Blood in Four Colours

[On the hallowed occasion of Free Comic Book Day 2013 (coming up this Saturday), Michael DeShane contributes this interview with the brains behind the zombie comic FUBAR.]

More than four and a half million free comics will be available on Free Comic Book Day 2013, coming up this Saturday, May 4. If superheroes aren’t your thing, discerning horror fan, you have only two official FCBD titles – a free release from the omnipresent The Walking Dead and one from small-press zombie success FUBAR – to choose from.

To mark the day, the creators behind the New York Times best-selling zombie anthology series FUBAR will be hosting events in 26 comic shops in three countries (US, Canada and Norway) and giving away 37,000 books! You can check here to see if something is happening in your area…

[Michael DeShane contributes this very cool interview with comics creator Emily Carroll.]

Sibling rivalry flares as brothers stalk a monster in the woods; a poem leads the reader to mystery and murder; a mermaid and a prince have an impossible love; and skeletons await, way down in the basement. These are the grim, illustrated stories of Emily Carroll – a compelling mixture of poetry, folk tales and the horrific.

Carroll first gained attention at Halloween-time 2010 when her web comic “His Face All Red” exploded across the internet, passing from person to person like a VHS tape in a Japanese horror movie. Since then Carroll has gone on to fill her website with intelligent, twisted tales that engage the reader in puzzling out their meaning; things like “Margot’s Room,” where each line of the poem is a clue that tells you where to click to get the next part of the story…

[Michael DeShane checks in from the front lines with the creators of the zombie war comic '68.]

Fans of the award-winning, seriously ass-kicking Vietnam era zombie comic ’68 are getting more of what they want. On March 27, a new collected edition, ’68 Volume 2: Scars, was released, and on April 3 a new series, ’68 Jungle Jim: Hellhole begins.

The first critically praised ’68 one-shot came out back in 2006 and told the story of a small group of American soldiers who set out to find missing comrades in the jungles of Vietnam, only to discover they had a new enemy – the undead. For the next several years individual commitments kept ’68’s creators – writer Mark Kidwell, artist Nat Jones and colorist/letterer/graphic designer Jay Fotos – apart. Then, starting in 2011, they followed up with a new four-issue mini-series, two one-shots (’68: Jungle Jim with art by Nate Van Dyke and ’68: Hardship with art by Jeff Zornow), and the latest mini-series ’68: Scars, with art by Nat Jones (all of which are collected in the first two ’68 trade paperbacks)…

[In honour of Women in Horror Month, Mike DeShane and Aaron Von Lupton are spotlighting three of the many ladies working in the bloody trenches of the horror comics biz. In this installment, Mike and Aaron talk with writer Rachel Deering. (Click here for Part One of the series, which featured an interview with artist Becky Cloonan.)]

It might seem that every idea in the horror genre has been used at least once, but comic book writer Rachel Deering managed to come up with a new one for her series Anathema: lesbian werewolves. Deering mines Hammer movies, gothic novels and old EC comics to create an atmospheric period piece that tells the tale of Mercy Barlowe, a woman who becomes a lycanthrope to save her lover’s soul…