5 DC Horror Comics for Clayface Fans

DC Studios' Clayface just did something nobody expected: it turned a Batman villain into a full-on R-rated body horror movie and opened at No. 1 at the domestic box office (Deadline). Directed by James Watkins from a story by Mike Flanagan, it follows Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a Gotham actor whose face, and then his whole body, stops belonging to him.

Critics keep reaching for the same comparisons. Time Out called it "one of the ickiest body horrors since The Substance", and over on r/comicbooks fans are calling it "a mix of Joker and The Fly."

If you walked out of the theater wanting more melting flesh, more tragic monsters and more Gotham dread, good news: DC has been making horror comics for decades, and a lot of the best of it came out of its Vertigo imprint. Here are five to read next, all on GlobalComix. No movie spoilers ahead.

1. Clayface: Celebrity Dirt

Start here. This is the closest thing to the movie on the page, and it's brand new.

Clayface: Celebrity Dirt, from horror writer Jude Ellison S. Doyle and artist Fran Galán, opens in a Los Angeles makeup trailer and gets gross fast. A new supplement is turning its users into monsters, and the industry has a name for it: "meltdown." Meanwhile, back in Gotham, Basil Karlo is locked in a box insisting, "My name is Basil Karlo, and I'm a star." Then he breaks out to stage his Hollywood comeback, and finds someone else is already living his life as a star.

It's Hollywood vanity plus body horror, which is exactly what the movie is going for. Movie Clayface is Matt Hagen and comic Clayface is Basil Karlo, but they want the same thing: their old face back.

Read Clayface: Celebrity Dirt #1 to start. Four issues are out so far.

 

2. The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21: "The Anatomy Lesson"

The movie is about a man who can't recognize himself anymore. Alan Moore, Stephen Bissette and John Totleben did that story in 1984, and it's still one of the best single issues DC has ever published.

In The Saga of the Swamp Thing #21, the botanist Jason Woodrue is hired to perform an autopsy on Swamp Thing's frozen body. What he finds changes everything Swamp Thing thought he knew about himself. It's quiet, clinical and devastating, the kind of identity horror that gets under your skin rather than splashing across it.

If it hooks you (it will), keep going with the Swamp Thing series, which includes the rest of Moore's run and beyond.

 

3. Hellblazer

If your favorite part of Clayface was how nasty and grown-up it got, meet John Constantine. Hellblazer became Vertigo's longest-running series, and it's DC horror at its grimiest: demons, cults, serial killers and one chain-smoking con man of a magician who usually makes things worse.

Start with Original Sins, the first collection by Jamie Delano and John Ridgway. It opens with a body horror gut-punch: a mild-mannered postmaster with "something black and hungry" nestled in his gut, and an appetite that won't stop.

This edition also includes Constantine's early appearances in Swamp Thing, so it pairs perfectly with pick #2. There are over two dozen collected volumes to binge after that.

 

4. Doom Patrol (Grant Morrison era)

What happens when your body stops being yours? Doom Patrol has been asking that question since the '60s. Robotman is a human brain stuck in a metal shell after a racing crash. Negative Man is wrapped in bandages around an energy being he can't fully control. When Grant Morrison took over the book with issue #19, it got much stranger: Crazy Jane and her dozens of personalities, a sentient street, a painting that eats Paris.

Doom Patrol is less gore and more nightmare logic, and it eventually moved to the Vertigo imprint. If the movie's weirdest moments were your favorites, this is your book.

 

5. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Some reviewers wished the movie spent more time in Gotham. Here's the fix. In Grant Morrison and Dave McKean's Batman: Arkham Asylum, the inmates take over Gotham's asylum on April Fool's Day and demand Batman in exchange for their hostages. What follows is less a superhero story than a painted psychological horror novel, with Batman walking through the personal hells of the Joker, Scarecrow, Two-Face and more.

McKean's art is unsettling in a way few Batman books have ever tried to be. Start with the 25th Anniversary Edition.

 

More DC horror to read after the movie

Still hungry? These four go well with a Clayface marathon

Detective Comics – James Tynion IV's Rebirth run puts a reformed Basil Karlo on Batman's team and gives Clayface his saddest, most human arc. Start with Rise of the Batmen (issues #934 to #940).

Animal Man – Grant Morrison's strange, heartbreaking run about a family man whose powers, body and even reality keep slipping out of his control.

Basketful of Heads – Joe Hill's gory Black Label thriller. One Viking axe, a lot of severed heads that keep talking, zero chill. Read the complete collection.

American Vampire – Scott Snyder and Stephen King's Vertigo vampire saga, which kicks off in 1920s Los Angeles with a young actress turned into a monster. Hollywood horror, again.

All five picks above are live on GlobalComix now, so the only question is how many nights of sleep you're willing to lose before Halloween.