The town of Maple Hollow holds a special fondness for Halloween. Every October is marked with a lengthy celebration of the spooky season. There are nightly haunted hayrides, pumpkin carving contests and all manner of amusements! Indeed, there are only two people in Maple Hollow who don’t celebrate Halloween—the town’s dentists, Dr. and Dr. Hollowell. They see Halloween as the night all their hard work safeguarding the town’s smiles is ruined, thanks to all the trick-or-treating and the candy that comes with it.
To make matters worse, their daughter Holly Hollowell was born with a natural attraction to the Halloween holiday. She rejected plush toys in favor of a rubber spider and always dressed in orange and black. However, despite Holly’s well-researched arguments that there is more to Halloween than candy, her parents refuse to let her trick-or-treat or dress up. Indeed, they make her stay home on Halloween night while they go out to a dentist convention!
Thankfully, Holly’s wish that she might finally have the Halloween of her dreams is heard by the Spoops – the little spirits of Halloween who make the world a little bit more magical every autumn. With their help, Holly will make up for lost time. And, with a little bit of pumpkin spice, the Spoops just might help Holly’s parents see the magic of Halloween.
I will admit to some bias in my enjoyment of Spoops: The Little Spirits of Halloween. All Hallow’s Eve has always been my favorite holiday. I made it a point to dress up every year as a kid and I spent more than few Halloween’s during my misspent youth dressing up at The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Even now, I’m a cosplayer who dresses up enough that, while maybe not every day is Halloween, I certainly keep to the spirit of the season all year around. Spoops: The Little Spirits of Halloween will appeal to those of a similar bend.
This is the first graphic novel of voice actor A.J. Locascio. Hopefully it will not be his last, as he shows a tremendous talent for writing for children. His rhyme scheme evokes memories of Dr. Seuss and Clement Clarke Moore, though he avoids the silly words of the former. At first, I thought some of Locascio’s word usage might be a bit too advanced for the intended audience. Then again, since the point of children’s poetry is often to expand vocabulary along with horizons, I don’t think this is a huge problem.
The artwork by Laurie Conley is born of the same spirit. It calls back to classic Easy Reader books, with colorful pictures interspersed amid the text. In this case, however, the colors are all black, white, and orange. There are many subtle touches in the art, like Holly’s parents being dully monochrome amidst the colorful world around them. Holly in particular stands out from her dull home, thanks to her bright orange clothing. The Spoops themselves, it should be noted, are suitably designed, splitting the difference between eldritch and adorable.
Spoops: The Little Spirits of Halloween contains no adult content or cursing. The only thing I think might draw objections is the belief that Holly’s Halloween wish might equate to summoning demons or performing witchcraft. Then again, anyone who would make that argument is unlikely to read a book about Halloween spirits in the first place. Most, I think, will find this appropriate for its intended audience of 5–9-year-olds, though some young readers may need help with some of the words.
Spoops: The Little Spirits of Halloween By A.J. Locascio Art by Laurie Conley Top Shelf, 2025 ISBN: 9781603095617
Company Age Rating: 5-8 years
NFNT Age Recommendation: Easy Readers (5-9), Picture Books (3-8)
Many young people know what they want to do with their lives from the very beginning. Ema Asano is one such person. Most of her classmates are focused on fashion and dating. But Ema cannot be bothered with such things. She dreams of following in the footsteps of her parents, who were both police officers before their deaths defending their community. Until such time as she can become a real cop, Ema roams the streets of Tokyo as a vigilante.
Ema’s diligence leads her into the bad part of town one night after her older sister, Yuko, goes missing. To her horror, she discovers that Yuko was lured there by one of her co-workers, Tamaki, who is a vampire in need of a meal. Ema is ready to call the authorities, but is stopped by another of Yuko’s co-workers, Taiga, who also a werewolf.
That encounter marks the night when Ema’s vigil becomes something else entirely. For there are monsters in the shadows besides vampires and werewolves. And Tamaki and Taiga, despite nominally being on opposite sides of an eternal war, find they have more in common with each other than their own kind. Thus forms an unusual team, as the trio work to put down those monsters who cannot control their urges to kill.
