5 DC Comics Stories Every Horror Fan Should Read for Halloween (& 1 Is a Batman Classic)

It’s October now and we are fully in the Halloween season. This is, of course, when everyone celebrates every creepy and spooky thing. And while DC Comics may be best known for its light-hearted shining beacons of hope and virtue like Superman, the company also has an impressive catalog of horror-themed comics. Whether in the main DC Universe or under the company’s Vertigo and Black Label imprints, these horror stories are filled with haunting imagery, visceral gore, existential dread, and larger-than-life monsters. These DC Comics stories are perfect for every true horror fan if they want to get ready for this year’s Halloween season.

While some people watch horror movies to celebrate Halloween, DC Comics has plenty of stories that can just as effectively enrapture even the most hard-core horror fans.

5) The Nice House on the Lake

Like many horror classics, the award-winning, non-canon Black Label title The Nice House on the Lake begins at an isolated house in the woods. A man named Walter invites his old friends to stay at his lake house. This quiet and peaceful reunion takes a terrifying turn when it’s revealed that while the guests were settling in, the apocalypse had begun and has wiped out in a blazing inferno most of human civilization. Yet even far away from the devastation, the friends aren’t safe as they begin to realize that Walter and his peers may not be human and were, in fact, responsible for the apocalypse. The lake house quickly becomes a disturbing, claustrophobic prison full of secrets, haunting imagery, and psychological horror. The Nice House on the Lake is a chilling tale that sees the humanity and sanity of its protagonists pushed to their absolute limits as they try to escape this house of horrors.

4) John Constantine: Hellblazer

There are few people in the DC Universe better prepared to take on the most unholy of abominations than John Constantine. The longest comic book series under DC’s Vertigo imprint, John Constantine: Hellblazer is the cynical occult detective’s first solo series. Over 300 issues long, the morally gray conman and master sorcerer uses every trick in the book to battle some of the most depraved and monstrous demons, phantoms, and gods that lurk in the shadows throughout the DC Universe. At the same time, the series recognizes that the real horrors lie in the atrocities that humans inflict on their fellow man, both individually and systemically. And John tackles them head on. Yet no matter how many monsters Constantine fights, both supernatural and human, his most challenging demons are the ones that reside within his psyche and endlessly torture him. John Constantine: Hellblazer is the perfect series for fans of supernatural, psychological, and socio-political horror.

3) DCeased

Marvel Comics may have been the first to the zombie craze with Marvel Zombies. Even so, when DC Comics eventually followed suit with its own zombie series DCeased, it was of equal or even greater quality. DCeased begins when Darkseid tries to extract the Anti-Life Equation from Cyborg. This unintentionally turns into a digital virus which Cyborg accidentally spreads through the internet. This virus transforms most of humanity into ravenous zombies. And as heroes and villains alike are turned into undead cannibals, the few survivors must wage a desperate war to save the world from this seemingly unstoppable horde. DCeased has a ton of incredibly nightmare-inducing moments, including when Batman is eaten alive by the zombified Bat-Family and when Plastic Man becomes a carnivorous lake. Many characters also must take on new forms to survive the zombie apocalypse, from Black Canary becoming a Green Lantern to Alfred transforming into the new host of the Spectre. DCeased is one of the darkest worlds in the entire DC Multiverse.

2) Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth

With his noir and gothic aesthetic and spine-chilling villains, Batman is right at home in a horror story. And Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth stands as one of the most iconic and scariest Dark Knight comics of all time. The plot is equal parts simple and terrifying: Arkham Asylum has been overtaken by the Joker and its other criminally insane inmates, and Batman must go in to stop them. The moment Batman enters, he finds himself trapped in a maze of pure madness where danger lurks around every corner. This graphic novel’s unique art style, provided by Dave McKean, makes every page look like something out of a hallucinogenic night terror. Many of the Dark Knight’s rogues, including the Joker, Two-Face, Scarecrow, Clayface, and Killer Croc, are given some of their most disturbing designs. With its nail-biting tension and nightmarish imagery, Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth sends the reader down a rabbit hole of insanity.

1) The Saga of the Swamp Thing

Few comics have completely redefined a superhero more than Alan Moore’s horror series The Saga of the Swamp Thing. Originally, this environmental hero was believed to have been a scientist named Alec Holland who was turned into a plant monster after being doused in chemicals in a lab accident. However, this iconic Vertigo series revealed the true nature of Swamp Thing’s existence, flipping everything we thought we knew on its head and expanding the character’s power and lore to new heights. The revelation also provided a deep exploration of what it truly means to be human. Of course, as a horror comic series, it is also full of terrifying concepts and imagery, as the Protector of the Green must battle undead monsters and Lovecraftian entities that threaten all life in the universe. With its complex themes mixed with terrifying body, cosmic, and existential horror, The Saga of the Swamp Thing is the gold standard of DC’s horror collection.

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