10 Horror Comics Worse Than Your Nightmares
2. The Auteur
Quentin Tarantino by way of Troma and John Waters. Rick Spears and James Callahan's The Auteur is not your typical horror comic book. In fact, it isn't your typical anything. Desperate to resurrect his career after a recent box office bomb, filmmaker Nathan T. Rex throws everything he has into the sleazy slasher pic Presidents Day. Wildly over budget and constantly off his face on drugs, Rex's downward spiral into madness threatens to consume him and everyone around him.
The Auteur is wild, unpredictable and not always readable. Gore and other bodily fluids are thrown liberally across the page; the gross-out humour is scathing, abrasive and frequently just downright offensive. And yet this hallucinatory nightmare is oddly captivating, largely due to the incredibly - often uncomfortably - detailed artwork by James Callahan, and the sheer energy with which Rex's adventures play out.
A TV show adaptation has been mooted - with Jude Law set to star, and Taika Waititi running the joint - but it's unlikely to ever do this surrealist deep-dive into a madman's mania justice. Well, whatever possibly could - other than Nathan T. Rex, that is.