Nightmare Fuel (comic book)



Remember when you were a kid, and you wanted to read Spawn, but your mom was a total square and said no? After reading some of the more adult-skewing comic books out there, you might begin to think that she was more concerned about your sleeping patterns than the book's material...

Sub-pages:

 * All Star Superman
 * Blackest Night
 * Chick Tracts
 * The Dark Knight Returns
 * The Crow
 * Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
 * Kingdom Come
 * Lenore the Cute Little Dead Girl
 * Marvel Zombies
 * One Hundred Bullets
 * The Sandman
 * Spider-Man
 * Tintin

Comic Books
""Frank...Frank...[he sees the silhouette of a young woman and two children]...we're still dead Frank." ]"
 * In the very first issue of Hellblazer, John Constantine drops by to visit his friend Gary "Gaz" Lester. Letting himself in, he finds that the place has an awful stench and hasn't been cleaned in weeks. The syringe he finds with tiny bug carcasses suspended in fluid is disturbing, but when he enters the bathroom and finds Gaz sitting in the bathtub complaining: "... it feels like there's bugs all over me", it's pure nightmare fuel.
 * What's causing Gaz's problems is even worse: he's become the host of a famine demon who causes people to literally consume the objects of their desire, i.e. start gobbling up money or jewelry as if it's the last, most delicious food on earth (see the liquor store scene in that film with a similar premise)-- one disturbing panel shows a bodybuilder chewing on his own muscular arm. The only way to keep innocent bystanders safe is for Constantine to seal Gaz alive in a wall.
 * There's also Rare Cuts, a compilation of the most High-Octane Nightmare Fuel-o-riffic Hellblazer short stories, which culminates with John and a friend trying to save a village from a mind-warping pagan festival... with masks involved. Those big, hideous, over-the-whole-head ones. And guess who's the only survivor.
 * How about the Son of Man arc? And then the story gets really nasty.
 * Also the flashback when he's begging to be allowed back into Ravenscar, even though they torture him on a nightly basis in there.
 * The Horrorist, where John has stopped even caring about the awful things he sees.
 * Hard Time--what he does to the prison.
 * Highwater, guest-starring some of the crowd from Preacher. (Not really, but they might as well be.)
 * Or more recently the Scab storyline, where John is Euuuugh.
 * The Newcastle Incident itself. It's not what happened that's so bad (we've seen worse since), but what's haunting about it is that it all happened because of recklessness and ignorance.
 * Garth Ennis' Preacher (Comic Book) has a Corrupt Hick with a Squicky sexual fetish. Also, the humiliating injuries of Big Bad Herr Starr become disturbing after he gets emasculated by dog-bite and his penis is replaced with a rubber tube.
 * Jody, T.C. and * shudder* Grandma.
 * Ennis also wrote the fittingly titled Punisher one shot The End. It begins with Castle in Sing Sing after a horrific nuclear war. A year later Frank and another prisoner escape, heading to New York City through the irradiated wasteland. Past burning skies, assisted suicides and Terminator style mountains of skulls, we learn that the other prisoners were cannibalistic and the nukes were detonated in mid air to kill more people. As they reach New York, Frank collapses and wakes up in the care of the Coven, who were responsible for what happened. He escapes and kills everyone, knowingly condemning the human race to extinction. The comic ends with Castle burning from radiation and fire as he walks to Central Park to, in his mind, be with his family.
 * Also by Garth Ennis, The Punisher arc Up Is Down and Black Is White, has Frank driven off the deep end by a vicious mob boss. After a night of him going ballistic on the New York underworld, the next issue opens on Frank sitting silently on a Police car...surrounded by the corpses of civillians, hoods and cops. He starts to hear a ghostly voice calling to him...