On the surface, there is little to distinguish Outsiders from other urban fantasy series. Indeed, creator Akira Kanou freely admits to having been inspired by the Twilight Saga. And there certainly are innumerable horror series built around the idea of a rivalry between werewolves and vampires. Despite this, Outsiders puts enough unique spins on its mythology to mark it as unique. It also boasts some twisted artwork with a far lighter and sketchier style than one would associate with a horror shojo.
Outsiders defies expectations in other ways as well. Usually, a novel of this sort would inevitably feature a love triangle between the teen heroine and the two dashing older men who barely look older than her. There is no such romance in Outsiders. While Ema does show some casual interest in wondering what dating a vampire or a werewolf would be like, her feelings are not reciprocated by Tamaki or Taiga. In fact, most of the romance in this first volume involves subtle hints of a growing attraction between the vampire and werewolf. All these twists help to make Outsiders into something unique that may appeal to fans of the genre looking for something different.
Outsiders Vol. 1 is rated 12+ by Titan Manga. I consider that to be a fair grade for the content. There is a fair bit of violence and bloodshed, but nothing inappropriate to a T-rated Manga. As noted, there is no sexual content or nudity. Indeed, there is barely any hit of romance and most of that confined to meaningful glances between the two male leads that the heroine presumes mean something more. The closest any of the characters come to impropriety is Tamaki undressing and dressing an unconscious Ema in clean clothes after her own clothing is torn while trying to save her sister. Even then, he is a perfect gentleman, and explains he only did this because he couldn’t well let Ema (who is immune to his hypnosis powers for some reason) run off into the night in a bedraggled state.
Outsiders Vol. 1 By Akira Kanou Titan, 2025 ISBN: 9781787745711
Company Age Rating: 12+
NFNT Age Recommendation: Older Teen (16-18), Teen (13-16) Creator Representation: Japanese, Character Representation: Japanese,
Horror manga, like most horror subgenres, is a surprisingly deep and disturbing rabbit hole. A reader might read Junji Ito’s Uzumakior Ishida Sui’s Tokyo Ghoul series and then discover multiple authors, along with those authors’ twisted imaginations, who populate this genre. Indeed, one particular joy for a horror-loving librarian is being able to recommend a terrifying book based on the readers’ interests. For those librarians with patrons who are fans of manga and horror, they can suggest the stories lying in wait in Shintaro Kago’s collection Brain Damage.
Kago is no stranger to disturbing readers, having penned works like Dementia 21, and the four stories here, propelled by Shintaro Kago’s singular vision, will burrow their way through the readers’ skin and into their brains. Follow four identical women wake up in a strange room and try to discover why someone’s hunting them. Meet a woman who devotes her life to helping the living dead move on. See a family fights to be remembered to keep from literally disappearing from existence. Discover how used cars carry the deaths of their owners with them.
While this book doesn’t have a wraparound story that ties all these tales together, the stories individually stand on their own and savagely shock readers by way of brutal twists.Those familiar with horror manga from creators like Ito and Sui should find familiar ground as reality unspools around these characters like cheaply woven thread. But in this realm, Kago’s satirical stories and pitch black humor raise societal, ethical, and existential questions, whether it’s questioning the ethical care reserved for flesheaters or the moral quandaries involved in stopping a horde of hungry automobiles. In this way, Kago’s fiction hearkens back to anthology pioneers like Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone, who revealed real-world issues to readers through the lens of the fantastic.
Fans of manga might be familiar with how many books use black and white images to tell their stories, which can seem an odd choice for a graphic novel, particularly among horror graphic novel fans used to seeing red ink all over the page. However, Kago’s decision to use black and white should not be viewed as restraint or self-censorship. This book does indeed have bodies being turned inside out and twisted in all sorts of directions (with black ink substituting for blood). Some of the more disturbing images in this book require no blood; there’s something disconcerting about seeing a hole with no ragged edges or blood spurting simply appearing in a person’s head or torso.
Brain Damage could serve, for many readers of horror graphic novels, as a bridge between manga and story collections and vice versa. For librarians in charge of adult collections looking for content to satiate your gorehounds and manga fans, this book could offer another author for your patrons to digest after they have devoured all of Ito and other manga horror authors in your collection.
