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Underground > Comic Books >

Disturbing scenes in comics

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I'm Rick Jones, bitch

10:39 / 06.07.03

THE STRIP WAS AN EPISODE "TALES FROM BEYOND SCIENCE" BY JOHN SMITH AND I CLAIM MY £5!

The other strips in that awesome series being written by messers. Alan McKenzie and Mark Millar.

"THERE ARE PEOPLE... LIVING IN MY SKIN!"

Ryan's art was so brilliantly stylised that it sort of threw you- some strips were all light hearted, then the destruction of a satanic CIA Marliyn Monroe clone ignites ley lines over the (rapidly ending) world as the ghosts of hollywood's golden age look on! (The still-living Marlene Detrich was protrayed as being dead by Smith in that strip. She died a week later). That's a shitty synopsis but it's a fucking weird strip.

A later strip was published in a summer special- it's all about worlds inside worlds and snow-globes. The last page is fucking chilling. Look it up.

The strips you mention were The Eyes of Edwin Spendlove by John Smith and Long Distance Calls by Mark Millar. According to the 2000ad Yearbook 1993 they all ran between progs 774 and 779. Except the story in the summer special, which I have no fucking clue about.

The same special having a story where Mr Ben joins the Judges and Judge Dredd blows the poor guy's guts out for being a jimp. I found that quite upsetting.

And don't forget anything with Brigand Doom in.

11:18 / 06.07.03

The summer special one was by Millar, a story about ariadne, the thirteenth month of the year, when spiders rise to trap little men and boys. this kid's grandad keeps this month in a jam jar next to his porn mags in the cellar, and rather unwisely lets his grandson take the month home with him. creepy stuff, excellently undercut by hughes' fun angular art

Earlier than I thought

21:01 / 06.07.03

People have been telling me how hideous 'Rascal Prince' is for years. Never found a copy. Is it that bad?

00:55 / 07.07.03

(long time lurker, first time poster)

The first time I remember being really disturbed by a comic was the 24 hour diner story in one of the early issues of Sandman. Also the serial killers convention story.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

09:04 / 07.07.03

Missed that one.

The one I was thinking about was about a strange wall at the artic pole...

19:13 / 07.07.03

Oh, yeah -- the first thing that happens after Morpheus gets out of the glass bubble is get his gem back from the psycho villain dude (can't remember his name) who's been like *playing soldiers* and worse with the random eight characters in this diner. Turns off their higher brain functions so they start acting out primate conflicts and mating strategies. Makes them confess their worst sins to each other. And then (if I remember right) one does penance by popping her eyes out. Ick! Ick! Ick!

That was when Vertigo was "horror" instead of "goth."

19:25 / 07.07.03

Her *own* eyes, that is.

20:12 / 07.07.03

strange wall at the arctic pole, that's just gotta be smith

20:55 / 07.07.03

...psycho villain dude (can't remember his name)

that was Dr. Destiny

09:58 / 19.07.03

Tulip getting shot in the head.
I can still hear the gun going of in my mind.

Everyone seems to have forgotten the bit in Miracleman: Olympus when KidM turns back into Johnny (?) and Miracleman tells hims that he's found a way to cure him.

We only see Miracleman's reaction "shot."

Easily the most disturbing and haunting comic moment.

23:19 / 19.07.03

OK, this may sound kind of tame, but I had several days of existential aaaaaaaaaaaarggggghhhhhh-ness from a Marshall Law special where the good-guy-back-at-"home" Kiloton got carved with a chainsaw. Even now, for some reason, it makes me queasy.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

00:16 / 20.07.03

Johny Alpha's death scene.

13:39 / 21.04.04

bump

13:51 / 21.04.04

Any particular reason for bumping this topic up, triplets?

16:05 / 21.04.04

Johny Alpha's death scene.

Which one?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:24 / 21.04.04

Oh well, now it's been bumped...

sorry, none too visceral, but it causes me emotional pain every time I even think of it and is the reason I haven't gone back and re-read the book...

the dream sequence in Jimmy Corrigan with the tiny horse, where Jimmy's reading comics and excitedly telling it all the cool things they could do with stuff they could order, and then his dad comes in and tries to make him shoot the horse...

sadly enough, I'm welling up just typing this post.