"Joker: We have SO many friends here, sweetheart. Say hello to Pearl.
 * Every. Single. Thing. About "The Slavers" arc. From what Viorca tells Frank about her baby to what the horrific things the titular slavers did to their prisoners to - most disturbing of all - the apathetic response to what happened, it is all horrifying and disturbing. This is not to mention the extreme lengths Frank Castle goes to in order to destroy the slavers in question.
 * Warren Ellis' Ruins, a version of the Marvel Universe where everything went horribly wrong. Everything. Powers go out of control, mutilating and killing their owners. Not to mention all the "Happy Accidents" ending in death or worse. Cannibalism, child prostitution, Body Horror and even MORE mutilation; the Hulk as a rampaging mass of tumors or a de-limbed Quicksilver lying in an asylum. Or maybe it's the Silver Surfer ripping open his own chest in an effort to breathe again.
 * Nightcrawler chewing on his own tail. Johnny Blaze pouring petrol over his own head and setting himself on fire. The army of cancer-ridden Kree. Thor as a pathetic, insane, cult leader. Emma Frost's flock of lobotomized children. Wolverine rotting from the inside out.
 * Mr. Sinister from the X-men comics. Yeah, whatever about the name, he is a scary son of a bitch. I suppose it has somewhat a hell of a lot to do with my fears (Unmarked dangers, manipulators, telepaths... basically something that can fuck you up real bad but you have no idea that they could). And that use of psychology that is on on par with Hannibal Lecter's. Shapeshifting, the fact that someone could be effectively controlling you or your life without you knowing. He seems to be a nightmare of mine that has written itself into a comic book because I very rarely have nightmares. Reading a very well written fanfiction with him as one of the main players made me feel sick to my stomach (and perhaps that's also due to lack of proper food). And to note, I'm a nightmare fuelist! And it certainly doesn't help either that the bastard fascinates me. I want to go on bogleech.com or something now, to make myself feel less freaked out.
 * And fuck he can just seem like a totally different person (which he's done A LOT) thanks to mind tricks and perfect shapeshifting. So hell-o Paranoia Fuel
 * Here's that fanfic by the way
 * By the way this is one of the best fanfictions I've ever read, the reason it makes me feel sick is because of how * well* he trounces everyone; it's just ugh...
 * One particular backup story from an issue of the reprint series Classic X-Men was particularly chilling. the young Scott Summers(Cyclops) grows up alone and bullied by a boy named Nathan in an orphanage. A kindhearted young teacher starts to protect him and finds a nice couple willing to adopt him. Then she wakes up to find herself in her nightgown where Mr. Sinister says she's been meddling in his affairs. The next day she suddenly acts completely different and cold towards Scott. The couple who wanted to adopt him are killed when their small plane crashes into a mountain.
 * Sinister was originally an entirely different type of character, considered too horrific to go to press as proposed. Ever wonder why such an example of Nightmare Fuel went by such a silly name?
 * Lucifer. Elaine Belloc pretty much tops the list. But we also have such gems as . And let's not forget the Jin En Mok.
 * Speaking of Sandman spinoffs, I haven't had the courage to read "The Unkindness of One". Sure, I've got loneliness issues, but I can't help but feel Matthew deserved a better fate, particularly given the identity of the OTHER former raven still in the Dreaming. It's subtle, but it's there. Only one character ever directly compares himself to Matthew, and the parallel's so obvious, that it's probably good Matthew didn't notice:
 * Death: At Death's Door:
 * While unable to remember the name of said illustrated novel, I remember a comic I found in my school library, of all places, which followed the lives of an indefatiguably jolly elderly couple in the days immediately after a nuclear war. At the start of the comic, they appear entirely unscathed, but as they prepare to go to bed on the final day, their skins are grey, the wife's hair has fallen out, and husband had blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. It's fairly obvious that they never wake up. What's truly horrible about it is their complete Genre Blindness, which somehow makes it far worse for the reader than it would if the characters actually understood what was going on. It also didn't help that the couple looked and acted lot like my own grandparents.
 * This editor believes that the referred to story is "When the Wind Blows" by Raymond Briggs.
 * Scanned for your viewing pleasure here.
 * Wait, it's written by Raymond Briggs??? "The Snowman" Raymond Briggs? Oh GOD, my childhood!
 * I remember a book called "13 short stories about war" which I was made to read in the 7th grade. While all the stories were more or less gruesome, the third story was especially disturbing. It was rather short but decided that it was appropiate for a target readership of children from 8-12 to explain, after a short indirect mention of the explosion of an atom bomb, the consequences in disgusting detail. Do not read if you just ate or are sensitive: . And now remember that this is in a book for 8-12 year olds.
 * Pretty much anything and everything by Jim Woodring, including his Frank series.
 * The Killing Joke, particularly the iconic image of the Joker going insane for the first time (see the image for the work's page). Gave me the worst nightmares of my life for weeks; I avoided reading it for years afterward until I'd worked through my obsessive tendencies.
 * on that subject in the speial collectors edition hard cover, there is a second story about a man who's talking to a camera about how he plans to kill batman, the mood of it is just chilling he talks about batman, he talks about how he's a normal ordinary guy as casually as how he intends to just walk up behind batman after he's stopped a bad guy and just shoot him, just out and out shoot batman, and yeah any actual worries can be dispelled completely since it's a oneshot story, but still it never shows him getting stopped or anything it just ends with him going out to act out his plan.
 * Also on the subject of Batman...Scarecrow, anyone?
 * Speaking of Scarecrow, his great-grandmother was one scary old lady. If you were wondering why her great-grandson turned out the way he did, well ... some very creative child abuse was involved.
 * Speaking of the Joker, Brian Azzarello's Joker is full of nightmare inducing sequences including skinning a man alive, rape, torture, the Joker crying on a hooker-like Harley Quinn, and much, much more..
 * Post-Crisis Joker in general has made this tropper afraid of clowns, yeah that's right of all of the reasons to be afriad of them he was the number one reason!
 * And right afterThe Killing Joke was published, we had A Death In The Family, where the Joker showed everybody that The Silver Age of Comic Books was over the hard way by brutally beating Jason Todd, the second Robin, with a crowbar in front of his mother. As if that weren't enough, he then leaves them both in a warehouse that blows up just as Jason manages to untie his mother, killing both. The fact that it was drawn with the bright colors of the Golden/Silver ages, but added just enough shading to look realistic, only made it worse. (You've never seen blood this scarlet.) And he does it all with that smile on his face.
 * Don't forget the way Robin's mother reacted: turning away with an uncomfortable mixture of disgust and denial, and lighting up a cig. Post-Crisis Jason was never a nice kid, but this is the kind of thing that screws anyone up.
 * For more Batman-related nightmares, check out Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth. Especially Clayface. "Batman... My skin is sick..."
 * And the postscript from an incredibly minor character, read in context of the whole book, is incredibly frightening:
 * I found Maxie Zeus' portrayal in that book to be the scariest. Maybe it was the indecipherable graffiti outside his cell, or the electroshock machine which stuck dozens of searing-hot electrical wires into his body (including a few which I'm fairly certain attached "down there"), or his disturbing-as-hell messianic complex, or what said electroshock machine was clearly doing to his body and mind.
 * The cherry on top of the Nightmare Fuel sundae that is Maxie Zeus? He has blue speech bubbles. Not too disturbing, until you remember who else had blue speech bubbles...
 * The real creepy thing is how he is holding a bucket of his poop and telling Batman how he will fertilize the earth, and the guard is saying "More, please, do it again..." Then he throws some at Batman...
 * You know what, this entire freaking book is insanely just plain scary. The way that Mad Hatter is hinted at being a pedophile, the way that the book is drawn so loose, shadowy, and surreal, the way that Two Face is shown unable to make any decision; even one as simple as going to the bathroom due to how his coin has been replaced with a deck of cards, Clayface as above, Maxie Zeus as above, the twisted flashbacks of asylum founder Amadeus Arkham; who had to slit his own insane and sick mothers throat; and eventually goes insane himself. The creepiest thing though? The Joker. The way that he has high heels, long fingernails, and he slaps Batman's ass. The way that he is drawn, pale skin contrasting with the dark tones, surreal art that frequents between detail and everything being blurred makes it the most terrifying way the Joker is drawn ever. Don't believe me? Take a look yourself. Above all the creepiest thing about him though? What he says, does, and how he says it. He doesn't have speech bubbles at all, he has demented blood red letters splattered all over the page in all caps; it really gives you a feeling about how he talks and his manner. How he talks about stabbing eyes out, divine madness, men who are pranked into thinking that their wife gave a safe pregnancy and then the doctors and nurses yell "April Fool's, your wife is dead and the baby's a spastic!" while at the same time blowing a guards head off, this is one of the scariest portrayals of the character. All in all, this is one of my favorite comic books, even if it is bloodcurling.
 * One of the most morbid portrayals of Two-Face is this comic. I mean, the man is portrayed as rather pitiable in it, but it's somewhat horrific to see him having to rely upon cards instead of his coin to the point of having to use them whether to decide to go to the bathroom or not. It's sad, yes.. but also extremely scary for me.
 * Batman and Gordon hear this horrific moment where Joker brings forth a hostage named Pearl to the phone...

Pearl: Oh Buh-bat-bat Bat Ohhh...

Joker: Such a crybaby, isn't she? ["skrit skirtch" noises are heard over the phone]

Gordon: What that noise? Can you hear it? Scratching. What's he doing?

Joker: Pearl is nineteen years old [scratching noises continue] She just started to work here in the kitchens here to earn some extra money. Pearl wants to be an artist, don't you, Pearl, darling?

