PTSD Radio

PTSD Radio [by Masaaki Nakayama] has this really interesting dreamlike quality. The stories are all different lengths. So sometimes they're just a page, two pages, three pages. Sometimes they're ten or twenty pages. So when you're reading through it, it feels like you're just ping-ponging in someone's dark subconscious without any kind of chapter breaks. It's really an interesting read, and the page turns are so well paced. They're really terrifying.

Uzumaki

Uzumaki by JunjiIto. Uzumaki is one of my favorite long-form comics by Junji Ito. There's an ongoing narrative and you get a big full story out of it. I love Junji Ito's short story collections as well. But if you're looking for something that has more meat on the bones, it’s a really good option.

Panther

There's a book from a few years ago by Brecht Evans called Panther, that almost looks like it's a kids’ book. If you were to open it and look at it, you would think it was an all-ages book. But when you read it and get into it, it's a very, very chilling horror story about abuse. Reading it in one sitting is one of the most unsettling single-sitting readings you can do. When it all hits you what the book is actually about, it just makes you feel icky and gross. I’m not saying that's a good thing, but when you create art what you want is to have an effect on people and it was one of the most affecting horror comics I've read.

Black Hole

Black Hole by Charles Burns is like an all-time classic. That was one that I read in college that made me really want to draw horror. It even changed the way that I drew at that time, because I had been mostly aping superhero artists. Then reading Black Hole and Hellboy made me think about black and negative space in a different way and use a lot more ink and brushwork.

Richard Corben

I love Richard Corben's art. The way he draws people as these kind of bulbous, amorphous shapes doesn’t make anatomical sense, but there's something off about them that is really fun to look at and to study. Because he's such a master of the craft.

Honorable Mention: Hellboy

If you want to count Hellboy as horror, let's add Hellboy to this list. Because that's one of the most influential books in my professional career in terms of my writing and my art. There's definitely some stories in the Hellboy mythology that are really pushed into horror. “The Crooked Man” is one of them. That story always has creeped me out.