Locke & Key writer Joe Hill, whose fantasy horror novel NOS4A2 recently debuted as a Vertigo’s shutdown.
First reported by Entertainment Weekly, DC is starting a new “pop-up line” of limited series horror comics called Hill House Comics.
The monthly comics will be run by Hill, who’s writing two of the five starting series (along with a back-up feature called Sea Dogs, which will be released in two-page installments in each comic).
This comes less than a week after DC announced that it was killing Vertigo and replacing it with DC Black Label, ending a decades-long imprint that showcased some of the best in mature graphic novels. Hill House Comics will be printed under DC Black Label, indicating it’s for people 17 and older.
“Anyone who’s paying attention knows we’re in the middle of a new golden age of horror: Films like Get Out, Hereditary, It Follows and plain old It have raised the bar higher and higher,” Hill said in a statement. “Meanwhile, ongoing shows like AMC’s The Terror and Netflix’s Stranger Things have shattered preconceived notions about what’s possible in episodic terror TV. There’s great stuff happening in comics, of course—in a field of unbounded creativity and wacko visionaries, there’s always great stuff happening—but greedy me wants more.”
Hill will be working on two limited series. There’s Basketful of Heads, featuring art by Leomacs, about a young woman who comes across a Viking magical ax that decapitates heads in a single stroke… only to have the head keeping talking after it’s been removed. Then there’s Plunge, which doesn’t have an artist yet, which Hill described to EW as an Arctic horror tale about a rediscovered research vessel, which riffs on John Carpenter’s classic novel, The Thing.
Other series include The Dollhouse Family by writer Mike Carey and artist Peter Gross; The Low, Low Woods by writer Carmen Maria Machado and artist Dani; and Daphne Byrne by writer Laura Marks and artist Kelley Jones.
Marks previously worked with Hill on a possible Locke & Key TV show for U.S. steaming service Hulu, which the network ultimately ended up passing on.
IDW did recently tease some news about Locke & Key that would be announced at San Diego Comic-Con, to which Hill said “you never know.”
The first issue of Basketful of Heads comes out October 31.