Book Review: Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics

Peter Normanton, ed., The Mammoth Book of Best Horror Comics. London: Robinson, 2008. ISBN: 9781845296414.

 

Genre: comics and graphic novels

Subgenre: horror

Format: trade paperback

Source: I own this one. 

 

This is a book I have read before, though it has been a while since the previous time Turns out that previous time was 2010, so a good time to revisit. However, I am finally getting around to writing a review for it here on the blog. This time it took me a while to finish it as I started it back in September 2020, and finished it back in June of this year. I picked it up for Halloween, and I kept reading a comic story here or there at leisure.

This book is a collection of horror comics from the 1940s to the 2000s. Though cover advertises "over 50 of the greatest horror comics," in reality you only get 48 stories; I counted to make sure. Most of the comics come from small and niche publishers, many no longer in business. 

The book is divided into four parts: 

• The Dark Age of Comics-- 1940s and 1950s.
• The Terror Returns-- 1960s and 1970s.
• The Faithful Few-- 1980s and 1990s. 
• A New Millennium for the Macabre-- 21st Century. 

 

The book has its pluses and minuses. On the pluses, the book is a nice overview of horror comics, mainly in the United States from the 1940s to the early 2000s. The editor's foreword, section overviews, and brief introductions to each comic are informative. The quality of the stories varies. Some stories are very good; others are just so-so. Many of these stories are relatively tame by today's standards, so it's interesting to see what readers thought was horrifying back in the day. 

For minuses, the print in the comics can be seriously small due to the book's format. These comics really deserve a larger format. The result is that some of the comics can be very difficult to read. In addition, and probably an issue with this volume, there are numerous print errors where pages are repeated. Plots were not really affected. All comics are in black and white. That is not an issue, but again, format made legibility an issue. 

Still, this is a good collection overall. Stories are a blend of monsters, horror, scary situations, and things reminiscent of an episode of The Twilight Zone or a similar anthology series. This book is a good choice if you want to get a look at older comics or maybe something to read for Halloween. I liked it overall. 

3 out of 5 stars. 

This book qualifies for the following 2021 Reading Challenges: