Scary Mixtures: Our Favorite Horror Comic Crossovers

Comic fans are used to crossover events. They lead to big sales, big press, and (usually) good fun. It's standard practice in the cape and cowl crowd to mix and mash heroes, villains, and settings. But it happens much less frequently in horror comics! We're taking at look at some of our favorite horror comic crossovers. Some are awesome, some are… not so awesome, and some are just plain weird, but we love them all!

 

 

Steve Niles is one of the most prolific authors working in horror comics today. Along with Mike Mignola, his characters, plot lines, and comic arcs are some of the best we've ever seen. Take, for instance, Criminal Macabre. Starring Cal McDonald, a rough and tumble investigator with a ghoul for a partner, Macabre followed on the back of one of the most amazing series ever made about vampires. That would be Steve Niles' other awesome comic, 30 Days of Night, Which starred vampires in Alaska… brilliant.

 

These two series, though not connected, were made for each other. So when Dark Horse and IDW came together to make this happen, horror dreams across the comic world came true! Times have changed since the early days of 30 Days of Night; Eben's on a vampiric war path against all of Los Angeles, Cal's buddy needs some vengeance, and the two butt heads in an epic four part mini-series.

 

 

Don't think The Punisher is a horror comic? Think again. The man kills for bloodlust, revenge, and sometimes money. He hunts down his victims, brutally murders them, all while wearing an all-black outfit with a giant white skull on it. With the proper soundtrack, this character could star in a bullet-riddled slasher flick!

 

So why, oh why, does The Punisher meet Archie? This crossover is so insane, so wild, so… well, dumb, that it had to make this list. 

 

 

 

Wait, by Dark Shadows, do you mean that old soap opera from the sixties? Yup. The one where boom mics would fall into frame and stage hands could be seen running around? Yes. And by Vampirella, do you mean the very scantily clad Vampire Heroine from the seventies? I sure do.

 

Baffling though it may seem, when a comic company like Dynamite Entertainment owns the rites to make comics out of two semi-popular (if that?) franchises, they won't hesitate to slap 'em together! So now we've got a story about Barnabas heading to New York City on a quest while Vampirella hunts down the "big apple butcher." Put two famous vampires in one city and they're bound to bump into each other. This is such a weird, wonderful pairing. It's not the type of team-up that instantly jumps to mind, but it kind of works, and we think it's wonderfully strange!

 

 

Hold on, stay with me here! Did you know that the Sonic The Hedgehog comic series is the longest running series based on a  video game? I didn't know that either, until mere moments ago. Did you also know that one particular Sonic comic, one yearly super special, hosted an insane array of horror/monster characters as guests? Me neither!

 

This issue included the sometimes-monstrous, sometimes-raging, always amazing Savage Dragon. And, if that wasn't enough, Spawn made an appearance too! Yes, that's right, Spawn, the undead man returned from the pits of hell, taught by a psychotic clown demon, with chains and spikes and murder. In a Sonic comic book. This issue was so weird and cool we had to take a look. Story's not too bad, either.

 

 

Okay, I know I'm clumping together a lot of comics here, but out of all franchises in horror and mainstream comics, no villain gets around like a Xenomorph. These Aliens franchise comics proliferate faster than a nest of chest-bursters! Allow me to list off some of the crossovers: Aliens vs. Predator, Aliens vs. Predator vs. The Terminator, Batman/Aliens, Superman/Aliens, Judge Dredd vs. Aliens, Superman and Batman vs. Aliens and Predators… oh, you get it. But the list seriously keeps going on and on and on!

 

But let's focus on one in particular, Superman/Aliens, in which Superman goes out into space with a research station (as Clark Kent), discovers a brood of Xenomorphs, and is too far from a yellow sun to be powerful. He is, through the course of the comic, impregnated by a face hugger, and makes it back to our space system just in time to crush the chest-burster before it rips through his body. That's right, Superman crushes a chest-burster with his own chest muscles, then pukes it up. Whoa. I'll leave you with that.