DC will launch a new pop-up horror line curated by horror author and comic writer (Locke & Key) Joe Hill under its Black Label (17+) imprint this fall. The new line of five limited series will be called Hill House Comics; the first title will launch in October, with one title launching each month following.
In addition to curating the line, Hill will contribute stories for two of the five miniseries and a backup story titled “Sea Dogs,” which will run through all of the titles. Stephen King progeny Hill, who established himself as a bestselling horror writer before his lineage was revealed, has been associated with IDW Publishing since 2007 (see “Joe Hill, ‘Angel,’ and ‘Igor’”); this is his first association with DC Entertainment.
Basketful of Heads, written by Hill with art by Leomacs and covers by Reiko Murakami, tells the story of a young woman battling four criminals who have kidnapped her boyfriend using a Viking axe that beheads her foes but leaves the severed head conscious and capable of speech. This title will launch October 30. The Low Low Woods, written by horror author Carmen Maria Machado (Her Body and Other Parties) with art by Dani and cover by J.A.W. Cooper, is a “gruesome coming-of-age body-horror mystery series” that follows two teen women who are trying to understand the memory-eating plague and other strange occurrences in their small town. The Dollhouse Family, written by Mike Carey (Lucifer, Hellblazer) with art by Peter Gross and covers by Jessica Dalva, is the story of a girl who gets a dollhouse on her sixth birthday and slowly becomes enmeshed and bound by its world into adulthood. “What starts as play concludes in an eruption of madness and violence.” Daphne Byrne, written by TV writer Laura Marks with art by Kelley Jones and covers by Piotr Jablonski, is set in late 19th-century New York, where a 14-year-old girl is trying to disentangle her mother from occultists promising to contact her recently deceased husband while sensing an entity with unspeakable appetites inside her own body. Plunge, written by Hill with no artist assigned, covers by Jeremy Wilson, follows a salvage team that finds a crew with strange new powers when it hunts the wreck of an Arctic oil research ship that’s suddenly started transmitting again 40 years after it was thought lost in a tsunami.The “Sea Dogs” backup story will tell the story of a deal with the devil during the Revolutionary War, which sends three lycanthropes aboard a 90-gun British warship.
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