Pearl: Uh-huh... ohhhh... [scratching noises continue]

Joker: She just drew me a beautiful house. She drew it with this pencil [big scratch noise] The one I've just sharpened. Open you eyes WIDE, Pearl! Beautiful... blue... oh...

Batman: JESUS, NO!

Joker: You have half an hour. And bring a white stick."


 * What is it about the Joker using pencils on eyeballs?
 * The bit where Arkham comes home...the dollhouse...the scariest stuff I have ever seen.

""It's like some kind of childhood nightmare.""
 * "oh daddy he's hurting me the dog's hurting me!" Gets worse when you realize who is saying it and why.
 * The Riddler. Yeah, go on, laugh. Nerdy guy who can't even throw a punch, right? Just leaves stupid clues and makes it easy for Batman to catch him, right? Go read "Dark Knight, Dark City" (Batman #452-#454), which has, among other things, Riddler forcing Batman into slitting a baby's throat.
 * As unbelievable as people find it, the No Man's Land storyline had quite a bit. First, the very premise (Gotham freaking city, mostly destroyed, then cut off from the rest of America, all laws, and all support? While the wackos run free?); add multiple references to Cannibalism, constant moral ambiguity, and the Joker doing classically barbaric Joker-things like kidnapping babies and inciting insane cops to shoot their own, and you have Nightmare Fuel that's near impossible to laugh off.
 * What freaked me out was the whole people wanting to actually stay in the PRISON that was being run by Lockdown. Lockdown has always managed to terrify me ever since I saw the episode where the Scarecrow escaped Arkham just to get away from the guy. Now, if that's not scary, this guy being able to scare the Master of Fear.. then what is?
 * Oh, about Joker's plan to kidnap babies?
 * One Catwoman arc has Joker tag Catwoman with a pie containing a radioactive tracer, which Joker then uses to play a cat-and-mouse game with her. She's the mouse. He's chasing her with missiles. The scary part isn't that she's being traced, though that too is genuinely terrifying. The scary part is that the missiles aren't aiming for her. They're aiming for all the innocent bystanders, effectively making poor Catwoman a walking danger zone. Catsy said it best herself:

"Young Miscreant: I'll blow her head off! I swear I will!
 * An alternate version of Two-Face's backstory is presented in Batman: Jekyll and Hyde. Basically,
 * Professor Pyg is what would happen if David Lynch created a Batman villain. He's a middle aged man with a pig mask and butcher clothing and he's terrifying. In his first appearance, he has a bunch of Dollotrons (human zombie dolls) hold a criminal accomplice down so Pyg can make him one as well and tells said accomplice that he'll then help Pyg do the same to the man's niece. Then, in the third appearance, he gives a tied Robin (Damian Wayne) a very odd and disturbing Motive Rant that seeps quickly into a Villainous Breakdown... all while dancing with power tools to "sexy hot" disco music. Robin simply responds as he breaks free, "You have just redefined 'wrong'."
 * The Dollotrons themselves are deeply disturbing, being regular people who have unwillingly undergone a process of creation that is not entirely revealed, but is implied to involve brain surgery, genital mutilation, and mind-altering drugs. They are also given a fleshy doll-like mask which is permanently attached to the victim's face.
 * Batman's code against killing suddenly becomes terrifying:

Batman: ...And I swear that if you harm that woman at all, I'll make you pay! I will break and twist things within you. You can't conceive of the pain I can cause. It's pain that will go on forever. You won't escape it... BECAUSE I WON'T LET YOU DIE."

": I'm not so hungry anymore."
 * In Scott Snyder's run on the 2011 reboot of Batman, we're introduced to an Ancient Conspiracy in Gotham. One who knows Gotham better than Batman. This, in of itself, isn't particularly terrifying. However, the more Batman investigates, the more he discovers just how powerful they are. And then they capture  and start to drive him completely insane in an enormous maze beneath Gotham. Seeing   raving and terrified is shocking, and pure nightmare fuel.
 * Empowered's Knight of Cerebus, Willy Pete, wants revenge on Thug Boy for ripping him off. How? Well, the rest of the Witless Minions were used to satisfy the physical lusts of a man who is walking flame. And because the normal orifices don't last long enough to finish the job... There's a reason Willy Pete has pride of place in Thug Boy's nightmares.
 * He's since added eating bits of living people to his repertoire, and combines it with... no, too horrible to describe, getting the Brain Bleach out again.
 * Mindf** k's backstory has a fair bit of this.
 * Actually, it's worse than that.
 * It's even worse than THAT.
 * And then, there's what Ninjette's ex-clan had planned for her - and what happens to the assassins they send to collect her. Y'know, for a book that began as a spoof on BDSM manga, Empowered has gotten pretty goddamned grim!
 * This was in a horror comic I read at the age of nine. It was a fairly standard story about a high school boy being picked on and being willing to do anything to get revenge on the bullies who kept hurting him. "Anything" included reading a book of black magic and using it to summon a soulless demon. What seared itself into my brain was the image of the boy turning into a skeletal demon with flesh like blue-white wax dripping from the body and exposing muscles and bones. And the body was stretched in a way that showed that the transformation was blindingly painful. The truly horrific part was the boy's face, which not only went from normal to "screaming skull covered with dripping wax" in two panels, but managed to express a ghastly understanding of what he had just become. I can still see every detail of that picture.
 * Garth Ennis has begun a new series, Crossed. All the horror of the zombie/infected apocalypse, turned Up to Eleven. The first issue ends with a pointed lesson for anyone looking for a 'magic bullet' solution to being chased by evil zombies; Just keep running!
 * You remember how the Reavers like to rape people to death, eat their flesh and sew their skins to their clothing? Yeah. These guys are worse. And Ennis actually shows it happening.
 * And they THINK!
 * The scene from the excellent 52 miniseries from The DCU in which . last line at the end of the issue is particularly creepy.