Brain Damage By Shintaro Kago Fantagraphics, 2025 ISBN: 9798875000935
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+) Creator Representation: Japanese, Character Representation: Japanese,
The words “meta” and “horror” weren’t typically mentioned together until the 1996 movie “Scream.” Not only did the movie revitalize the waning slasher genre, but it also serves as a blueprint as to how a movie can still entertain audiences while explaining the tropes it uses. Since the premier of Scream and its multiple sequels, horror movies have been given permission to give audience members well-versed in horror permission to get a good look behind the blood-streaked curtain. This has, in fact, become a trope in itself, one that has been adopted by Murder Kingdom, a garish, grim, and gory tale written by Fred Van Lente and illustrated by Chris Panda. Not only does this story stick the knife into the slasher genre, but it also eviscerates the notorious magical theme park down in Florida.
Tanith is disillusioned because, as the conductor of the Rock Candy Mountain Railroad, she has experienced the hardships of creating the magic at Storybook Kingdom theme park. Thanks in part to Tanith’s red locks, she is called away from her conducting duties to do meet-and-greets as princess Briar Rose. Unfortunately, the actress Tanith replaced is murder by a Girl with No Hands (a fairy tale character) and as more and more people are dispatched in methods taken from Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Tanith must find the killer to keep her own story from prematurely ending.
Those who have worked in theme parks (or in any job involving customer service) might find the horrors Tanith endures, such as leering fathers and the errant ashes of loved ones, just as awful as the prospect of a possible killer running around. Van Lente’s story follows all the slasher tropes, from red herrings to characters serving as convenient infodumps, but it saves its sharpest knives for the fairytale land it occupies, from skewering the sanitizing of what were quite gruesome children’s stories to exposing the corporate machinations behind the magic.
Rather than simply being a copy of Walt Disney World with enough changes to avoid Disney’s lawyers, Storybook Kingdom feels like a realized theme park, which is helped by Chris Panda’s illustrations. Everything from the overall look of the park to its underground tunnels (which do exist underneath Walt Disney World) have a look that balances authenticity and artifice. The colors seen here are vivid and vibrant, especially the reds when someone’s innards are exposed. Some of Panda’s artwork even has the look and feel of a page pulled from a storybook that could give young reader nightmares. With the ending leaving room for a sequel (as great slashers do), it will be interesting to see what kind of theme park aesthetics Panda creates next.
If Murder Kingdom is an ongoing series, this issue might be a good one for adult librarians to add for their horror and Disney loving patrons, particularly if those Disney/horror fans have a sense of humor. Even slasher fans who hate Disney might want to check it out because, as “Scream” has proven, sometimes the most memorable slashers are those who can make fun of themselves.
Murder Kingdom By Fred Van Lente Art by Chris Panda Mad Cave Studios, 2025 ISBN: 9781960578785
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
Maxwell Dark hunts monsters—but only in your dreams. He’s recently showed up in Gloomy Elms, a spooky town with a nightmare problem and he’s found the perfect client, if only she’ll let him into her dreams.
Sid, a middle schooler who’s just living her life, is freaked out when a weird kid shows up and claims he can “help” her. But her nightmares are getting worse and no matter how much her friends make fun of him, it’s starting to look like only Maxwell can help. Together, they dive into Sid’s worst nightmares, filled with grotesque monsters, to search for the nightmare that’s causing all the trouble. However, Sid’s nightmares are getting worse and they’ve had no success in tracking down the cause, plus Maxwell’s no closer to his own quest, finding his lost sister who vanished into the dream world years ago. Can Sid defeat her nightmares, with Maxwell’s help?
The human characters are all drawn very similarly, with round faces, big eyes, and light skin tones. A few kids in the background at Sid’s school have darker skin or chunkier builds. Maxwell’s eyes look vaguely distressed and his black hair, outlined with thick white borders, sweeps over one eye. Sid has light brown skin and a cinnamon roll of hair on top of her head. At night, it has a purple tinge, but it’s brown in the daylight. Although the town of Gloomy Elms has some stereotypically spooky elements, the really gross horror shows up in Sid’s nightmares. Tentacled and fanged creatures in vivid hues smash through a grotesque world, splashing Sid and Maxwell with unidentifiable substances. Although they are splashed with blood at one point, there’s no realistic, human-based horror – even the nightmare versions of Sid’s “friends” are obviously not real, looking like zombie caricatures.
