Greetings ghosts and ghoulies and welcome to The Theatre of Terror the home of horror comic news, reviews, classic comic scans and creepy art from around the world. Just remember, it's not for the nervous!
Horror comic fans can now get their freaky fix by downloading the Madefire App and exploring the exciting new world of Motion Comics.
Set up by comic legend Liam Sharp, along with some very clever tech bods, Madefire is looking to carve its own little corner in the evolving online comics market. Motion comics offer a new experience to reading comics online. Readers swipe, poke and prod their way through the comic, reading at their pace. The app includes sliding panels, movement, actions and sounds to augment the comic experience.
Madefire transform a once static medium into an interactive experience that unfolds dynamically on mobile devices, and evolves with each new episode.
It’s currently worth taking a look at Madefire at the moment, as all the motion comics they have created are free to download. It’s a good range of horror and sci-fi that tick plenty of the boxes we demand here at The Theatre of Terror.
Stories such as: Houses of the Holy, by Mike Carey and David Kendall, a 1930’s vampire, monster thriller with plenty of shocking scenes – The Irons, by Haden Blackman and Gary Erskine, a psycho-killer on the loose cop story, set on another planet, and Treatment, from the mind of Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons.
The quality of the content is very high and they have some decent names on board. Madefire really has come out swinging, hoping to smash it’s way on to the comics scene, a scene which is generally very opposed to change.
Check out the teaser video below.
Madefire may not be to everyone’s tastes. The added elements of movement and sound effects certainly make for a different ‘reading’ experience. I imagine some will loathe what the company has done to their beloved medium, while others will embrace the changes whole-heartedly. It’s really up to you to judge for yourself, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPad to use the app, a factor which will piss a few people off before they’ve even started.
NOTE: Later this year Madefire will be launching it Motion Book Tool for those looking to create their own motion comics. We can’t wait to get our hand on this bit of kit so keep watching folks, there’s gonna be some Back from the Depths Presents motion comics. You heard it here first.
The words ‘reboot’ and ‘remake’ never seemed to enter into my vocabulary growing up as a bit of a film freak. There was the word ‘sequel’ which cropped up relatively often, but that was always something to be cherished (what Christmas was ever complete without ‘Return of the Jedi’?) Now, the words ‘reboot’ and ‘remake’, that at one stage would be synonymous with the word ‘shit’, are commonly used in relation to films. Too much, some might say. In fact, some might say (okay, me) that we’ve got a bit of a rehash epidemic on our hands. There’s the recent Total Recall remake, the Robocop reboot in post-production. I read somewhere a while back that someone has been tasked with writing a Lethal Weapon remake; I cried a little inside. Good concepts and original material, it seems, are hard to come by these days.
The exception to the rule here, of course, are zombies; the cultural obsession that never, ever seems to get old and die (sorry). Infused across every conceivable media and done sometimes well (Walking Dead, 28 Days Later, Left 4 Dead) and not so well (the shockingly bad Day of the Dead remake-that-wasn’t-a-remake), we can’t seem to get enough. So when Tim ‘Hack/Slash’ Seeley and Mike Norton announced Revival, a ‘rural noir’ about the dead coming back to life in a small town, my Deadhead Radar (™) flickered into life and I found myself shambling to the shop to get my fix. It was here that I found out that Revival isn’t about zombies and is all together a different kettle of (dead) fish. And different is good.
Now, when I say good, I mean this is one of the best of the many original stories that Image comics have released en masse recently, all of which are nothing short of excellent. Seeley and Norton deal us a story about the realistic consequences of what would happen if 23 of a small town’s recently deceased population literally just woke up and carried on with their lives. The town has been cordoned off and quarantined from the outside world (the government are worried that what has happened in the town is contagious and will spread across the country), the religious zealots are having a field day, convinced that this is all the proof the world needs that God exists and members of the scientific community are all trying to work out how the Hell something like this has happened in the first place.
Revival has one of the best issue 1’s I’ve read in a long time. Not to say that the rest of it is rubbish, it’s just the first issue is of such a high standard and poses so many interesting scenarios and possible analogies (this event could represent the current global fear of terrorism, that fundamentalism has run wild etc.) that are crafted with such expert precision in the script and the artwork that you can’t help but take a breath after reading it and then go back and read it all over again.
After a darkly amusing prologue that reads like every coroner’s worst nightmare, we are introduced to Dana Cypress, a small town cop tasked by her over-protective Sheriff father to be the liaison officer to Ibrahim Ramin, a member of the Centre for Disease Control who has been sent in to study some of the ’revivers’ to find out what makes them tick. Through Dana, we meet the rest of the town but most importantly Dana’s sister, Martha, a young woman with a big secret to hide.
