I was recently invited to contribute a graphic story to a collection of uncanny tales, Congregation of Innocents, published by the Curious Tales collective. For the past three years this group, consisting of novelists Jenn Ashworth, Tom Fletcher, Richard Hirst and Emma Jane Unsworth, together with artist Beth Ward, have published a limited edition of spooky stories in time for Christmas. Each edition, strictly limited, has been themed on the writings of (classic) authors. This year’s is inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson, the master of uncanny Americana. My story, The Brood of Desire, is the first comic strip to be included within a Curious Tales anthology, so I thought I would list my favourite graphic novels that exemplify the uncanny sensibility.

Congregation of Innocents: Five Curious Tales is available from curious-tales.com

Graphic novels, especially if discovered in adulthood by readers of a certain age, can seem, in themselves, uncanny – that odd mixture of the strange and familiar – the comics of childhood morphed into “serious” fiction, mixing the fantastic with the mundane and shifting between multiple layers of reality. There are many genres within graphic fiction, but works that evoke a sense of muted horror can be found across these arbitrary divisions. Works of domestic fiction, of small-town, downbeat tales, are sometimes more heavily freighted with the gothic sensibility than the abounding horror and science fiction titles.



1. Beautiful Darkness by Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoet (2014)

Cute characters, taking tea, are suddenly surrounded by dripping gore. Ah – turns out they are living inside the body of a dead girl in a forest. They climb out of the skull to find lots of tiny companions, wandering about. Trying to set up a new community to survive in the woods is challenging. They forage for food, build new shelters, and interact with the woodland creatures, sometimes trying to befriend them, sometimes killing and eating them. Nature takes its cruel course, picking off the characters one by one as they start to squabble and kill each other.

2. Prosopopus by Nicolas De Crecy (2009)

A baffling and disturbing wordless story. After a successful hit, and after calling on his mistress, an assassin returns to his apartment to find it inhabited by a smiley, cigar-smoking troll. The creature was apparently formed from his own semen, cigarette smoke and the blood of his murdered victim. The troll loves him, and wants to protect him, it seems – and, strangely, it starts to film him. It kills and dismembers two thugs sent to murder the unnamed hitman who, it is implied, was exacting revenge for the death of a former girlfriend. What does it all mean? Hmm … Like a David Lynch movie, the story demands repeated viewing and endless speculation.

3. Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton (2013)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A frame from Naming Monsters by Hannah Eaton

A kind of psychogeographic dérive around London and its suburbs. Our protagonist, another Fran, processes the grief of losing her mother while contemplating the real or imagined menageries of the city. Fran is obsessed with cryptozoology – the study of animals that may not exist.

Packed with adolescent dread, the vignettes are nevertheless hilarious. I love the sequence with the spiritualist meeting – very Beyond Black. The sensitive, yet striking graphics, combining multiple media, are wonderful and the dialogue is droll, drawing the reader along in a series of roguish misadventures, while leaving one with more than a little unease.

4. Adamtine by Hannah Berry (2012)

A masterfully constructed tale, scattered with puzzles – the title itself being one example – which gradually builds a sense of unease. Four seemingly unconnected people become stranded on a night train. Although they don’t know each other, the passengers are all, in some way, connected to a sinister individual, Rodney Moon, who was accused of a series of murders. The driver seems to have disappeared, the intercom emits only static and they appear to be stranded in the middle of nowhere. Another train stands further up the tracks. Hesitantly, they disembark and walk towards it…

5. The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Mr Punch by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (2006)

A young boy comes across an old Punch and Judy booth standing alone on the shingle beach. The thuggish red puppet soon appears and begins to talk to the boy from the stage. Later, the boy makes the acquaintance of a sinister Punch and Judy “professor” who lets him try on some of the glove puppets. When he asks to try on Mr Punch he is refused, being told “once you bring Mr Punch to life there’s no getting rid of him”. This is a tale of fading childhood memories and the intrusion of adult evil into the innocence of youth. Dave McKean’s ominous graphics, combining puppet tableaux, photomontage and paint, create a wonderfully macabre atmosphere around Gaiman’s characters.

6. Fran by Jim Woodring (2013)

I could have included any of Woodring’s Frank stories here, but I find Fran the most intriguing. The eponymous heroine is the girlfriend of generic anthropomorph Frank, a hapless individual who blunders through “the Unifactor”, Woodring’s fictional world, rendered in immaculate inkwork. Unaware that Fran is actually the incarnation of a powerful goddess, Frank starts to act like a bit of a macho dick. Faced with this adolescent behaviour, Fran decides to return to her own realm, leaving her luckless boyfriend bereft. He decides to follow her, accompanied by his ever faithful demi-godling pets, Pupshaw and Pushpaw. Funny, disturbing and frequently bloody adventures ensue.

A frame from The Black Project by Gareth Brookes Illustration: PR

7. The Black Project by Gareth Brookes (2013)

This one, as Jonathan Rigby of Nottingham’s Page 45 Comics once remarked, is “wrong in all the right ways”. Richard, an obsessive teenage boy, makes girlfriends out of found objects and materials: papier-mache, string, soft fabric, a balloon and some old-fashioned bellows.

He catalogues his increasingly sophisticated creations while his real-life friendships and relationships deteriorate. The book was a long time in the making because it is illustrated in lino-cut and embroidery and the crafted graphics and rib-tickling narrative conflict with the themes of suppressed suburban violence to produce a wonderful feeling of dissonance.



8. Black Hole by Charles Burns (2005)

A classic that has received much critical acclaim. A gothic teen horror story about a disease, known simply as “the bug” which is caught by sexual contact with an infected person. One boy develops an extra mouth on his chest which starts to talk; a girl periodically sheds her skin, another grows a tail. Those stigmatised take to the woods and live on junk food and sweets in a makeshift camp, periodically venturing into town for food. Events are complicated by a series of murders of the outcasts. The community’s reaction to the disease – fear, disgust, the banishment of those afflicted – rings horribly true.

9. The Ticking by Renée French (2006)

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Illustrations from The Ticking by Renée French

I love French’s work, which combines exquisite graphite drawings, bizarre, vulnerable characters and sparse, handwritten text. This is the story of Eddison Steelhead, born as his mother died, who inherited his father’s malformed face and was brought up in isolation on a remote island. Eddison refuses the operation that will correct his deformity and sets out for a wider world. French’s drawings induce feelings of tenderness and unease, body horror mixed with pathos.

10. Here by Richard McGuire (2014)

A 320-page book, with every scene drawn from a single vantage point: the corner of one room. Set in McGuire’s own childhood living room, it is a cut-up catalogue of everything that has happened on that spot from the early days of an uninhabited earth, to the distant future. Snapshots are overlaid on the same page, giving the sense that time is flexible, so conversations from the 1800s seem to interact with others from the 1980s, although the speakers have no inkling of this, forcing one to think about whether places can retain a trace of past (or future events) as well as the transience of life and human works.

• Congregation of Innocents: Five Curious Tales with an Introduction by Patrick McGrath is available to buy from publisher, priced £8 plus p&p. Suitably atmospheric events to tie in with publication are under way - please check the website for more details: curious-tales.com