AfterShock Comics Announces ‘AfterDark’ Anthology One Shot For Halloween

AfterShock Comics are celebrating Halloween this year with a one-shot horror anthology special, AfterDark, announced today. Featuring four terrifying tales from writers Cullen Bunn, Jim Starlin, Joe Pruett, Frank Tieri, artists Cliff Richards, Nikkol Jelenic, Szymon Kudranski, Joe Eisma and colourist Guy Major, AfterDark is being billed as “Tales from the Crypt meets The Twilight Zone.”

“A prestige format “One-Shock” featuring top creative talent just in time for the most horrific month of the calendar year, AFTERDARK is a collection of tales you’ll want to read with the lights on! A disparate tale from a possible future; a chance encounter with a mythical Black-Eyed Kid, a children’s fable gone awry; and a gut-wrenching last meal at the local diner.”

Cullen Bunn, no stranger to horror, explains what his story is about:

“‘Dust to Dust’ is a bittersweet sort of horror tale, a story of love and loss and undying commitment, both to the fleeting time we have left on this earth, and the time we’ll have in whatever’s next.” 

Frank Tieri also spilt the beans (or should that be, blood?) on his story too:

“We did a story for the Shock anthology called ‘Little Red Hood’, which was essentially the little red riding hood story as if it was told by Quentin Tarantino or Martin Scorsese. In that story, Red was a drug courier, Grandma was a drug dealer, the Wolf was a rival drug lord, ‘Mother Goose’ was a mob boss called Don Orca… anyway, you get the idea. As it turned out, it was one of the more popular stories in that book so we thought hey, what the hell, why not do more? Why not play in that whacked out universe again? And so, we got the LRH band of Joe Eisma and Matt Herms back together for more tales that will ruin your childhood, bringing us to…’Along Came A Spider’, our little horror tale for the AfterDark anthology, yet another f#%&ed up twist on a classic fairy tale. In this one, we pick up with a certain Detective Muffet who’s on the trail of an elusive and deadly serial killer called The Spider. Needless to say, it’s very dark. It’s very creepy. It’s going to lead to some nightmares. And it might lead to even more than that, so stay tuned…”

Thanos creator, Jim Starlin, concisely summed his own tale:

“It’s a tale of catastrophic generational dissatisfaction set in a dystopian future. Lots of laughs.”

And not to be left out, Joe Pruett added about his own contribution:

“It will be a stand-alone one-off story returning to the world of the BLACK-EYED KIDS, one of AfterShock’s first series, written by myself and drawn by original series artist Szymon Kudranski. We will see some familiar faces in the new story, but you do not have to have been a reader of the series to enjoy it. It’s new reader friendly.”

AfterDark #1 will be available on Wednesday 13th October from AfterShock Comics