"And it did nothing at all... until I smiled..."
 * 52 also featured a scene where Ralph Dibny wanted to disprove that a cult could resurrect his wife, only to see a straw version of her call out to him. The last page of that issue was particularly haunting as it seemed as if he lost his mind.
 * For me, the second panel of #2 where the Elongated Man recalls the memory of cradling his dead wife with an agonised stretched scream on his face made me jump. Edvard Munch has nothing on that panel.
 * Who can forget Captain Comet's fate?
 * I squirmed as Jean Loring, as Eclipso, pleaded with Ralph  It was both frightening and heart-rending at the same time.
 * It's a testament to how awesome the series is that  is absolutely terrifying in it, before and after he
 * The infamous Issue 15 of Alan Moore's Miracleman, where Johnny Bates, aka Kid Miracleman, goes on a rampage and destroys London, ripping people apart and leaving disemboweled corpses and body parts across the entire city.
 * That issue may be the epitome of this trope. "Burn in hell... and I did."
 * Superman Beyond 3D certainly has its moments, particularly when  and seeing him in 3D was NOT good for my sanity.
 * "I WILL GIVE YOU BODIES BEYOND YOUR WILDEST IMAGININGS"- A perfectly innocent-seeming advert for the Veidt Method takes on Nightmare Fuel properties at towards the end of Watchmen when is revealed.
 * Moore really is the master of this sort of thing.
 * The always reminds me of the standard anatomy textbook diagram of the female genitalia. Considering he read Watchmen before getting up to that chapter in his textbook...
 * The entirety of Tales of the Black Freighter. I saw the ending coming a mile away, which somehow just made it worse. "In hell, at least the gulls are happy."
 * Rorschach eating beans freaked me out for some reason. It just seemed so wrong. Maybe it was the sound effects...
 * Ronch ronch ronch. Lots of Rorschach's actions are seriously grotesque. But somehow the thing that really got to me the worst was that little throwaway detail of young Walter's drawing of his dream. Ugh. (Also, I find the bit where really really hardcore unnerving. Mostly because I'd had three readthroughs of the comic before it even hit me what the hell just happened.)
 * Neil Gaiman's Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader??: dressing up slowly as the Joker is bizarrely terrifying.

"She ripped all of her clothes off, tearing them up. They were dirty. They'd touched her skin. She tried to burn them, but her hands were shaking and the matches kept going out. In truth, she was a little crazy by this time. It was the smell. She couldn't get rid of the smell. In the shower she used up all of the soap, the shampoo, the bubblebath, the perfume... the smell was still there. Have you ever burned an insect with a magnifying glass? Just once, long ago, when you were a kid and didn't know any better? There. You know it. You know the smell. When the soap wouldn't get rid of it, she went to the kitchen and fetched the wire brush that she used for scraping the potatoes... twenty minutes later she passed out. Twenty whole minutes. Even then she could still smell it. She could smell it in her dreams."
 * For those who haven't seen that version, Ultimate Galactus has, shall we say, a different method of operation from the mainstream version. Instead of a giant humanoid in shiny purple and a big-ass hat showing up and declaring with much Purple Prose that his eating your planet will ultimately serve some higher cosmic purpose, the Ultimate version is truly scary; so much so that The truly nasty stuff comes in the third volume, when Galactus actually starts doing things to the world it intends to eat.  It's not for nothing that the final volume is called Ultimate Extinction.
 * The true nightmare fuel from that story was Silver Surfer's teeth. * shudder*
 * And as for the cosmic purpose Galactus normally has? Why does Ultimate Big-G need to eat planets? Simple
 * Also, the Ultimate Skrulls. You know that office building around the corner? It could be full of Skrulls. Your boss? Skrull. The general at that army base down the way? Skrull. And they've been here for years. And they want to make the world better. By putting drugs in the water that will lobotomize everyone. While the drones are vulnerable to standard guns, the officers aren't. At least, they have a Healing Factor. And how do they take on peoples' appearances and powers? By eating them. We even get to see what happens during a Glamour Failure. The only way to take out their leader is
 * Two Swamp Thing stories stand out for me: The Anatomy Lesson and My Blue Heaven. Slasher films don't bother me, but those two single issue comics get inside my head.
 * Arcane: "How... how many years have I been here?" Swamp Thing: "Since yesterday." Arcane: "...yesterday?" That exchange, in context, remains one of the most horrifying things I have ever read.
 * What Arcane did just before finding himself in Hell. Short version: He arranged for his niece Abby's husband Matthew to be in a car accident, and offered him a Deal with the Devil: Arcane would save Matthew's life in exchange for Matthew becoming his new vessel. At first, Abby is impressed by her husband's newfound confidence and passion, until she realizes just what happened and just who she had been sleeping with:
 * What Arcane did just before finding himself in Hell. Short version: He arranged for his niece Abby's husband Matthew to be in a car accident, and offered him a Deal with the Devil: Arcane would save Matthew's life in exchange for Matthew becoming his new vessel. At first, Abby is impressed by her husband's newfound confidence and passion, until she realizes just what happened and just who she had been sleeping with:


 * It Got Worse: Arcane tells her every detail about what he has done and what he will do, then tears her soul out and forces it into Hell. Arcane's punishment was too good for him.
 * Mommie needunt no....
 * "The Nukeface Papers." All right, the Green Aesop anvils are flying thick and fast, but mother of god, that guy's face...
 * What makes it worse is that Nukeface is portrayed as a nice, friendly guy who's completely oblivious to the damage he causes.
 * Scott Snyder has introduced all sorts of lovely things in his run on the title. Let's start with the Rot, the embodiment of all dead matter. It comes in various forms: a swarm of mosquitos that get into people's ears, force the victim's body to break its own neck, and then animate the corpse; a giant creature made from flies, dead shrubbery, rotten meat and a mammoth skeleton; or, probably its most terrifying form - William Arcane, Abby's sickly little brother who can manipulate any and all dead matter. He is, to all intents and purposes, the Rot's equivalent of Swamp Thing. Consider for a moment how many dead cells are in your body, how many skin cells you shed...and imagine what he can do with that. Nice, isn't it?
 * The three big DCU Crises with 'rebooting' actions definitely qualify for this. First, in Crisis on Infinite Earths, nearly every single Universe out there simply ceases to be. Untold billions, dead and gone in about the time it takes to tell, over and over again. And even more chilling when you realize that suddenly - they never were. Take a moment to examine the implications of that. Zero Hour went one step further. Only one major universe and a pocket universe left by this point, and even that is being slowly wiped out from both ends of time, heading slowly towards the 'Present' time. And Heaven help you if you get caught in a time rift as it's opening. You see, you are alive as the rift scatters your atoms across what is left of time. The scream Batman gave out as it happened to him in this event basically points towards this very thing. Finally, Infinite Crisis. 'Your' entire reality and universe is under attack by three men (correction: two men and an overgrown, whiny manchild) that think "You're not good enough. You don't deserve to exist." And two of them have set events into motion that make an already unstable situation, even worse. And now they're starting to attempt to wipe out everything you have known, and replace it with a so-called 'perfect' reality. It's an astounding miracle that we didn't see more heroes and civilians desperately seeking out the red couch after each of these events, that's for certain.
 * Umm... hello? Final Crisis? How could you miss Final Crisis? Somehow I think the entire planet becoming slaves to the evilest being in the DCU all in a plot by a cosmic vampire to EAT REALITY is worthy of this.
 * Grant Morrison lampshades the horrorific implications of the first DC reboot in his run on Animal Man. How?