13:54 / 22.04.04

many years ago: Robert Crumb's one-page "Pud." The bazooka joe-looking kid forcing the little girl to suck him. Yuck, that Crumb has a lot to answer for...

advancedplastics

03:10 / 23.04.04

there's only one thing that immediate comes to mind, maybe its the only one i can't supress.

someone else mentioned it already, but EXQUISITE CORPSE, by jerry prosser and the pander bros. was truly disturbing. everything about it. there were some really cool things going on conceptually that i didnt appreciate fully at the time (i was 13 when i read it). definitely worth checking out.

05:36 / 23.04.04

Hey, topic bump for the new person. Woo!

There was an issue of Arsenic Lullaby where Voodoo Jim(?) resurrects a group of aborted fetuses from a medical waste dumpster and has one of them impregnate the ex-girlfriend of the guy he's working for. According to Jim, she'll stay pregnant damn near forever, and the fetus will whisper shit to her occasionally. I laughed my ass off at that, which makes it all that more disturbing...

The part in Preacher where Jesse is staging his one-man assault on Masada, and orders the soldier with the machine gun to kill all of his comrades. Couldn't he have just told them to go stand in the corner of the canyon for a week, or something?

12:55 / 23.04.04

24 Hours, an issue of Sandman by Gaiman.

advancedplastics

14:52 / 23.04.04

Hyde's treatment of Griffin in League Volume 2.

15:12 / 23.04.04

well the reveal in the final page of the unfunnies issue one sent a real shiver down my spine. quite nasty, and he had me on his 'new way to do horror comics' thing. ish 2 was a lot easier on the soul, but there was still a bit with a rather cute young budgie being obscene to everyone he saw because a sniper was going to shoot him down if he didn't. yick. plus the cover, which features an abortion done like the animaniacs. not disturbing exactly, just really really rank.

15:17 / 23.04.04

oh god, I'd forgotten about Hyde and Griffen. That really was disturbing. Bleuurrgh.

22:30 / 23.04.04

Not sure who wrote it, but the art was by the V for Vendetta guy (sorry, I've just finished a 15 hour day, 2 in a row, and brain is shutting down, David Lloyd?) and it was a Hellblazer story where people are marching around with punch and judy heads on. A couple of panels, where a woman goes to her small child and says something about 'this little piggie goes to market' or something, and we see that she has a pair of scissors behind her back. That always shuddered me. Oh and the Zenith moment when the guy with the metal hand that sends out electric charges, and he zapps one of the possessed villians in the face, and she takes it, and then rips his arm off, saying something like 'oh, it's only that hand that's made of metal'.

23:00 / 23.04.04

Smith and Weston's Killing Time for me, I suppose. It's all pretty horrible - nasty, sweaty atmosphere, helped no end by Weston's art (his best ever?) colours (some artists *need* to colour their own work) - but there are moments that stand out. Like the teeth. Or the harp.

But the bit that stuck with me? The ultimate fate of Max and Ishmael. They're complete heroes throughout, tough, fair, wonderfully charming and likeable. And then episode ten rolls around...

"Dry your eyes and I'll let the blue boy down." Blind Man's Bluff. "Hold my hand, Max, please... will you hold my hand?"

Disturbing, unexpected and upsetting. /me shivers.

13:34 / 26.04.04

The bit in "Like a velvet glove cast in Iron" when that frat boy type has that sex with the girl the dan Clowes lookalike is after and then the frat boy shoots her in the head...that was preety fucked up!

15:17 / 26.04.04

quote:Originally posted by Benny the Ball:
Not sure who wrote it, but the art was by the V for Vendetta guy (sorry, I've just finished a 15 hour day, 2 in a row, and brain is shutting down, David Lloyd?) and it was a Hellblazer story where people are marching around with punch and judy heads on.

It was written by Grant Morrison. Did you really not know that or were you merely trying to sucker some GM fanboy into showing off their encyclopaedic knowledge

You're right though I found those two issues of Hellblazer pretty bloody disturbing as well.