The caricature horror, leaning more towards the gross than the truly terrifying, plus the somewhat simplistic plot – Maxwell is twelve and is wandering between towns and orphanages to travel into people’s nightmares – put this firmly in middle grade territory. There are moments where Sid stops in the middle of fleeing from monsters to reflect on what true friendship is and Maxwell’s behavior often comes off as more socially awkward than dramatic or heroic. However, although this will certainly not be a good choice for parents who dislike all forms of scary stories and horror, it will be very popular with kids who have grown up with cartoon horror and are fans of the Five Nights at Freddy’s world but don’t want something too serious.
Nightmare Hunter By Brady Smith Penguin Random House, 2025 ISBN: 9780593751183
Many horror fans are aware of EC Comics simply because of the company’s reputation. EC Comics not only produced gut-churning content whose influence can still be seen across different media but were also on the front lines of censorship battles over what the illustrated page can show. With EC Comics resting on such a high pedestal, any attempt to revitalize the property can seem daunting, but with the success of Creepshow, both the television series reboot and the new collected editions featuring today’s top comic creators, Oni Press takes a stab at it (a joke the book’s Grave-Digger might approve) with EC Epitaphs from the Abyss, an anthology of comic stories featuring a host of talented comic book writers and artist while also evoking EC’s bloody, twisted magic.
Those who have watched or read Creepshow or Tales from the Crypt should be quite familiar with the book’s format of a spooky host, possibly undead or at least appearing to decompose before the readers’ eyes, talks directly to the reader, makes a few jokes that give new meaning to gallow’s humor, and introduces tales that show humanity at their worst and paying for it with their lives. This comeuppance is usually delivered in a twist ending that typically leaves readers somehow both satisfied and horrified. Though this format is familiar, the creators involved do give all the stories a modern twist.
The stories in this book all take place in their own self-contained universes. Lasting only a few pages, they quickly set up the plot and conflict and all end with a gruesome twist that hits the reader like a corkscrew to the eye. These stories also feature the writing talents of some of today’s top comic writers. Some standouts that demonstrate the EC story structure blended with modern sensibilities include a cautionary tale from Jason Aaron (Scalped and Thor: God of Thunder) that shows why you shouldn’t text and drive, along with an exercise in tension from Stephanie Phillips (Grim and Eight Limbs) that shows how tenuous family bonds can be. Of course, a book can’t really evoke the sacred, bloody cow of EC Comics without including some very gory content and the artists here provide plenty. Gorehounds will be pleased to note that there are plenty of examples of grisly death and human bodies coming apart in violent fashion. Leomacs, particularly in Jay Stephen’s story “A Hand In It,” illustrates with a hyper-realistic approach that looks the most like EC’s signature look while many of the other artists in this collection have artwork that looks more at home in a DC’s Vertigo comic, which is in no way a slight.
Critics might call this collection a futile attempt to recapture how EC Comics caught lighting in a bottle or simply a blatant cash grab, but librarians in charge of adult graphic novel collections, particularly those with patrons who are horror fans, should give this collection a try. At the very least, the nostalgia this book could create might get those same readers to explore other horror titles in your collection.
EC Epitaphs from the Abyss ByBrian Azzarello, Chris Condon, J. Holtham & Stephanie Phillips Art by Jorge Fornes, Phil Hester, Peter Krause, et al Oni Press, 2025 ISBN: 9781637157534
Many graphic novels exist due to a collaborative effort between the writer and the illustrator. For the talented creatives who are both writing and drawing their own books, they have to plan out a story and then consider how to lay that story out in a visual medium. For artists illustrating another author’s script, it means interpreting the writer’s words and directions in a way that readers can follow the story. For graphic novel writers who don’t draw their own stories, they hope that the illustrator interprets their work in a way that synergizes with what the writer has pictured in their head. This collaboration between illustrator and writer may seem like a sort of tug-of-war between what each creative wants, but writer Jeff P. Jones’s latest offers a fresh take on this dynamic. His book Bloodshot World is a collection of Jones’s stories with each drawn by a different illustrator.
The book’s blurb describes the book and its aesthetic, which it proclaims is the “bloodshot aesthetic,” as “engrossing grotesque, the irresistibly strange, the hauntingly dark,” which is a description that frankly doesn’t do the book justice. Included in this collection is a myriad of tales that go from horror with “As You Are Now, So Once Was I,” about a zombie whose diet of flesh allows him to recall his humanity, to “Tribute,” a sentimental story of a chance meeting between two actors on the set of the original “The Wizard of Oz.” A book with “Bloodshot” in the title might have readers expecting to be swimming in gore, and while there is plenty in Jones’s zombie tale and the surreal story of a woman removing her own heart, the tales rely more on emotional resonance rather than visceral images.