Yes, she is Nightmare Fuel Incarnate, thank you for asking. "Batman and Robin. Orphans."
 * DC Vertigo's House of Mystery reboot contained a story called "The Hollows" wherein this girl, doped up it seemed, fell in love with a giant fly. She ... copulates with him, and she turns pregnant. Except towards the end where she's gotten bloated and feels sick all the time until.. She basically explodes in a fleshy bag of maggots.. Ew just ew.
 * The worst part of this story? She's telling it to us in the House of Mystery, where she keeps ordering huge meals but can never feel full. Once the story's over, we flip around to see her back and find out why.
 * The worster part? This is the first story in the series. You pick up this book you've heard is quite good and this is the first thing that hits you (well, besides the house parts). It's hard to believe stuff like Jordan's story comes after this.
 * Chalk one more up for DC with Gail Simone's Secret Six. The jokes and the freaky stuff are so tightly entwined sometimes (* cough* Ragdoll) that you'll get Mood Whiplash, but a standout is Junior. Just...Junior. * shudder*
 * For those who haven't read this incredible but, at times, creepy as hell comic: Junior is a woman who's the younger sister of the second Ragdoll. Their father, the original Ragdoll - who was a mass murderer, rapist and cult leader, among other things - was also a pedophile and he molested Junior for much of her life. Grown up Junior has become so psychotic and feels so "Ugly" inside that she had surgery to make herself as hideous as possible. She now gets her jollies by torturing, raping and murdering (not necessarily in that order) men and women. The three most horribly memorable moments are her ordering a priest to absolve her of her sins, only to murder him brutally when he refuses, torturing Bane by throwing bricks against his body with such force that they shatter on impact (counting down how many bricks are left to assault him with as she does) and calmly slicing her brother's fingers off with a pair of scissors.
 * The Black Flash. He appears as a Bizarro version of the good guy. Creepy, but okay. He's fast, just like him. Tough, but expected. Unfortunately this doesn't get that far when you know that he's out for your soul, and you're destined to go. Meet him, and goodbye.
 * Warren Ellis'--gosh, he shows up a lot on this page, doesn't he?--"Superidol". A narrator that's a dead ringer for Richard T. Jones talks into a confessional camera about an artificial Korean pop-star, Rei-Rei. His narration is cut with images about the effects the idol has on the world, including people, men and women, getting surgically altered to look like her. The comic closes with the narrator saying the economy is going into buying Rei-Rei products, and that money is being used to make more Rei-Rei products, and the whole world is becoming Rei-Rei.
 * I read a short comic called Killing Time. Aha. AHAHA AHAHAHAHAHAHA.
 * Probably the most terrifying scene is a single panel. Max Winwood, being the mainest of the two main characters, spends most of the story smiling or thinking to himself while casually shrugging off insane killers and magic as if it were an every day occurrence. One panel, where he sees Winwood doesn't say anything, and the panel has nothing in it apart from him and a speech bubble from offscreen. But I was absolutely terrified when I saw Winwood's expression of absolute terror.
 * Stone Island, in which a prison becomes the launching ground for an invasion of Earth by nightmarish creatures from another dimension. Arguably the most horrific part was when the apparently innocent David Sorrel is unveiled as The Light and The Way, a bioengineered gate for the creatures to enter Earth: as well as being strapped to a circular frame, his skin has been removed, the top of his head has been opened to reveal his brain, and numerous tubes and wires have been inserted into his body at various points- one's even been threaded into his penis. Meanwhile, Sorrel is still talking, still smiling, as if nothing could possibly be wrong with him.
 * Then, of course, the gate actually opens, ripping Sorrel in two. And he's still talking.
 * In the same scene, Harry Rivers is being transformed into one of the creatures- which begins with him vomiting out his intestines. Particularly frightening is when his skull begins expanding and the skin of his face tightens into a grinning rictus that will remain with him for the rest of his life.
 * Hell, all of the transformations in the comic count as purest nightmare fuel- especially their aftereffects.
 * Murmur, a Rogue of The Flash, has a healthy bit of Nightmare Fuel behind him. A serial killer, his modus operandi revolves around his hatred of the sound of speech - he cuts out peoples' tongues, created a quick acting virus that essentially turns your lungs and throat into jelly, and.
 * On the Flash, what, no love for the Reverse-Flash? Generally, you get pretty much what you'd expect from an Evil Counterpart. . When he finds out she doesn't love him (and in fact is repulsed by him) he deals with rejection by.
 * If he can't have that, then
 * Or how about the fact that he already has a family of his own anyway? One can only be grateful that his last remaining heir - the superhero Impulse - is about as purehearted as a teenager can be. And for that, poor Bart is targeted for death by virtually the entire Thawne bloodline.
 * Wolverine's Healing Factor allows him to survive pretty much anything -- and the writers and artists seem to love reminding the readers of this at every opportunity. So nine times out of ten when he appears he is put through some of the most horrific injuries and torture that one can imagine (Eye Scream, castration, being burned alive, being shot hundreds of times in a matter of seconds etc. it's all in a day's work for Wolvie). Even knowing he'll come out okay because of his healing powers doesn't dilute the visceral horror that the more graphic representations of his powers evokes. Of special note to me was the incident with Ultimate Wolverine when the Hulk tore him in half and the guy had to crawl up a freaking mountain to reattach himself.
 * And while on the subject of Wolverine, don't forget the time Magneto ripped the adamantium right out of his body. This was bad enough that it nearly killed Wolverine, the guy able to come back from all of the above mentioned horrible injuries.
 * And the gruesomely hilarious Punisher storyline where . Frank Castle gets so fed up with a moronic Wolverine that he   All of that, Castle, knows, will only slow Wolverine down, not stop him. Wolverine later claims a blood-grudge against Castle for that. I can't imagine why.
