craig Dawson and illustrated by Damian Edwardson puts a neat and very unsettling twist on the much explored horror standard of the séance. Edwardson’s use of light amongst the shade here giving the story’s most unexpected development something as close to a jump scare as is possible on the printed page.
If you’re looking for body horror with a sting to it then ‘Together’, written by Mark Spencer, illustrated by Ade Hughes and lettered by Andrew Richmond, takes an unfortunate countryside encounter with bees and turns it into a tragedy that spans years, with Hughes’s art leaning heavily into a requisite sense of the claustrophobic and of festering decay.
Of the continuing strips the urban horror of Horace Moss Clearance Expert (above) is the standout here. Moss is a kind of psychic investigator/house clearance operator and the premise here is so disconcerting because it places the otherworldly and the grotesque in the context of the banal and the everyday. Writer Jo Heeley puts a very different spin on the genre staple of the Screaming Skull giving it a degree of social relevance while Ian Stopforth’s art is amazingly intense and atmospheric.
Regular feature A Doctor Van Helsing Story (above) makes two self-contained appearances in This Comic is Haunted #4. Both are written by John H. Short, art by Adam Jakes, and lettering from the near omnipresent Andrew Richmond. There’s a kind of moody classicism to Jakes’ black and white art that is a beautiful fit for the pacing of these tales. In ‘The Vigil’ the good doctor becomes embroiled in a haunted museum mystery while in ‘The Curse’ a stolen artefact brings death from beyond the grave. Both stories have elegantly concise but chilling plots and are an object lesson in how to structure a short story in comics.
I have picked out just a small handful of offerings from #4 that especially caught my attention. As with any small press anthology where creators are sometimes honing their craft there will inevitably be those that feel more confident in delivery than others. But for genre fiction fans there’s lots to appeal here, and the Grey Phantom host character (above) certainly echoes back to a grand tradition in comics with a more eerie line in content. Those currently revelling in this year’s 40th anniversary celebrations of classic Brit weekly Scream! will no doubt find much to enjoy herein.
Simon Hall, James Fletcher, Russell Fox, Mike Powell, Ian Stopforth, Andrew Richmond, John H. Short, Adam Jakes, Adam Colclough, Adam O’Donnell, Bhuna, Dan Pollard, Gary Burley, Mark Spencer, Ade Hughes, David Thomas, Jo Heeley, Alexus Savage, Dave Heeley, Giuseppe D’Elia • 77 Publications, £9.99
Review by Andy Oliver
The77 Publications will be at Booth 4 in the DSTLRY Hall at Thought Bubble.
Thought Bubble 2024 runs from November 11th-17th with the convention weekend taking place on the 16th-17th. More details on the Thought Bubble site here.
Read all our Thought Bubble 2024 coverage so far in one place here.
Art by Rocío Arreola Mendoza
