The annual Dark Horse horror anthology is back this week in Headless Horseman Halloween Annual. Five creeptacular tales of gore, violence, and hopelessness await you, if you dare. But is it good?
As in years past, the Headless Horseman is the horror host of this anthology who opens the issue. Panels Behind the Horror Host features each story with some pretty good alliteration in the dialogue. A fun and jovial opening!
The first story is “Leech Lake” by David Dastmalchian and Leah Kilpatrick. The opening page is a beautiful full-page splash of kids trick or treating, but soon, the kids are frightened by someone who answers the door. The reason why is revealed via flashbacks and further exploration of the parent at the door.
In the flashback we meet three girls, one of which is very much into Halloween and dressing up. Her girlfriends, however, are very much into barely trying with their costumes and looking sexy. They’re grown up and growing apart from our main character. Soon our main character rushes into the woods and horror commences!
The opening tale has a fun twist on a classic movie monster and is honestly worthy of a show like Creepshow. Good stuff.
Oh look. A sexy “mouse” and sexy “cat.”
Credit: Dark Horse
“Feeder” is the next tale with colors and script by Ben Stenbeck and art by Matt Smith. The opening page reveals an “alpha male” jerk having the time of his life killing zombies, only to die rather quickly. The story ends up being from the perspective of a zombie who doesn’t mind being one. This tale has a nice mix of humor and gory horror, with Smith truly delivering on some wickedly gross zombies.
Lukas Ketner writes, and Eryk Donovan draws “Stingy Jack and Old Nick,” which focuses on a man named Jack who is quite wiley when it comes to the devil. He gets out of deals with the devil, which builds up to a different kind of Hell for the character.
Rendered in black and white, the story has a fluid look and feel as if drawn from a different time and place. The tale’s connection to pumpkin carving is a nice touch.
“The Spice of Life (and Death)” by James Asmus and Chris Panda is next up, and it is all about a young couple who likes to get into the horror side of Halloween. They dress up their yard with gross guts and scary elements, but the neighbors don’t approve. This story also plays into the usual tropes, like obsessions with pumpkin spice and how younger people get into Halloween while adults with kids find that odd.
I can’t say “The Spice of Life (and Death)” makes a ton of sense by the end of the story. Given how characters are infected in a way that’s not explained, I wasn’t sure how it all came together. It’s a visually fun story with a nice use of blur and a different sort of zombie.
Closing out the anthology is “Little Rabbit” by Jay Martin. Four pages long, this tale plays with your expectations. At the start, a woman feels a small house wide-eyed with her mouth bound. She’s running for her life, but what she gets in the end is tragic but also haunting. It’s a reminder there are levels of evil out there we can’t hope to understand.
If you like horror, snatch up Headless Horseman Halloween Annual as it’s a howling good and scary time. All five stories offer different kinds of horror tales, all of which offer something unique and hair-raisingly good.
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