 * When it comes to Wolverine I argue there is no story with more Nightmare Fuel than Barry Windsor Smith's Weapon X. From the very beginning, where it's revealed just how Logan got caught up in Weapon X (he was ambushed outside of a bar and kidnapped), to the end where and everything in between it's 120 pages of horror. More examples? Ok, how about the Adamantium being injected into his body? How about Logan being wired up and remotely controlled? How about Logan being made a chewtoy for starved wolves? How about Logan screaming in agony (which is initially thought to be a cry of bloodlust by one of the scientists) when he pops his claws? How about Logan being forced to sleep in the blood of the slaughtered wolves (in sub-zero conditions nontheless)? How about Logan having his body cut open to install mind control devices? How about those mind control devices being demonstrated by a scientist popping each one of his claws to the tune of "This Little Piggy"? Keep in mind that at this point in the experiment they had yet to install the little metal tunnels that allow the claws to come out without piercing his skin. That's still not enough? How about what's seen when the scientists get visuals from Logan's mind? It really has to be seen to be believed. And a subtler example: The professor in charge pours his hot coffee on an unconscious Logan's face and watches as it pours into his eyes with no physical reaction. Wolverine's mind is conscious the entire time, hes just unable to move. Oh, and we can't forget the staff's belief that Wolverine isn't a human worthy of simple rights...  All this presented with a very surreal, stream of consciousness-like style that uses garish colours and unconventional word-balloon placement to enhance the unsettling nature of the book. It's no wonder Wolverine is so messed up.
 * Let's not forget about Grant Morrison's The Invisibles, featuring possibly the creepiest antagonist ever whose distinctive mask, in a scene meant to foreshadow, can be seen in every background pattern.  . Other minor highlights include a correctional facility turning young criminals into embryos in a jar, people being tortured with a drug that makes written words appear as the objects they represent (if you're wondering what's so bad about this, imagine someone waving a piece of paper with "Your Mutated Face" on it after talking about all the things they can do with flesh-eating bacteria...), and a Lovecraftian abomination impregnating Princess Diana. And don't even ask about what happened to Jolly Roger's cell.
 * Yeah, about those "embryos" in jars? They're actually the genitalia of the castrated inmates.
 * One side-issue of Elf Quest starts with a Muggle couple fleeing into a forest of cute six-inch-tall butterfly-like critters who like to cocoon up sleeping animals, "preserving" them exactly as they are. The Preservers have forgotten why they do it, and so never get around to undoing it. They're adorable. They're friendly. They have cutesy names for everything. The couple meets them instead of the 'evil spirits' they were expecting, chats with them for a while, and eventually the Preservers chase off the couple's pursuers. The grateful duo can't wait to go set the record straight about the "evil spirits," who were definitely not to be feared. They fall asleep, watched over by their new friends.  The end!
 * However, in Elf Quest #10: The Forbidden Grove Cutter and Skywise discover the Preservers in the aforementioned forest and among other things, cut the couple (their nudity now slightly more censored) out of the cocoon and let them go. The narration implies that they've been in the cocoon for a year, sleeping peacefully, safe and sound, and none the worse for wear. So... Nightmare Retardant?
 * This House of Secrets cover. HOLY CRAP WHAT IS THAT.
 * Hmm...either . Hard to tell from this angle.
 * Now that's what I call Ice Scream!
 * Maybe it's to a lesser extent than the others, but reading Darklighter, a comic about the exploits of Luke Skywalker's friend, managed to shock me when Hobbie Klivian was said to be infected with something, and there is a sudden reveal of Hobbie, arguably the most sympathetic character, covered in ropey reddish growths under his skin, his medals pinned to his pillow. And he gets visibly worse. I knew he'd get better, having read the X Wing Series repeatedly, but I've got a horror of anything bulging under the skin.
 * How about this from Shade the Changing Man #28?
 * Larfleeze aka Agent Orange, the only member of the Orange Lantern Corps. The reason for that is because he kills and eats anyone drawn to the orange light (or something new) turning them into mindless avatars for him to control (to find and eat more people), since they're not real they can't be hurt in any way and feeding on other lantern powers makes them (and Larfleeze) stronger. Did I mention he's also an insane immortal who just
 * The next issue revealed that
 * From Green Lantern #43: Black Hand. Just..Just Black Hand. An insane, nihilistic necrophiliac who's been  Darkseid ain't got nothin' on this guy. Listen to his introduction in the issue: "My name is William Hand. Although I live, my heart is filled with death. And I am happy." I had some nightmares after reading that one.
 * Black Hand is made even creepier as you consider why he's such a nutjob. In Green Lantern Secret Origins, Atrocitus hunts down the then-teenaged William Hand because he's destined to be the instrument of the Blackest Night. And in the aforementioned Green Lantern #43, Hand admits that he's been "different" for as long as he can remember. The implication is that Hand was cursed from birth to be  and never really had a chance to be anything more than what he is.
 * I cannot think of much that is more nightmare-inducing than that scene in DC's Identity Crisis. After stripping away his Robin costume and desperately attempting to pull the boomerang from his father's chest, Batman comes in and holds him. In that last page, all you can see is Tim, mostly in shadows, with the main focus being his eye and the tears streaming from it. Eerie, depressing, haunting... I cried, and I nearly never cry at comic books.
 * Black Hand is made even creepier as you consider why he's such a nutjob. In Green Lantern Secret Origins, Atrocitus hunts down the then-teenaged William Hand because he's destined to be the instrument of the Blackest Night. And in the aforementioned Green Lantern #43, Hand admits that he's been "different" for as long as he can remember. The implication is that Hand was cursed from birth to be  and never really had a chance to be anything more than what he is.
 * I cannot think of much that is more nightmare-inducing than that scene in DC's Identity Crisis. After stripping away his Robin costume and desperately attempting to pull the boomerang from his father's chest, Batman comes in and holds him. In that last page, all you can see is Tim, mostly in shadows, with the main focus being his eye and the tears streaming from it. Eerie, depressing, haunting... I cried, and I nearly never cry at comic books.

