10 Surprisingly Good Licensed Comic Books

10. Hellraiser

Clive Barker is one of the most influential names in horror. Whether it's as a painter, writer or filmmaker, his creations have launched a thousand nightmares - none more so than the Ceneboites, a group of extra-dimensional sadomasochists who cannot differentiate between pleasure and pain.

Although Marvel held the rights to the character fans had dubbed "Pinhead", those comics only contained short stories by Barker. The man himself had been reticent to go back to these characters for fear of having himself defined by just one of his creations. So outside of the novella The Hellbound Heart, the first Hellraiser Movie and the novel The Scarlet Gospels, the Cenobites' stories had all been told by others.

Then in 2011, Boom Studios would get the rights to the Hellraiser franchise, and even more excitingly, Clive Barker himself would write the book alongside Christopher Monfette.

What followed was the story fans had wanted for years - a dark continuation of the original novella fleshing out the world of the Ceneboites and the fate of its characters in ways that were both original and in keeping with the other Hellraiser media Barker produced.