To explain the story too much would ruin it due to it being so tightly woven. Needless to say, Seeley’s characters are immediately engaging and believable, all of them with emotional baggage, all of them dealing with the ‘revivers’ in different ways because of that baggage. These people are drawn from a world that is exactly like ours (only the dead are walking around) and the dialogue reflects this; every line is thoughtfully crafted and directly contributes to pushing the story forward. Mike Norton’s artwork is perfect for this story, his detailed, consistent pencils capturing the essence of small town life that has been thrown into the limelight through no fault of its own. Special mention must be made to the colourist, Mark Englert, who works into the artwork such an atmosphere in places that you can almost feel the cold of the snow.
Revival reads in a similar vein to other ‘small town/slice of life’ books like Jeff Lemire’s Essex County and Craig Thompson’s Blankets but piles on the crime mystery and horror elements to create something that borrows from obvious source material but puts a unique and original spin on it. Out of all the Image titles recently released, this is definitely one for the top of the pile. A little of something different definitely goes a long way. Well, let’s hope so. Issue 6 is released at the end of this month and long may it continue.
It will also probably also be available from Back From The Depths later on (where you can download issues of Hallowscream), and viewable online at MYEBOOK if it stops being awkward and lets me upload the bloomin’* thing.
The Back From The Depths 2012 HALLOWSCREAM! Hallowe’en Special has returned from the depths once more and is available to download as a totally free pdf file!
60pages of horror for your delectation, a bevvy of beasties and brutality behind a monstrous cover by Malcolm Kirk!
SEE the stomach-churning sideshow freak!
HEAR the bellowing countryside beast which feasts upon unwary wanderers into its domain!
SMELL the bodily emissions of the not exactly undead!
They sing! They dance!
Page 3 : Beaten Path Story by John J Owens, Art by Neil Roberts Page 9 : The Gravedigger Story by Matt Garvey, Art by Erick Marquez Page 14 : Sucked Story by Dirk Van Dom, Art by El Chivo, Letters by Jim Campbell Page 17 : Farmin’ Story by Paul Eldridge, Art by Chow Martin Page 19 : Cash 4 Souls Story & Art by Gordon Innes Page 20 : Youkai Chronicles : Mokumokuren Story by Dirk Van Dom, Art by Antony Rothwell Page 25 : Terrorvision Guide by Malcolm Kirk Page 26 : Gaki Story by Paul Bristow, Design by Malcolm Kirk Page 29 : Charles Wynford Lodge Movie Posters by Julian Jones Page 30 : Buck Tucker : Enemy of Love Story by Dirk Van Dom, Art by Bhuna Page 33 : Terribly Bad Monsters : To Be Frank Story & Art by Christopher Geary Page 34 : The Pond Story by Chris Sides, Art by Chris Travell Page 41 : Terribly Bad Monsters : A Curse Unwound Story & Art by Christopher Geary Page 42 : A Grim Tale : Freakshow Story & Art by Malcolm Kirk Page 43 : Dead Wood Story by Dave Roberts, Art & Letters by Michael Kennedy Page 47 : The Nuisance Story & Art by Antony Rothwell Page 49 : Rayne : Demon Hunter Story & Art by Rattan Bhagwandin Page 54 : AAIIEEE! Advertisement Page 55 : The Wanbies Story by Tim West, Art by Neil McClements Page 59 : Deadvertisements by Malcolm Kirk
…and… Page 60 : Back Cover Skull by Malcolm Kirk
You can now purchase printed copies of Hallowscream via the all new Comicsy website.
With just over 2 weeks until the launch of Hallowscream 4, we are delighted to announce you can now swot up on the 3 previous issues by taking a trip over to the wonderful new UK small press website Comicsy. This excellent site contains a whole host of comics, antholgies and small press doodlings from some awesome names in the UK comics scene, may of who have graced the pages of our beloved Hallowscream.
If you’re too skint to purchase Hallowscream, dont forget you can download them as free digital PDF’s by visiting the Hallowscream website.
Slender is a free pyschological/survival horror indie game by Mark J Hadley, based on the internet urban legend of the ‘Slender Man’, a supernatural creature, fond of kidnapping children and usually depicted as a tall, thin figure, dressed in a black suit and tie, with a completely featureless face and elongated arms, (and sometimes also has tentacly things sprouting out of his back).
If you want to know more about the phenomena, simply search for “slender man”. The internet’s crammed with stuff relating to it.
Slender, the game is a relatively simple affair. In fact, I find it very reminiscent of the 30 year old 3D Monster Maze on the ZX81, with Slender Man taking the place of the Tyrannosaur, and the maze replaced with dark woodland. However, do not let this lull you into a false sense of security. Despite appearances, 3D Monster Maze is still an incredibly tense game when you sit down to play it. Slender, too, may have a simple premise, but it’s also scary as hell. Seriously.
