The ghost hunting shenanigans of the four paranormal detectives known as GHOSTBUSTERS perfectly melded humor and horror into an iconic film still popular today as it was almost 30 years ago. It's little wonder, then that the Ghostbusters has had such a huge marketing appeal, ranging anywhere from toys to cartoons, and leaving a very permanent mark on the comic market. The franchise has spent years floating from company to company (even making a pit stop at Tokyopop for a manga do-over), but it has recently planted its feet with industry bad boy IDW. THE NEW GHOSTBUSTERS picks up right where the IDW GHOSTBUSTERS left off, this time sending our boys in gray jumpsuits into a strange world possessed by the unknown.

Imagine that you're the ugliest kid on earth. I'm not talking about a huge forehead or a crooked nose—I mean, “God's playing a trick on you,” ugly. Kids make up songs in your honor and the mere sight of your face sobers a seasoned alcoholic. Well, that's Todd, in a nutshell; a kid so unbelievably hideous that even a serial killer had to pass on him. This new series from Image Comics is a hilarious black comedy about a kid with a bag on his head and the worst luck in the world. Combining an indie vibe with a big publisher debut, TODD, THE UGLIEST KID ON EARTH is bound to be flying off the shelves in no time.

Some say that the horror comic magazine is as dead as a week-old corpse, never to walk and love again. Few brave souls, however, have taken it upon themselves to ignore such opinions, attempting to give the forgotten medium another shock to its undead heart. Of course, who could really blame them? With comic companies re-printing every old mag they can find, the sudden rise in popularity for the classics has rekindled a love for all things “eerie.” Morality plays, ghoulish hosts, and dangerous women are back with a passion! TALES OF FEAR #1 is a recent addition, a one man's pursuit to cut out a niche into the already huge cake of the horror world. Though the comic is kind of rough to look at, the passion that creator Gary Scott Beatty has for the bizarre clearly shines through.

You know it’s going to be a good time when Vikings are involved. HELHEIM (Oni Press) proves that you can throw the manly warriors into a great horror comic, crafting a work that is just as epic as it is terrifying. With walking corpses and beautiful woman, the comic is building up to be a strange story in the vein of CONAN THE BARBARIAN with its mix of magic and rip-roaring muscles. There's a reason the work is named after the Norse version of Hell.

It's always a dame, ain't it?  A slinky girl in killer heels with a cheetah walk, ticking men off her list like she's grocery shopping. But when Dr. Vincent Morrow has the bad luck of coming across the one woman with a living parasite for a tongue, he suddenly finds himself trapped in a life or death struggle with a shadowy man in black. Looks like it's another day in the office for the supernatural doctor, where the bizarre and the arcane are an everyday occurrence.    

After what seems like an eternal hiatus, writer/artist/actor Terrence Zdunich (REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA) has gotten back on his four color horse with the seventh, and latest, installment in his self-published domestic horror title THE MOLTING. Presumably, Zdunich had his bloodied hands busy with his second Darren Lynn Bousman collaboration THE DEVILS CARNIVAL, but it was an admitted bummer for this writer to stop receiving this slow burning, unbearably intense and uncomfortable masterpiece of a title without warning. We’re glad to have it back.

The Land of the Rising Sun has done wonders for the horror community. From ghost girls to giant lizards, Japan has been scaring us for years with strange stories and bizarre creatures that still haunt many of our nightmares. The rising interest in Japanese comics has brought scores of readers dumping their hard-earned cash on the novel-thick manga, creating an illustrious, second comic movement wholly separate from its mainstream American counterpart. But don't let the idea of Japanese comics fool you; it's not all doe-eyed teenage girls fighting giant robots. It's an industry as diverse as it unique, ranging anywhere from comedy to mystery to sci-fi, even going so far as to aim at a particular reading populace, such as younger girls or older men.