Jayson

Tight quarters, creepy crawlers and isolation in a place where there is no hope of rescue is a perfect recipe for horror. Space is the perhaps the setting that checks off those boxes with the boldest pencil marks. It avoids the cell phone trap and creates an area of pure unadulterated mystery where anything is possible. It’s the perfect canvas to paint a masterpiece of horror. Problem is; it’s a well-used one.

In 1983 Stephen King released Cycle of the Werewolf, a Gothic horror werewolf story unsurprisingly set in a small town in Maine. The story is notable for a few reasons, firstly the story is told in short story format following the lunar calendar creating a larger werewolf story over many incidents and how they affect the inhabitants of the small New England town. Secondly, it was presented as a graphic novel, illustrated with startling, gruesome splendor by the great Bernie Wrightston (Swamp Thing and the beautiful Frankenstein graphic novel) who passed away on March 18th.

Horror has its origins in folklore and fairytales. The type of stories that were designed to hide within them the germ of truth; a real life lesson enveloped in the fantastic. These stores would later cement themselves as the tropes of genre storytelling. These are warnings, parables that illustrate the horrors that inhabit our world and then exhibited behind the display case of fantasy so that we may observe them objectively. The best of genre often operates this way; intricately layered, fiercely intelligent, and many times divisive.