Some might look at the word “Bloodshot” as a kind of bait-and-switch, fooling readers who were expecting a gruesome anthology like “Creepshow.” However, the stories, when read individually, are entertaining and thought-provoking. “Another Cop Tale,” which features a familiar story of a world-weary beat cop taking a well-meaning rookie under his wing, demonstrates Jones’s keen eye for the more subtle and human elements in storytelling. Such nuance could have been risky for Jones, who must have his characters convey emotions without necessarily having the benefit of lines of description to explain those emotions to his readers.
That’s where the illustrators come in. While all the stories are in black and white, each illustrator contributes to their respective story with their unique artistic style, from AJ Smith’s and Elena Cerisciola’s charmingly animated style in “Tribute” to Grego Pulp’s visceral “Creepshow”-inspired aesthetic of “As You Are Now.” Each individual illustrator also uses their artistic strength to tell the story Jones wants to tell; a clear example of this is “The Source of My Troubles,” a story written along with Paul D. London and illustrated by Marco Bovi. Taking place in a gigantic landfill, Bovi’s illustrations show both the nuances in characters’ faces and the chaotic mess that surrounds them (and is perhaps a metaphor for the characters’ chaotic soul).
Forays into literary criticism notwithstanding, the entire book seems like a teaching tool for any adult graphic novel writer/illustrator who might be browsing a particular library’s (or librarian’s) graphic novel section. These stories, while solid, are also excellent demonstrations as to how comic stories are created from conception to illustration and how both writer and illustrator bring their individual visions together to create a story told in the visual medium.
Bloodshot World By Jeff P. Jones Art by Marco Bovi Markosia, 2024 ISBN: 9781916968981
Company Age Rating: Teen Plus
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18)
I did not read any of the original Lenore, the Cute Little Dead Girl comics when they first came out in the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is astonishing for several reasons. Chief among them was my being a Goth and comic nerd who came of age around that time.
Alas, despite being exposed to Sandman and Johnny the Homicidal Maniac through Lucy; the cute Goth grrrll who worked at the local comic shop, I somehow never learned that Lenore was a comic and not an icon created to sell merchandise at Hot Topic until several years later. By that point, the original comics were out of print and hard to come by honestly. Or even dishonestly. I didn’t think much about Lenore until earlier this year, when I was asked if I would review the current Lenore series published by Titan Comics. I said I would like to, but I had never actually read the earlier Lenore comics. Lo and behold, they offered to send me a copy of The Bloody Best of Lenore and told me to get to work. So I did. And oh my badness I am even more astonished I did not read this before!
There is not much of a plot to Lenore, nor much continuity between the individual chapters. At least, none that matters beyond introducing the various characters. Lenore is a zombie who was about 10 when she died over 100 years earlier. She lives in a scary mansion with her two friends: Ragamuffin and Pooty Applewater. Ragamuffin is a vampire who was cursed and trapped in the body of a rag doll. Pooty is a bounty hunter, with a bucket for a head, who was meant to take Lenore back to Hell, but decided not to because that would mean he’d have to return to Hell too and he really didn’t want to do that. Because of it being Hell.
The comics center around them goofing off, reenacting various children’s nursey rhymes in a dark fashion, and dealing with various supernatural menaces. These range from the creepy mad coroner who wants to finish embalming Lenore, to the Creepig; an undead pig that kills all creatures who eat leftover pork products after midnight.
The artwork by Roman Dirge is deceptively cute yet disturbing. Dirge’s own recollection of their past is that their art teacher told them they would never find success as an artist. This inspired him to become a stage magician, a musician and, most shamefully, a comic book magazine publisher, before several empty pages forced him to fill the space with something. That something became Lenore and thus did an international nightmare begin
Fans of Tim Burton and other dark yet cute things are the ones most likely to enjoy Lenore. It should be noted, however, that the darkness here is very dark and Titan Comics rated this volume M for audiences 18 and up for a reason. There are disturbing images. There are dead baby jokes. There are numerous references to various bad things happening to Ragamuffin while he sleeps up to and including sexual assault. You have been warned.