However the most disturbing would be a short story in Eagle called 'The Butterfly Collector' or something similar. I was only 7 or so when I read it and it freaked the living fuck out of me. I thought I had escaped it but reading this thread brought the horror back to me.

17:57 / 26.04.04

The Arkham Asylum graphic novel probably has the most disturbing scenes for your buck, I've always thought. Between Batman skewering his hand with a broken glass shard, pedophile Mad Hatter, creepy deteriorating Clayface, Arkham's mum eating beetles and "I look at the doll's house and the doll's house looks at me," there's very little not to be disturbed by. Oh, almost forgot the Joker slapping Batman's ass and asking how Robin was.

But despite all of the more obvious disturbances, what gets me the most is what Dr. Destiny wrote in the back of the book. "In dreams I walk with you." That's the kind of thing that stays with you, even after you're done being skeeved out by everything else. Positively haunting.

18:31 / 26.04.04

I'd only read the grant morrison Hellblazer in the collect DC british horror anthology monthly or quarterky book that came out years ago, and never remember them showing his name, honest! Went through my hellblazer's that I've got since then to try and find it and there they were, around the mid 20's.

I vaguely remember the butterfly collector, not a great deal, but enough so that your mention of it sent an unease down my mind.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

06:33 / 27.04.04

The end of that GM Hellblazer... (I think it was that anyway"... "bump, bump, bump, bump, and up the funny stairs".
Brr.

16:52 / 27.04.04

I should've mentioned this earlier, but in the pages of an indie/gothy/queer comic by Tommy Kovac called Stitch, about a teenage boy who gets turned into a doll but can't quite remember how or why, there was a supporting feature called "Skelebunnies."

In that, drawn in a very cutesy style, there's a story about a Bad Little Rabbit who doesn't brush his teeth at night, so he gets abducted by the Skelebunnies who put him through this machine -- dark panel -- then a knock at the Mother Rabbit's door, "Mommy? I don't feel so good..."

She opens the door -- her baby boy has had his head surgically transplanted... onto an octopus-like body... made of stitched together giant penises. Veiny. Moist. Totally out of place with the cute fuzziness and loopy "evil" of the rest of the strip.

He woozily says, "My teeth feel fuzzy."

End story.

AAAAAAAAUUUUUGH!

Haus of Mystery

18:50 / 27.04.04

The bit in 'Velvet Glove' where Tina lies 'ready' for her romantic night. ugh.

16:29 / 28.04.04

A Jamie Delano early Hellblazer story where his niece gets kidnapped by a vampire (?) who makes child brides out of little girls. Or something, I can't remember too well.

The story was obviously going to end happily but it was still chilling and amazingly paced.

09:39 / 29.04.04

Elektra made me afraid of movie theatres, too. As a child I was terrified of looking down and seeing my shirt lifting into a bloodless tentpole... I heard the "tent" thing was a result of Marvel's long-running policy against exit wounds.
That one issue of Rom, Spaceknight when Quasimodo's genetically-engineered garden of Eden in the middle of the radioactive Forbidden Zone is falling to the radiation, and all the beautiful people are rotting on their feet like zombies, and Rom's clone, with holes in his cheeks and sides showing his teeth and ribs, attacks the Wraith Warlock and strangles him, and the Warlock is changing shape into snakes and giant spiders but the clone just hangs on with the last of his strength till they're both dead.
That early issue of the original New Gods, where Orion snaps for the first time and tortures a Mother Box to death.
Yeah, I'll third old fat King Mob plugged into the television in a room full of eggs.
The Marshall Rogers run on Batman- that one scene where Penguin realises he's alone in the old theatre with the Joker... you never even see the freak, but Penguin's cold sweat and hurried exit says it all...
But you know what gave me the worst FEAR of all?
First time I picked up the Archie Comics version of Ninja Turtles (Shudder).

11:39 / 29.04.04

I remember being a kid and being utterly shocked by the "tentpole" thing. I don' know, I think exit wounds would have seem less shocking somehow.

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