Last panel close-ups on protag; half his face is missing, and sad, soul-less eyes impassively, blankly, stare out at the world. "Mystery Future Sender: Don't open the coffin. Don't let them take Skids. Don't go to Delphi. And do not-I repeat, do not-look in the basement. And for the sake of the Cybertronian race itself, please don't-KZZZZZZZZZK"
 * Bear in mind that Tim Drake had, almost from the start of his career as Robin, a terrible dread that being orphaned was part of the role inherently. It had been over 10 years since that storyline, and it finally happened.
 * Superboy Prime. At first he comes off as a teenager with entitlement issues, and then you slowly begin to realize that he's a teenager with entitlement issues and enough power to destroy a planet. The world cannot possibly come up with anything scarier than that.
 * In Infinite Crisis, Superboy Prime has more than one moment that would qualify as nightmare fuel. But perhaps his defining moment, in my opinion at least, is in Infinite Crisis #4, when
 * Prime becomes more terrifying when Fridge Horror is applied. He comes from an alternate universe known as Earth-Prime. Also known as here. Earth-Prime is Real Life. Meaning that this teenage Kryptonian is real. There's actual posts on the DC Comics thread. It also means that any Nightmare Fuel in both DC and Marvel exists. Especially considering the concept of The Multiverse, which would undoubtly contain the DCU and Marvel Universe. The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You indeed.
 * The Marvel crossover event Inferno was filled with minor moments of mass murder/maimings as the city warps into living objects of death, gouging out peoples' eyes and trapping them for eternity in postage stamps. But worse is the murderous elevators: one elevator murders a tourist family (complete with the son screaming for his daddy to save the family as they are killed behind the doors of the elevator). Even WORSE, was a page cut from all printings of the Inferno in collected format from New Mutants #71: right after a scene where the villainous Hellfire Club members are forced to go out to save people from the attack of the demomic objects, we see people banging on an elevator door trying to flee the building. In the page that is cut, a still at this time COMPLETELY 100% EVIL Emma Frost is in telepathic linkage with the people as they flood into the now opening elevator, as she screams at them to not go into the elevator. Cut to the screaming sounds of the dying and the elevator reaching the first floor as Emma (in telepathic contact with the civilians as they are being murdered) screams in utter and complete horror as the elevator opens up and a tidal wave of blood pours out of it, with the skulls and corpses of the dead piled up inside the elevator as the blood pours out.
 * Also, the key plot point is that thirteen infants were supposed to be sacrificed. Thankfully this was averted... and then the US government raised those infants as child soldiers. Brrr...
 * Spousal abuse is a pretty heavy topic to cover in comic books, and the subject has unfortunately become something of a hallmark with regards to the Marvel character of Hank Pym, aka Ant-Man (and about a million other different aliases over the years). After suffering a mental breakdown, Hank once struck his wife, fellow super-hero / Avenger The Wasp, in a fit of anger, and for decades writers have been getting mileage out of that single incident. Perhaps the most visceral representation of Hank's anger management issues, however, came from the Marvel Universe's Ultimate line, where the Ultimates version of Pym was very much NOT a loving, devoted husband. Pym didn't just strike his wife, he used his ant-controlling helmet to sic THOUSANDS of ants upon her (an attack which caused her to go into anaphylactic shock). As if seeing an army of insects trying to devour her wasn't bad enough, Hank's calm, cold reaction as it was happening upped the creepy factor by a thousand-fold. "You shouldn't have made me feel small."
 * Didn't that version also use Bug Spray on her while she was small, naked, and pretty much helpless?
 * The last page of Beasts of Burden #2. The entire story is nightmare-inducing, but that last page, in which you see  will not let you sleep.
 * #4 isn't too shabby either. Specifically the part where  And for further shudders,   when he meets up with the Burden Hill pets.
 * And #1 is more Squick than anything, but between that Eye Scream part and when
 * The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror #15, particularly the one-page bits. While there's obvious homages to EC Horror comics of the 1950's, just...eeeeeeeeyugh.
 * I'm just plain terrified of the picture of the Simpson family sitting at the couch... as decaying corpses. That's not an image I really needed, especially of some of my favorite cartoon characters!
 * The whole concept of the Sinestro Corpsman Kryb, especially for parents: A Parent-Murdering, infant-stealing alien with a hollow back with dozens of possably screaming little babies and toddlers inside? Yeah, that sounds like something straight outta the original Grimm stories.
 * There's more. Her hollow, cage-like back has nipples in it, with which she feeds the kidnapped babies. And it is implied that the babies are somehow brainwashed into thinking her as their real mother. And that they will eventually become child-terrorists Children of the White Lobe, prophesied to bring down the Green Lantern Corps.
 * The idea of sentient virus as a member of the Sinestro Corps always gave me the chills. I mean it's bad enough a virus is wiping people out, but knowing it is not only alive but armed with an energy ring is just messed up.
 * Triply so since the only reason for that particular Sinestro to exist is in direct response to the existence of Green Lantern Leezle Pon, a superintelligent smallpox virus, first mentioned off-handedly by Tomar Re way back when.
 * Dr. Terminal's capture of The Rumor from The Umbrella Academy. The creepy pedophilic overtones and the casual mention of mass murder are bad enough ... but then there's the revealing of her missing arm and the pool of blood on the floor ...
 * The Archie Comics version of Dr. Eggman was done up quite handily as a source of Nightmare Fuel when he first got started; in his debut, his Robotic Reveal was done by having acid melt off his artificial skin, showing the horrific metallized being underneath the bubbling flesh. Then, once his satellite explodes with him on it, we see him alive and well in his current body, having downloaded his consciousness into it, a trait that allowed for a lot of Family-Unfriendly Violence against him. Oh, and let's not forget that, before his Flanderization, he gained the ability to roboticize people by touch. An unkillable, inexhaustible robotic Mad Scientist with the power to turn you into one of his mindless robotic slaves with a mere pat on the back? Damn. Oh, and might I mention that, before he replaced Prime!Robotnik, he had successfully crushed the Freedom Fighters on his own planet and was ruling it, unopposed, and merely came to Prime!Mobius as a Self-Imposed Challenge?
 * The story "Collection Completed" from the original Tales From The Crypt. The husband, bored by his retirement  takes up a new hobby:  . When he   - and seems to take enjoyment in hurting his wife, she  . The flat-out cruelty the husband showed   became serious Nightmare Fuel for me...and I read the story while I was in my mid-twenties.
 * Banjo Lessons from Twisted Tales.
 * Strikeforce Morituri had a lot of these, many of which involved the deaths of the main characters; normal people who are granted a random superpower by introducing a symbiotic organism into their body. However, this process is inherently incompatible with the human body, and it gets fatally rejected less than a year later after the process. Near the top of the list are...
 * Issue 13, page 28; Crenella (Wildcard) copies Aline's power to melt molecular bonds... and he himself melts from the inside out, all his soft tissues and then his bones dissolving away into a pool of yellow, while Aline (paralyzed at the moment) watches in horror as he dies her death. This is a major factor to her defection from the Strikeforce soon after.
 * Maus. It's about the Holocaust. Need I go on?
 * The ghost children in Wildstorm's Friday the 13th.
 * A lot of Halloween: Nightdance, but one part in particular, where Lisa, after an encounter with Michael in her house, runs to her room and finds the walls covered with blood and disturbing, child-like drawings.