The Bloody Best of Lenore By Roman Dirge Titan, 2017 ISBN: 9781785863042
Junji Ito is a name synonymous with horror manga. Much like Stephen King is with horror novels, it is virtually impossible to separate Junji Ito from the genre he helped revolutionize. When a creator becomes synonymous with a genre, they are bound to attract their fair share of imitators, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What separates an homage to the original from merely a ride on the creator’s coattails is how the artist/writer creates their own unique spin on what came before. Luckily, Antoine Revoy avoids falling into the trap of being merely an Ito imitator with The Harrowing Game, a book Revoy has both illustrated and written.
This game has gone on for thousands of years. Three ghosts gather together in a room to tell scary stories. The one with the scariest story wins and gets the chance to move on, possibly letting their soul transcend. Tonight’s contestants are a girl with no memory of who she is, an old lady trapped in a mirror, and a small boy in a bathtub. The stories they tell will take the reader from the lands of ancient Egypt to an art school in New England, and these stories are designed to terrify beings that are already dead. However, there is also a ravenous entity who delights in corrupting the innocent, whose presence can be felt throughout these stories, and who may have its own plans for the storytellers.
Ito’s influence might be all over this book, but Revoy does manage to tell an intriguing story without being derivative. The ghosts themselves, who are revealed by Revoy as the book progresses, have backstories beyond just being ghosts trapped in a bathroom. Also, the book’s anthology format exposes readers to a variety of stories, giving them the opportunity to find a story that will satisfy, while allowing Revoy a chance to experiment with different kinds of stories. However, the stories are not only united by one narrative thread; they are all united by themes like hunger, desire, and being very careful what you wish for.
Where Ito’s influence is most keenly felt within this book is in the art style. Utilizing a black and white manga artstyle similar to Ito’s, the book’s panels are relatively large and full of action, making the overall narrative move at a surprisingly fast clip. While Revoy doesn’t create the mindbending images that Ito is most known for, he does create his share of eye-catching images that will at least unsettle the reader. Ultimately, Revoy may fail to perfectly capture Ito’s beautifully horrifying imagery and style, but the interconnected story/narrative helps the book become something more than merely Ito Lite.
The book is just enough Ito to earn its stop in a library’s adult graphic novel collection. For librarians responsible for these collections, and those still wondering whether Revoy’s The Harrowing Game is imitation or imagination, adult patrons who are fans of Ito, horror manga, or simply horror graphic novels might be the best judges. This book also happens to be ideal for those who love short story collections like Tales from the Crypt and Jay Stephens’ Dwellings.
The Harrowing Game By Antoine Revoy 23rd Street, 2025 ISBN: 9781250248329
NFNT Age Recommendation: Adult (18+), Older Teen (16-18) Creator Representation: French,
The era where fictional kids continually idolized their fictional parents is long gone. Today’s kids realize their parents are often flawed individuals, often needing the kids’ advice on life, even as many of these kids don’t realize their own flaws. Such a dynamic may not generate familial bliss but they do create good conflict for stories, especially when that parent has a secret life (an interesting and action-packed secret life) that the kid doesn’t know about. Such is the setup of The Sin Bin, written by former “Supernatural” writer Robbie Thompson and illustrated by Patricio Delpeche. The Sin Bin is a charming, monster-bashing good time about a girl and her hockey playing, monster hunting father.
That monster hunting father is Dale “Dukes” Duquesne, a hockey player who’s on the tail end of his career and bouncing from one minor hockey team to another, but his daughter Cat, his biggest supporter and giver of unsolicited advice, believes that he’s just one good game away from the majors. However, young Cat makes a discovery about how her dad spends his time off the ice. It turns out he hunts ghosts and monsters and banishes them to a dimension known as the Sin Bin. Cat soon wants to join the family business, even if she doesn’t realize the danger involved.
Fans of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a television show that artfully straddled the line between horror and humor, should find Cat an interesting heroine. Thompson consistently makes her the book’s emotional center as well as the POV character responsible for how the audience sees this world of fighting monsters, fights at school, and living in hotel after hotel. Fortunately, Cat has enough pluck and determination to deserve her spot as the book’s main character even as Thompson explores the sometimes fraught yet somehow deep bonds between parent and child.
