DC House of Horror and Resurgence of Horror in Comics

DC Comics reached out to eight popular horror authors to write DC House of Horror Vol1, which is an 80 page comic that they are hoping will be the resurgence of horror to comic books. My guess is that they reached out to me because the American Library Association honored me by labeling me one of the Major Horror Authors of the 21st Century. That and my recent literary success, I suppose. And probably because Clive Barker and Stephen King were too busy. Still, they picked me to be a part of it and I'm stoked. Also writing in the comic are Edward Lee, Brian Keene, Mary SanGiovanni, Bryan Smith, Nick Cutter, Wrath James White, and Ronald Malfi. We were paired with artists Rags Morales, Bilquis Evely, Howard Porter, Scott Kolins,  Howard V. Chaykin, and Dale Eaglesham. It also features the maniacal Keith Giffen riding herd over us all. If I told you some of the conversations I had with Keith you'd crack up.

You see, back in the 1950s, EC and Eerie Comics had titles like Tales from the Crypt, Tales of Terror, Weird Tales, etc. Then came a resurgence in the 1970s when DC published supernatural fiction and occasional horror stories in such titles as Ghosts, The Dark Mansion of Forbidden Love, Secrets of Haunted House, Secrets of Sinister House, Swamp Thing, Weird Mystery Tales, Weird War Tales, and Tales of Ghost Castle. I broke my eye teeth on those when I was a kid. By the late 80s, though, these titles were all gone with the exception of Swamp Thing. Then in the 90s, Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics began to bring it back. Then comics like Jonah Hex, Ghost Rider, and Constantine made horror in comics even more popular.

DC House of Horror is an attempt to bring horror back to DC. This is Vol 1 and if it's a success, then we might see Vol 2 and some resurrections of their old titles. I'm personally hoping that Weird War Tales comes back because of my military background. You know I could write some bad ass weird war scripts.

In DC House of Horror, all of us were given a DC franchise character and told to put our own spin on them. I was given Shazam and I placed the events in the 1970s. Others were given Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, etc. What makes this great is that we were pretty much told to do with these characters what we wanted to. The stories wouldn't be cannon, so the sky was the limit. We had a load of fun. And I got to bring in the movie The Exorcist and a quote from Hunter S. Thompson on the first page of my piece to start the party off. See if you can spy The Exorcist movie posters on the subway wall.

This isn't my first foray into comics. Many of you stalwart fans might remember that I had a short story in the back of several IDW comics, including The Keep, CSI, and several others I don't remember. But this is my first time writing a comic script and having it published. I'm beyond honored.

So how can you help? Have you ordered a copy? Then go to or call your local Comic Book store. If you don't have one, then call Liz Scott at Phat Collectible in La Habra, CA at  (714) 680-3760. Tell her Weston sent you. I know they ordered a bunch of extra copies.