The aim of the game is to collect 8 pages, while avoiding contact with The Slender Man. Even looking directly at him is a bad idea. Instructions are included with the game itself and the controls are fairly simple.
I’ve lived in the countryside most my life. I’ve been around a lot of woods and foresty places. I’ve sometimes wandered around them when it’s been dark. I’ve then often wondered what the flip I’m doing there. This game captures the feel of that perfectly.
You can download the game from the official site here or this fansite, which has more information.
You may also want to check out some of the numerous YouTube videos showing people, (mostly grown men), screaming like little girls while playing this.
Best played in the dark, at night, when you’re alone, (if you want to scare the poo out of yourself, that is).
I’m lucky enough to receive random comics in the post, most of them full of whacked out weirdness and grisly goings on. Arriving on the ‘doorstep of doom’ this week is quite possibly one of the weirdiest (yeah, i made that word up) and wackiest comics I have ever had the pleasure to read. El Bigote: A Tequila-Drenched Reckoningis the first offering from Tekilla Comix, the brain child of writer Matthew McLaughlin and artist El Chivo. It’s only a thin preview issue of what’s to come in the future but is so packed full of wild ideas, it’s impossible to not be impressed.
Set in the untamed borders of the Mexican afterlife, our quill-flinging mustached hero, El Bigote (The Mustache), rides his trusty ostrich steed across the prairies dishing out retribution to undead banditos. I may have never typed a sentance more insane than that.
McLaughlin’s script dances illusively between English and Spanish, which only leads to highten the bonkerousness of the whole affair. Artist El Chivo is fully in on the madness and fleshes out this bizarre comic with his own neat touches.
With more issues on the way, possibly in the form of a web comic, I look forward to seeing what these two poco loco amigos can do.
Not the after affect of a heavy night on the pop, the Bloody Mary Illusion is an old urban legend and fun-time party game played at sleepovers around the world. There are many variations of the story but the general gist involves staring in to a mirror and repeating the name “Bloody Mary” somewhere between 3 and 14 times. (Think of it as an old school version of The Candy Man.) Other methods include chanting more than three times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, rubbing one’s eyes, running the water, or chanting her name thirteen times with a lit candle. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say, “Bloody Mary, I killed your baby.”
It is said that if Bloody Mary is summoned, she would proceed to kill the summoner in an extremely violent way, such as ripping the face off, scratching the eyes out, cutting the head off, driving them insane, dragging them into the mirror with her or causing serious injury or death. Alternatively, if she doesn’t kill the one who summoned her then she will haunt them for the rest of their life.
While this urban myth is just a bit of fun, and ideal for proving how brave you are in front of college girls wearing nothing but tight t-shirts and knickers, there lurks a small element of truth in the story! Stare in to a mirror, and after a short time, you will begin to see an unfamilar face staring back. Go on try it. I dare you!
A recent report from the Department of Psychology at the University of Urbino has just published a paper on this optical illusion. Giovanni B Caputo’s Strange-face-in-the-mirror illusion study asked 50 unsuspecting volunteers to stare in to a mirror for 10 minutes. When questioned after many of the test subjects reported seeing…
huge deformations of one’s own face (reported by 66% of the fifty participants); a parent’s face with traits changed (18%), of whom 8% were still alive and 10% were deceased; an unknown person (28%); an archetypal face, such as that of an old woman, a child, or a portrait of an ancestor (28%); an animal face such as that of a cat, pig, or lion (18%); fantastical and monstrous beings (48%).
However, the paper also found:
…the frequent apparition of fantastical and monstrous beings, and of animal faces cannot, in our opinion, be explained by any actual theory of face processing. Neither constructive approaches nor top down accounts seem to provide adequate explanations.
it continues…
The participants reported that apparition of new faces in the mirror caused sensations of otherness when the new face appeared to be that of another, unknown person or strange `other’ looking at him/her from within or beyond the mirror. All fifty participants experienced some form of this dissociative identity effect.
Spooky, huh?
Did you try it yourself? If you did, you will likely have experienced one of the strange visions listed above. This, sadly, has nothing to do with the supernatural. Caputo attributes these visions as a variation on something known as the Troxler Effect. Discovered by Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler, back in 1804, it is part of the general principle in sensory systems that an unvarying stimulus soon disappears from our awareness. In otherwords, if you stare at something for long enough, your brain gets bored and begins to fill in the information for you. Have a look at the image below or visit Moillusions for more optical illusions.