People who remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer might remember the violence Buffy dishes out while serving as the Slayer. However, the book’s aesthetic as constructed by artist Delpeche, focuses more on the action elements than the horror. There are plenty of things here with tentacles and sharp teeth but they’re drawn in a way that’s meant to excite rather than horrify. Rather than spend time illustrating Junji Ito-inspired horrors, Delpeche saves his talents for character design, allowing them to express a plethora of emotions that readers can see and experience.
Clearly written for younger (and older) teen audiences, this book has just enough horror not to be horrifying, and teen librarians with patrons who love Supernatural, Stranger Things, or other series featuring monster fights will be happy to find a monster fighter as relatable as Cat. While hardcore horror fans might not find this scary, this book still excels at being a breezy, fun fight with monsters that never loses its heart.
The Sin Bin By Robbie Thompson Art by Patricio Delpeche IDW, 2025 ISBN: 9798887241678
Company Age Rating: 13-17 years
NFNT Age Recommendation: Teen (13-16) Creator Representation: Argentinian,
The town of Maple Hollow holds a special fondness for Halloween. Every October is marked with a lengthy celebration of the spooky season. There are nightly haunted hayrides, pumpkin carving contests and all manner of amusements! Indeed, there are only two people in Maple Hollow who don’t celebrate Halloween—the town’s dentists, Dr. and Dr. Hollowell. They see Halloween as the night all their hard work safeguarding the town’s smiles is ruined, thanks to all the trick-or-treating and the candy that comes with it.
classmates are focused on fashion and dating. But Ema cannot be bothered with such things. She dreams of following in the footsteps of her parents, who were both police officers before their deaths defending their community. Until such time as she can become a real cop, Ema roams the streets of Tokyo as a vigilante.
the waning slasher genre, but it also serves as a blueprint as to how a movie can still entertain audiences while explaining the tropes it uses. Since the premier of Scream and its multiple sequels, horror movies have been given permission to give audience members well-versed in horror permission to get a good look behind the blood-streaked curtain. This has, in fact, become a trope in itself, one that has been adopted by Murder Kingdom, a garish, grim, and gory tale written by Fred Van Lente and illustrated by Chris Panda. Not only does this story stick the knife into the slasher genre, but it also eviscerates the notorious magical theme park down in Florida.
problem and he’s found the perfect client, if only she’ll let him into her dreams.
content whose influence can still be seen across different media but were also on the front lines of censorship battles over what the illustrated page can show. With EC Comics resting on such a high pedestal, any attempt to revitalize the property can seem daunting, but with the success of Creepshow, both the television series reboot and the new collected editions featuring today’s top comic creators, Oni Press takes a stab at it (a joke the book’s Grave-Digger might approve) with EC Epitaphs from the Abyss, an anthology of comic stories featuring a host of talented comic book writers and artist while also evoking EC’s bloody, twisted magic.
Many graphic novels exist due to a collaborative effort between the writer and the illustrator. For the talented creatives who are both writing and drawing their own books, they have to plan out a story and then consider how to lay that story out in a visual medium. For artists illustrating another author’s script, it means interpreting the writer’s words and directions in a way that readers can follow the story. For graphic novel writers who don’t draw their own stories, they hope that the illustrator interprets their work in a way that synergizes with what the writer has pictured in their head. This collaboration between illustrator and writer may seem like a sort of tug-of-war between what each creative wants, but writer Jeff P. Jones’s latest offers a fresh take on this dynamic. His book Bloodshot World is a collection of Jones’s stories with each drawn by a different illustrator.
is astonishing for several reasons. Chief among them was my being a Goth and comic nerd who came of age around that time.
Junji Ito from the genre he helped revolutionize. When a creator becomes synonymous with a genre, they are bound to attract their fair share of imitators, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. What separates an homage to the original from merely a ride on the creator’s coattails is how the artist/writer creates their own unique spin on what came before. Luckily, Antoine Revoy avoids falling into the trap of being merely an Ito imitator with The Harrowing Game, a book Revoy has both illustrated and written.
individuals, often needing the kids’ advice on life, even as many of these kids don’t realize their own flaws. Such a dynamic may not generate familial bliss but they do create good conflict for stories, especially when that parent has a secret life (an interesting and action-packed secret life) that the kid doesn’t know about. Such is the setup of The Sin Bin, written by former “Supernatural” writer Robbie Thompson and illustrated by Patricio Delpeche. The Sin Bin is a charming, monster-bashing good time about a girl and her hockey playing, monster hunting father.
