Good on Paper: The Best Comic Adaptations of Horror Franchises

San Diego Comic-Con is mere moments away, and we couldn't be more excited! To celebrate, we're digging deep into our long boxes to take a look at some of the best horror franchises that got the inked treatment.

 

 

Clive Barker is one of the most interesting horror writers around. Where other writers will offer up tense, grisly scenes and scenarios, Barker likes to step outside the box. So when he wrote The Hellbound Heart (which was adapted into the Hellraiser film), it wasn't your typical horror story.

 

Throughout the years the Hellraiser series has drifted away from Clive Barker's original twisted vision, so it was with a sigh of relief that we learned the news of Clive Barker's Hellraiser. Originally published in 2011 and written by Barker himself, the Hellraiser comics featured all the pain, pleasure, plot-twists (Kirsty Cotton becomes something you'd never expect), and grand ideas about the nature of horror you've come to expect from the author.

 

 

If you don't get a sick thrill out of Chucky and the Child's Play movies, than there's just not enough wrong with you. Movies about a toy doll that gets a serial killer's soul voodoo'ed into it? Yes, please! A series so full of blood, humor, and plastic seemed a natural fit for a comic.

 

Eight years pass in between the events of Child's Play 2 and 3. Eight years? That's the perfect gap for a comic adaptation! Published in 1991, Child's Play (the ongoing series) followed Chucky doing things like hunting down the Galaxy Studios tour in Hollywood. Or going to a toy store where the "good toys" decide he's giving them all a bad name! Sure, it's silly, but it's Chucky… it's supposed to be silly!

 

 

Buffy Season 8 is proof that all good things don't have to come to an end! Four years after the series was cancelled, Dark Horse Comics and Joss Whedon and co. teamed up to create Buffy The Vampire Slayer Season Eight.

 

Published in 2007, the comic picks up a year after the events in the show, and we see everyone dealing with the aftermath of the series. Buffy runs a global network of slayers, Willow's magic has increased to the point that she can fly, the government views them all as high-risk terrorists... and that's just within the first few issues (of 40)! It was such a success that they went on the make an ongoing series called Season 9. In the Buffy-verse, there's never too much of a good thing.

 

 

Pulbished in 1988 by Dark Horse Comics, Aliens: Outbreak picks up ten years after the events of the film Aliens. It focuses on a young-adult Newt and Commander Hicks. Both are left paranoid and traumatized by the events of the last film, and both end up on a crusade to the alien home world to destroy the aliens and steal their eggs.

 

Not the most sound plan, but when terrorized by Xenomorphs you've got to face your fears, right? My favorite part of this series was the cult that considered the 'morphs to be gods, and ended up allowing the entire planet (Earth) to be overrun. Oops.

 

 

And finally, here's a new one for you: the video game The Last of Us, released last month for Playstation 3, features some of the most graphic, heartfelt, and interesting gameplay we've ever seen in a zombie game. The story of this world, set in 2033 when a fungal outbreak has turned much of civilization into mindless zombies, is perfect for a comic adaptation.

 

But American Dreams isn't really an adaptation. It's a prequel, and it shows the game's main character, Ellie, in her earlier life in a quarantine zone. This story not only broadens the world of the game, it's an amazing comic in and of itself!