Regardless of the cause, these illusions can be pretty creepy. If you want to give yourself a scare this Halloween, you can try it out and see for yourself. The best method is to use a 25 watt incandescent light, placed behind you so that you can’t see the light directly or it’s reflection, and five to ten minutes of staring at yourself in the mirror (from about 1.5 – 2 feet away). The low-level lighting that makes colour perception difficult and should increase the likelyhood of a trippy visual.
Bloody Mary Recipe
A quick recipe to mix one up and try it for yourself. Add dashes of Worcestershire Sauce, Tabasco, salt and pepper into highball glass, then pour all ingredients into highball with ice cubes. Stir gently. Garnish with celery stalk and lemon wedge (optional). Served On the rocks; poured over ice.
Ingredients:
45ml (3 parts) Vodka
90ml (6 parts) Tomato juice
15ml (1 part) Lemon juice
Drink 13 of these and we guarantee you’ll be seeing all sorts of weird!
Following the success of their debut event in October-November 2011, the UK’s festival of horror in the performing arts will be returning this Halloween for three weeks of macabre entertainment.
The Etcetera Theatre, Camden will play host to this year’s Festival, which welcomes a broad range of horror theatre, comedy, magic and performance art, from psychological spine-chillers to all-out splatter, improvised ghost stories to grotesque stand-up and séance magic to body horror, and almost anything else imaginable. The purpose is to foster new talent as well as nurturing the already burgeoning live horror scene within the UK.
Applications are now open for this year’s festival, and they’re happy to accept submissions from performers or companies regardless of whether they have explored the horror genre before. If you like a bit of performing arts then they’re looking for exciting and committed groups looking to push the boundaries of live entertainment.
We at Back From The Depths are once again looking for contributors for our free, annual pdf horror comic, HALLOWSCREAM…
…but…
we’re also looking for contributors for something else.
That’s right. This year we’re doing not one but two creepy comics, and we need all the scares we can get. What is this second scare-filled tome? I’ll tell you what it is – it’s a Christmas special.
It’s yet to be named, but we’re looking for yuletide based horror yarns along with the more general stuff.
HALLOWSCREAM GUIDELINES
Ideal submissions should be horror orientated and must be weird or spooky to make the final cut. We are mainly looking for completed comic strips between 1-7 pages in length. Script submissions should also preferably be around 1-7 pages in length. Eerie illustrations and artwork along with interesting horror/comic articles, scary short stories, petrifying poems or anything just plain creepy will also be considered.
XMAS SPECIAL GUIDELINES
Identical to the Hallowscream guidelines, but submissions must have either a Christmas or winter theme. Anything which doesn’t meet that criteria will be more likely to end up in Hallowscream.
GENERAL GUIDELINES
If you’re looking to illustrate something, get in contact and we’ll give you details of available scripts.
We’ll also consider material previously published elsewhere, as long as the contributors own the copyright.
Completed artwork can be either colour or black and white, and should preferably be A4 (21cm x 29.7cm) 300 dpi jpegs.
As this is a non-profit, small press publication, contributors will not be paid but they will retain copyright on any material submitted.
DEADLINES
Deadlines for the Hallowe’en and Christmas editions are identical. There’s no need to point out which issue your story is meant for, as it should be obvious from the story’s content.
Scripts, articles and text submissions : Sunday 22nd July
Artwork : Sunday 7th October
Completed strips : Sunday 21st October.
The finished issue of Hallowscream will be available online for FREE on October 31st. The finished issue of the Christmas special will likely be available online for FREE mid-December.
You will also be able to purchase print version via the online publishing site Lulu.
Do you want to join the Scream team? We're looking for enthusiastic people to contribute articles on horror or comics here on The Theatre of Terror. Contact me for more info.
Horror comic fans can now get their freaky fix by downloading the Madefire App and exploring the exciting new world of Motion Comics. 
It’s currently worth taking a look at Madefire at the moment, as all the motion comics they have created are free to download. It’s a good range of horror and sci-fi that tick plenty of the boxes we demand here at The Theatre of Terror. 
from Amazon.
Not the after affect of a heavy night on the pop, the Bloody Mary Illusion is an old urban legend and fun-time party game played at sleepovers around the world. There are many variations of the story but the general gist involves staring in to a mirror and repeating the name “Bloody Mary” somewhere between 3 and 14 times. (Think of it as an old school version of The Candy Man.) Other methods include chanting more than three times, chanting at midnight, spinning around, rubbing one’s eyes, running the water, or chanting her name thirteen times with a lit candle. In some versions of the legend, the summoner must say, “Bloody Mary, I killed your baby.” 
Bloody Mary Recipe
Following the success of their debut event in October-November 2011, the UK’s festival of horror in the performing arts will be returning this Halloween for three weeks of macabre entertainment.
Latest Posts
Previous Posts
