“You think water moves fast? You should see ice. It moves like it has a mind. Like it knows it killed the world once and got a taste for murder.”
That observation from Samuel L. Jackson’s character Russell Franklin from the film Deep Blue Sea may not be scientifically correct, but he is right about one thing: the cold is scary.
While film, literature, and television have captured the chill of chilly weather, in classics such as The Shining and The Thing, and the recent tv series The Terror, the comics medium is uniquely suited to portraying the creeping horror of winter. Open panels highlighting the emptiness of a snowy valley and images of figures blurred in a blizzard force us to sit and stare at the unrelenting freeze.
Here are eight of the best comics to use wintery backgrounds to tell their tales of terror.
“Snow,” Creepy #75, 1975 – The frightening thing about snow is the way it encloses the world, piling upon the landscape and burying every person, plant, and animal it lands upon. Writer Bruce Bazaire emphasizes this claustrophobia for his tale “Snow,” published in the anthology magazine Creepy. The story follows a fairly straightforward post-apocalyptic narrative, involving a man returning to his nephew in an empty apartment after scavenging for food. But artists Rich Buckler and Wally Wood infuse the story with dramatic energy, rendering everyone with athletic flair and laying out panels in surprising arrangements.
Nothing captures the shivering dread driving the tale like the juxtaposition between an opening splash page, with the startled man staring at the apartment building in the distance, and a page with 12 tight panels, showing the boy singing inside his room. Those two pages lay out the characters’ predicament, caught between the suffocating enclosure of the house and the nothingness of a snowy glade.
“Revenge,” Monthly Halloween, 1993 – The Tomie tales from Japanese cartoonist Junji Ito follow a standard structure. Men encounter the mysterious woman Tomie, one or more of them fall in love with her, and then she uses her abilities to drive them to madness. In the hands of anyone less than the master of horror manga, these stories would become boring, rote. But Ito manages to make the tales feel unnerving every time.
That’s doubly true of “Revenge,” in which Tomie needs to do little more than let herself be discovered by explorers traveling through the mountains. Before finding Tomie’s body trapped in the ice, the troupe all express unquestioning devotion to their leader. But after she’s retrieved, her mere presence creates dissension in the ranks, building to the story’s twist, which lets dark blood spill on the empty white landscape.
“The Vampire’s Kiss,” Peter Parker: Spider-Man #77-78, Feb – March 1997 – While Spider-Man has his share of scary enemies, few borrow from horror tropes like Morbius, the Living Vampire. Despite the various indignities heaped on the character – including Comics Code Authority rules restricting him from being undead, a cartoon version with goofy suckers on his hands instead of fangs, and an upcoming film adaptation starring Jared Leto – Morbius remains an intimidating figure, especially in this two-part arc from writer Howard Mackie and a team of artists, including Claudio Catillini and John Romita Jr.
Throughout the story, Morbius stalks the snowy campus of Empire State University, searching not for victims but for a scientist who may be able to cure his condition. When Spidey refuses to believe the vampire’s altruistic intentions and attacks, Morbius must bite the wall-crawler to escape. With Spider-Man taken down, his wife Mary Jane becomes the hero. It’s up to MJ to transport her dazed husband across town and back home, staring down thugs on the subway and standing up to Morbius himself. The artists, Romita in particular, draw the villain as a foreboding black shape against the white sky, letting the contrast increase the threat.
“Slayride,” Detective Comics #826 (December 2006) – For many superhero fans, the Batman: The Animated Series episode “Christmas With the Joker” is a Christmas staple. So there was more than a little excitement when Paul Dini, who co-developed the series, wrote a new Christmas story for Detective Comics. “Slayride” offers a more terrifying take on the idea of Joker running amuck at Christmas time, this time with Robin as his captive as he runs down Christmas shoppers with his car.
It’s a terrifically tense story, highlighted by the expressions penciler Don Kramer and inker Wayne Faucher give the main characters. The bound and gagged Robin tries in vain to stop Joker, while the Clown Prince of Crime goes through a full range of emotions as he tries to spend Christmas in his own wretched way.
30 Days of Night (2002) – 30 Days of Night has such a perfect premise that it’s hard to believe no one had come up with it before writer Steve Niles, artist Ben Templesmith, and letterer/designer Robbie Robbins. Set in the Alaskan town of Barrow, 30 Days of Night follows husband and wife police officers Eben and Stella Olemaun as they deal with an onslaught of vampires there to feast on the residents during a month without sunrise.
Templesmith’s moody art captures the disorienting gloom of living through a non-stop snowy evening, rendering the figures as indistinct sketches and washing it all in blues and greys. But Niles’s script remains sharp throughout, fully developing the Olemauns as compelling leads and working some interesting twists into the story’s delicious premise. No comic better captures the chilling effect of winter.
“Sparrow” Locke and Key: Key’s to the Kingdom #1 (August 2010) – The fourth volume of Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez’s series offers plenty of snowy terror, as the Locke children – Tyler, Kinsey, and Bode – discover magical keys in their family house, where they’ve retreated to after an attack that left their father dead and their mother wounded. But the standout tale is the first, a tribute to Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Waterson.
“Sparrow” initially seems like a childlike romp, as Rodriguez borrows Waterson’s whimsical style to describe young Bode’s transformation into a small sparrow, flying with his flock over the snowy woods. But things take a decidedly darker turn when the evil Dodge takes the form of a wolf who attacks Tyler and Kinsey. More than any other entry on this list, “Sparrow” captures both the beauty and the danger of winter.
Revival (2012-2017) – By the time Revival #1 hit comic shop stands in 2012, zombies had already overrun the culture. But creators Tim Seeley and Mike Norton prove there’s plenty of life left in stories about returned dead. When people start coming back to life in Revival, they aren’t brain-eating ghouls; rather, they’re normal people, wanting to pick up where they left off – if only they could get over their wounds, their unraveling mental states, and the sudden appearance of ghost-like creeps in the woods.
The creators wisely don’t let the premise do all the work of the 47-issue series, and instead focus on a mystery investigated by Detective Dana Cypress and her recently revived sister Em. Seeley’s smart dialogue and strong character work keep readers invested, while Norton’s clean storytelling and expressive figures make compelling human protagonists for this terrifying tale.
“The Longest Night” Hellboy Winter Special 2019 – More than most series, Hellboy offers plenty of wintertime mayhem, thanks to its regular release of winter specials. But my favorite story might be “The Longest Night,” from the 2019 special. Written by Chris Roberson, illustrated by Leila del Duca, and colored by Michelle Madsen, “The Longest Night” borrows from the Agatha Christie mystery model, in which a group of travelers waits out a blizzard before they can alert authorities about the dead body in their midst.
The story mostly stays in the warmth of the cabin, where the artists use of yellow tones and thick linework creates a sense of safety, making its occasional cuts to the blizzard all the more terrifying. The contrast allows occultist Sarah Jewell to layout her case to the crowd, building tension for the story’s monstrous climax.