It would be easy to describe the British horror magazine Scream! as just another EC Horror-inspired anthology series. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s a shortsighted observation that is as lazy as the one that argues Hammer Films were simply UK versions of Hollywood’s Universal Monsters pictures. Like their movie world counterparts, Scream! and EC looked to some of the same classic terrors, but they added flavors their own to forge separate identities. They were marked by their own country’s politics, satirical traditions, and definitions of fear.
Scream!, which saw a weekly release, ran from March to June of 1984, and it featured both on-going and standalone stories in a style not unlike that of another British comics staple: 2000AD (which began its publication run in 1977). A total of 15 issues were released, along with a series of specials that followed the same format.
Rebellion, the current publisher of 2000AD and of the original materials found in Scream (both were once a part of IPC Magazines), has released a new book that collects the magazine’s special issues. It’s called Scream! The Specials 1985-2024 and it works as a companion to their first book 40 Years of Scream!: The Archival Collection.
With these two books combined, fans and new readers alike will be able to have everything Scream-related in a comprehensive package that comes adorned with appropriately ominous black and silver covers. It’s like holding horror history in your hands.
Scream! is an interesting case study in horror. The stories that accompanied each issue represented a variety of styles and tones that went from more macabre satires of English culture to more comedic genre offerings that followed in the footsteps of old DC Thompson comic strips (like The Bash Street Kids and The Broons), only with the tongue-in-cheek sensibilities of shows like The Addams Family and The Munsters.
Some of the ongoing stories stand out for the inventive flair behind their concepts, bringing new twists to well-trodden tropes. “The Dracula Files,” for instance, sees the iconic titular vampire navigating the harsh political landscape of the Cold War. Written by Gerry Finley-Day and Simon Furman and illustrated by Eric Bradbury, the story follows a KGB officer called Stakis as he crosses over the Eastern Bloc in pursuit of the bloodsucker.
The comic strip mixes folk horror, Bram Stoker-centric designs, spy fiction, and a bit of hippie culture for an experience that’s as sharp as a political thriller and as intense as a Christopher Lee Dracula movie from the house of Hammer.
On the one hand, the spirit of Grand Guignol is felt throughout, with gruesome vampire killings being supplied in ample amounts. On the other, Stakis’s and Dracula’s cat-and-mouse game can dig up memories of MAD Magazine’s Spy vs. Spy strip, where two mortal enemies are locked in slapstick combat without an end in sight. “The Dracula Files” features no slapstick, though. Just good old fashioned neck biting and stakes to the heart, courtesy of two beings that refuse to give up the fight.
“The Thirteenth Floor” is another Scream! favorite. Conceived by John Wagner and Alan Grant (under the pseudonym Ian Holland), it centers on a residential building named Maxwell Tower that was built without a 13th floor. The building is run by a faulty artificial intelligence that creates the missing 13th floor whenever it needs to punish someone who’s bullying or harassing any of its residents.
The AI conjures unimaginable horrors for its victims, making them wish they never messed around with anyone who calls Maxwell Tower home. “The Thirteenth Floor” harkens back to a time when technology could still be seen as a friendly psycho, a semi-genocidal machine that attempts to be fair. It shows the AI we want, which is clearly not the one we’re getting given how things are turning out.
The Specials book includes the issues that were published after Rebellion took over. Some of their stories feature new takes on classic strips and they’re a special treat if you’ve already spent some time with the original stories. Legends such as Dave Gibbons, Ron Smith, and Barry Tomlinson are joined by current star creators such as Torunn Gronbekk, Alex Paknadel, and Anna Readman.
The one-shot story “And His Skin is Cold” by Readman and George Pooley is among the highlights of the Specials book. It’s a vicious rock and roll horror story that centers on a Jim Morrison-like lead singer who is seemingly immortal. Is it a play on Faust or something different and more monstrous altogether? Readman’s designs are the star here, possessed by a sense of violence that is gritty and terrifying all at once.
Scream! shaped generations of readers and creators with its brand of fear. It carried its own influences, but it managed to carve a space of its own in the field of horror. This wasn’t a UK knockoff of American horror comics. This magazine spoke to a readership that had its own dark tastes. Both the archive and the specials books are a must-have for genre fans everywhere. Stick with them long enough and you might end up emitting a scream or two before you’ve flipped the final page. It’s simply not for the nervous.