I did not participate last year because I didn't quite grasp the beauty of their art and now I'm ...


#5 John Coulthart





At Number 5, I selected The Mammoth Book of Horror Comics, to best describe the beauty of John Coulthart's work. His use of shadows in the various skulls bring depth, eerie, frighten, and deception to his work. I also wanted to bring about the stalking and the creepiness of his Skeleton's Monster scaring the poor blonde woman that shriek in horror that she about to be attacked - her eyes is focusing on the monster and the covering her mouth provides the exclamation point of the artistry that Mr. Coulthart's brings to the table.


Another Masterpiece of Horror by John Coulthart

#5 Steve Ditko

Ditko is one of the masters of the comic form, but his work in Creepy and Eerie is probably some of his best. There's a sense of menace and unease throughout the stories, and a stylized expressionism that doesn't get in the way of feeling for the characters (the same can be said of some of his darker Doc Strange and even Spidey stories). He did some very good horror work in the 50s, and even some of his Charlton horror in the 70s had the same spark, but Warren gave him a chance to also experiment with technique and he took full advantage of it. Reading "Collector's Edition" in Creepy #10 was a critical development in my love of horror.

You are definitely not alone in feeling this.




I asked him about that when I met him last year. He explained that he threw the kids on those covers because the Comics Code Authority wouldn't permit him any other avenues of scaring readers, so by putting innocent kids in situations that otherwise wouldn't have been all that objectionable, it amped up the excitement level a hundred-fold.

That "Beware" cover is actually Frank Frazetta and Sid Check. You can see their signatures on the right margin, in the grave.

For my part, good horror art isn't about what gruesome subject is depicted but mostly, the uneasiness it puts me in, in the form of striking art, be it the very style of the artist, his sense of colors or panel design. But shadows probably is the greatest tool of horror drawing if coorectly handled.

First, I have a few runners up :

Jorge Zaffino, with a small body of work and little touching true horror, his style nevertheless always had me unsettled, especially his facial expressions :


Junji Ito, even if not the most singular stylistic voices, his visual ideas are his own, and let's keep it so :


Graham Ingels, the original master of stylistic horror in comics


Chris Bachalo, however cartoony his style is, it is truely greatly matched with the darkest moods, and his strong sense of design makes him the best monster artist around in my book


Shintaro Kago, well, his approach of horror is truely unique, and he really f**ks wit your mind.

houseofhorrorzine.tumblr.com/post/52574363040/eliciousironing-abstraction-1-9-by-shintaro-kago


But... Some other artist made the top 5 of the list

So a ghastly welcome to Kevin O'Neill to spot number 5
He sure is these days more recognized for his LOEG and was before for his Marshall Law, but some of his work is just really gruesome, especially te Nemesis stuff













His style was even deemed obscene by the british publishing authorities, mind you, not the content, the actual style!

5. Mike Kaluta

His stylist illustrations were all over various genres for DC in the 70's but I thought he did nice work for horror covers.