Grab a Graphic Novel: Spooky Stories
We’re highlighting our graphic novel collection by exploring tried-and-true cartoon classics, as well as fresh-off-the-press new releases. Pick up a graphic novel today!
Our Grab a Graphic Novel blog series presents our latest reads from the aforementioned collection. Available at all five libraries, the collection encompasses comics, manga and, of course, graphic novels — anything that uses pictures as an intrinsic part of the storytelling process.
This month, in anticipation of Halloween, we’re highlighting some super spooky stories for readers of all ages! Some of these are blatantly Halloween-themed, but we’ve also got a sampling of mystery, thrillers and horror for you to enjoy. Some of your favorite classics, like Dracula and Frankenstein have been adapted as graphic novels, creating a frightening, new experience. Join us, as we find new ways to be thrilled and terrified by these awesome, scary stories!
Junior
Scooby-Doo!: a Haunted Halloween by Howard Lee
Description: Zoinks! Someone in Banning Junction is burning creepy patterns in the cornfields. Seems like a ghost is out to ruin the annual Halloween party! Can Scooby and the gang solve the case and save the celebration?
Scary Godmother by Jill Thompson
Description: It’s Halloween night, and it’s up to Scary Godmother to show one little girl just how much fun spooky can be! Meet Hannah Marie, who, with the help of Scary Godmother, stands up to her mean-spirited cousin Jimmy and her fear of monsters on her first Halloween adventure with the big kids. Later, Hannah joins forces with Orson, the vampire boy, to unravel a mystery near and dear to their hearts.
Costume Quest: Invasion of the Candy Snatchers by Zac Gorman
Description: Klem and his pals aren’t the most popular Grubbins in candy-starved Repugia, but Klem’s hoping that will change once he brings a hoard of candy back from the human world. After all, it’s Halloween, so there’s candy everywhere! Unfortunately, there’re also bullies everywhere, ready to steal all of Klem’s sweet, sweet loot. Will he and his friends make it out alive, or are they doomed to an eternity of sugar-free torment?
Goosebumps: Slappy’s Tales of Horror by R. L. Stine
Description: The talented Dave Roman creates the horrifying drawings for “The Night of the Living Dummy,” the origin story about that most evil of all ventriloquist dummies, Slappy!
The Spooky Tale of Captain Underpants : The Horrifyingly Haunted Hack-a-ween by Meredith Rusu
Description: George Beard and Harold Hutchins are back in a new Halloween adventure! Piqua’s biggest pranksters are getting ready for the best holiday ever – Halloween, of course. But their dreams of costumes, candy, and haunted houses go down the drain when Mr. Krupp and Melvin start a campaign to make Halloween illegal!
Young Adult
The Last Halloween. Volume 1: Children by Abby Howard
Description: The Last Halloween is the story of Mona and her unusual friends, who must work together to defend humanity from countless horrific monstrosities! Perhaps they will succeed, and humanity will prevail as it always has. Or perhaps this will be… The Last Halloween.
Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell
Description: Deja and Josiah are seasonal best friends. Every autumn, all through high school, they’ve worked together at the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world. (Not many people know that the best pumpkin patch in the whole wide world is in Omaha, Nebraska, but it definitely is.) They say good-bye every Halloween, and they’re reunited every September 1. But this Halloween is different—Josiah and Deja are finally seniors, and this is their last season at the pumpkin patch. Their last shift together. Their last good-bye.
Josiah’s ready to spend the whole night feeling melancholy about it. Deja isn’t ready to let him. She’s got a plan: What if—instead of moping and the usual slinging lima beans down at the Succotash Hut—they went out with a bang? They could see all the sights! Taste all the snacks! And Josiah could finally talk to that cute girl he’s been mooning over for three years . . . What if their last shift was an adventure?
Through the Woods by Emily Carroll
Description: These chilling tales spring from the macabre imagination of acclaimed and award-winning comic creator Emily Carroll. Come take a walk in the woods and see what awaits you there…
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley adapted by Sergio A. Sierra
Description: A graphic novel adaptation of Mary Shelley’s classic tale of a monster, assembled by a scientist from parts of dead bodies, who develops a mind of his own as he learns to loathe himself and hate his creator.
Five Nights at Freddy’s: The Silver Eyes by Scott Cawthon
Description: Ten years after the horrific murders at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza that ripped their town apart, Charlie — whose father owned the restaurant — and her childhood friends reunite on the anniversary of the tragedy and find themselves at the old pizza place which had been locked up and abandoned for years. After they discover a way inside, they realize that things are not as they used to be. The four adult-sized animatronic mascots that once entertained patrons have changed. They now have a dark secret… and a murderous agenda.
Adult
Uzumaki: Spiral into Horror by Junji Ito
Description: The coastal town of Kurouzu-cho is infested with spirals. They manifest in ramen, on pottery wheels, in the fields and sky. The obsession with spirals seizes the town’s residents like a fever, causing intense paranoia, fear, madness and eventually complete transformation. Slow-moving students transform into snail people; others stretch their bodies into spirals just to die. When she notices that human fingerprints are spiral-patterned, one woman cuts off her fingertips with a pair of scissors. A potter becomes obsessed with the grotesque ceramics that emerge from his kiln after the spirals infect the lake where he gathers clay. The teenage lovers of warring families transform into serpents and vanish into the sea, never to be seen again. Hideous and beautiful transformations, death of family, death of community, death of self: this is the world of Uzumaki.
The Walking Dead. Book One by Robert Kirkman
Description: Police officer Rick Grimes is shot on the job and wakes up a month later to find that the world that he knows is gone. Zombies have taken over and are killing and eating those who are still alive. He sets out toward Atlanta in the hope that his family is still alive and endures many horrors along the way.
Coffin Hill Volume 1 by Caitlin Kittredge
Description: Set against the haunted backdrop of New England, COFFIN HILL explores what people will do for power and retribution. Noted novelist Caitlin Kittredge, author of the Black London series, brings a smart, mesmerizing style to comics.
Ghosted Volume 1 by Joshua Williamson
Description: Jackson T. Winters is one of the greatest criminal masterminds to ever live… except he’s rotting in jail after his last, doomed score. But when a filthy rich collector breaks him out, he’s tasked with putting together an elite team of paranormal experts to do the impossible: Steal a ghost from a haunted house of horrors!
The Stand: Captain Trips by Stephen King
Description: On a secret army base in the Californian desert, something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. Something will send Charlie Campion, his wife and daughter fleeing in the middle of the night. Unfortunately for the Campion family, and the rest of America, they are unaware that all three of them are carrying a deadly cargo: a virus that will spread from person to person like wildfire, triggering a massive wave of disease and death, prefacing humanity’s last stand.
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