Yes, Hallowe’en has been and gone, but what’s any good horror story without a final jolt? Writer David Hine and artist Mark Stafford’s new horror graphic novel Lip Hook is a story of witches, sex magic, poisonous fogs and dangerous insects set in a small, strange town called Lip Hook. It’s a textbook example of folk horror that has clearly seen The Wicker Man and Blood on Satan’s Claw a few times. Hine and Stafford add their own soupy, delirious texture and the result mixes humour and horror to delicious effect.
Hine and Stafford have worked together before on the graphic novel The Man Who Laughs. Stafford is cartoonist in residence at the Cartoon Museum in London, while Hine has written for Marvel and DC, including stints on X-Men, Batman and Spider-Man.
For Graphic Content Hine and Stafford tell us their own favourite horror on screen and on the page.
Read on while we go and investigate that strange noise from the other room.
MARK STAFFORD
Fiction
I'll go with the Town Manager by Thomas Ligotti, which the cartoonist Krent Able hipped me to. It's an incredibly strange tale of malign political manipulation being asserted upon a small town's population, and their inability to resist. Ligotti is an odd writer who, like horror greats Shirley Jackson and Ramsey Campbell, seems all too familiar with derangement. Their work is as much about the experience of paranoia as it is about any supernatural shenanigans.
Television
The Stone Tape, a BBC drama by Nigel Kneale from 1972. I love Kneale's work, which wasn't confined to any genre, but from the Quatermass serials onwards he developed a series of very creepy recurring obsessions about modern technologies and ancient evils which is in full effect here as a group of sound technicians become convinced that the ghostly figure haunting their new site is a recording of some kind, etched into the stone and ready to be exploited. It doesn't go well.
Comic
I have to admit that 90 per cent of the stuff regarded as classic Horror comics - all those short story twist ending tales - don't really work for me, fabulous art aside.
For real disquiet I'd go for the works of Al Columbia, whose stories often resemble old-school 1930's cartoons that have taken a turn for the genuinely hellish.
Junji Ito is probably the world king of creepy comics right now, and his manga are essential reading. I'll also recommend relative newcomer Josh Simmons' work ... with a side order of trigger warnings ...
DAVID HINE
Film
It’s really not possible to limit myself to a single choice. All three of these were seen when they first appeared, with no advance expectations. Each one of them impressed and disturbed me in equal measure: Night of The Living Dead, Eraserhead, Get Out. OK, to be honest, one of those does stand out above the rest. Eraserhead, for whatever perverse and inexplicable reasons, remains the most memorable movie I have ever seen. Every moment, every shot, is perfect in its own way.
Fiction
I have read a lot of horror over the years with Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King, Clive Barker, Thomas Ligotti, Ray Bradbury, Arthur Machen and HP Lovecraft featuring strongly, but one story that inserted itself like a needle in my brain was The Human Chair by Edogawa Rampo. I can’t say anything about the plot without ruining it for potential readers, but if you like writers who think outside the box then check out his book of short stories, Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination.
I also recently got around to reading Richard Matheson’s I am Legend, which is brilliant and not at all what I expected.
Comic
Like Mark, I am a huge fan of Junji Ito and particularly of Uzumaki. Another Japanese manga artist I am in awe of is Suehiro Maruo, who, coincidentally, has adapted several stories by Edogawa Rampo. He works in the ‘ero-guro’ style, which translates as ‘erotic grotesque’ and it is. My biggest early influences though, in order of discovery, were the Alan Class British reprints of 1950s short stories by Lee and Kirby or Lee and Ditko, then Creepy and Eerie and finally, working backwards, EC Comics.
Lip Hook, by David Hine and Mark Staffford, is published by SelfMadeHero, priced £14.99.
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