 * Later in the story, a guy discovers Michael had killed his wife, carved her head like a Jack 'o Lantern and nailed her body to a wall.
 * Halloween: 30 Years of Terror had a story in which Michael kills a schoolteacher, strings her body up on the playground and mutilates her face with razor wire, giving her a horrific Glasgow smile-esque grin (she had earlier told her students to try and face their fears with a smile...)
 * There was a Sabrina the Teenage Witch comic from a while ago. Sabrina was telling a bedtime story about a kid who was teased. The teacher wasn't too pleased about this, so she
 * Citizen Steel's whole family getting massacred by Vandal Savage's superpowered Neo-Nazis at a reunion in JSA.
 * The Marvel Comics "What If?" story when they went all dark and bleak, and Jubilee is being chased by a crazed Sabretooth.
 * What if the Fantastic Four's second child had lived. The story where the girl is evil.
 * Irony of Ironies: In this story, the girl is named "Sue" after her mother. In the next "What If?" the daughter turns out to be the savior of mankind and is given the name "Mary". Is her middle name "Sue" by any chance?
 * Several of the stories in the Hellraiser comic series crossed into this, prime examples being "Like Flies to Wanton Boys" and Neil Gaiman's "Wordsworth".
 * The second run of Doom Patrol, in which the villains are often anatomically askew and don't want to kill you, just redefine your existence.
 * From Hell delves into the Jack the Ripper murders in graphic detail, and you'll be glad it's in black and white. (Then you read the appendix, which contains actual crime scene photos, obviously also in black-and-white. There, the lack of color is no help.) The violence eventually takes a back seat as the story delves into the mind of a misogynist madman... which is no less unsettling.
 * The pseudo-Fetus Terrible story from Hack Slash: Comic Book Carnage.
 * The woman half-dissolved in an Acid Pool in Come Together.
 * Near the end of volume 5 of "Scott Pilgrim'', the main character's love interest Ramona vanishes right in front of him, with no explanation other vaguely claiming she's a "bad person" who did "bad things".
 * The very idea that some random creep can enter your mind and alter your memories to the point where your screw-ups can end up being altered to make you look like a hero in spite of your dickery is sure to keep you up at night.
 * Both the face and the body of the Hooded One (plus identity, death and pretty much any scene with that character) from Bone definitely qualify. As does the crossing of the dream land... and what happens to those who step into the Ghost Circles.
 * The TMNT anthology Turtle Soup begins with the turtles returning home from a rough battle, with Michelangelo badly injured. They sleep, and the reader gets treated to their nightmares. Mike's is the worse, as he dreams that he's been split in half and a creepy zombie-looking woman grabs his exposed heart and eats it in front of him. Yikes.
 * Just about every single aspect of the Cyborg Superman is Nightmare Fuel, save perhaps his slightly silly name. He's immortal. He destroyed an entire metropolis . He bears the twisted visage of one of Earth's greatest heroes, cowed a monster like Mongul, and even proved to be a challenge to Darkseid. When Geoff Johns got a hold of him,   Oh, and he wants to annihilate all life. The only thing more terrifying than facing the Cyborg Superman is actually being the Cyborg Superman.
 * Someone above mentioned that they thought the Indigo Lantern Tribe was creepy. Green Lantern #59 makes that interpretation canon. The Indigo power rings seek out people with no compassion in their hearts and forces them to feel it by flushing out all of their "bad" feelings. The Indigo Tribe is a cult of former Complete Monsters that have gone through emotional lobotomies. And they eventually want to spread their "compassion" to everyone.
 * It's implied that this isn't necessarily the case, just that most of the members need to atone.
 * are the only exceptions to this rule seen so far. Indigo-1 doesn't deny that she and the rest of the Corps were just like Black Hand in their former lives.
 * Aliens: Labyrinth...I don`t even know how to describe this, so here`s some images http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=35512.285 (scroll down)
 * V for Vendetta: Valerie.
 * Green Lantern: [[media:gl49_7927.jpg|This cover]]. It at first may be a bit Narm-ful due to the similarity to the trollface meme... until you realize the situation of the cover: Hal Jordan, the Greatest Green Lantern, has gone insane. His home is destroyed, along with almost everyone he ever knew in his civilian life. He has now turned this grief against the Guardians of the G.L. Corps and wants to kill them. Along the way, he fights and kills other Green Lanterns. ONES HE KNEW AND FOUGHT WITH. By the time he reaches Oa, his slaughter of his comrades is an afterthought, he just want "more power to fix things". And even though it wasn't executed well, Hal's plan to do so is even more terrifying than you could think.
 * A particular story from Monica's Gang, a Brazilian comic book, also doesn't escape from this Trope. The story is called "Coelhinho Perigoso!"(Translates as "Dangerous Bunny!"), where Franklin recreates Monica's stuffed bunny, only Up to Eleven. When Franklin was away from his awesome invention, he stole the bunny in hopes of teaching Monica the lesson of her life, then in Jimmy's thoughts  It's true that Jimmy was just THINKING all this stuff, but that kind of thing is too much for a child.
 * Kevin from Sin City. He's scary enough just being a cannibal serial killer but his silent, cold expression combined with the fact that you hardly learn anything about him, much like the Joker in The Dark Knight. He just... exists.
 * The Yellow Bastard is also frightening. Especially if you happen to be one of his victims after he turns into a freak.
 * Daddy's Little Girl. That short story is both Nightmare Fuel and pure Squick.
 * The Anti-Monitor of Crisis on Infinite Earths is pure Nightmare Fuel. Everything about him (or it, more like) is just so absolute and uncomplicated in its evil that it terrifies the shit out of the reader just to ponder it. And let's not even get started on his appearance.
 * There's an old story from Marvel comics, from House of Mystery or some such, where a guy was sent to prison. Now, this prison was rather unique, rather a nightmare fuel version of Valhalla. Thing is, the prisoners' psyches are transferred into robots and divided into 2 teams: Clickers and Grippys, and ordered into eternal combat with everything from clubs and swords to giant tanks and beam weapons. The protagonist quickly (time is perhaps non-determinate in that environment) began feeling the weight of non-stop combat stress, eventually determining that the only way out was suicide. Last page showed the guy alive, and human, and back in The Real World. Two officials comment that he is the only one to come back from that environment, but one admits "Not... Entirely" ...
 * Charlie Huston's run on Moon Knight. How to describe.... it explained that the reason Moon Knight hadn't been seen for years was that he'd gotten into a fight with Raoul Bushman, his nemesis. He'd had his knees broken during the fight, so in revenge, Moon Knight CUT OFF BUSHMAN'S FACE!!!
 * And why did Bushman and Moon Knight get into the fight in the first place? Bushman had basically been sicced onto Moon Knight by a group of suits who wanted to fuck up Moon Knight's life as best they could.
 * This is, of course, just the tip of the iceberg. Marc Spector (Moon Knight's real identity) started having visions of an Egyptian God (Khonshu) telling him to kill everyone in his name. Was it the real Khonshu? Who knows, but it's not exactly like he's gone away....
 * After getting the cape back on, Moon Knight takes this brutal murder to most of the criminal scum he continued to fight. Some of the stuff he did..... real heroic quality. Not!
 * Then his former sidekick Midnight returns, half-cyborg. Since he wants to be killed, and Marc refuses, Midnight gets into a violent fight with Moon Knight, climaxing when he tied Moon Knight to a giant clock and STARTED SLICING OPEN HIS BACK.
 * He also mind fucked a psychiatrist into saying that he was sane so that he could work for the government. Brilliant.
 * Christ, for a little crossover, the Young Avengers/Runaways Civil War crossover was horrifying. Unfortunate Implications of the only characters that were gay aside, the fact that Teddy--sweet, Gentle Giant, loving boyfriend Teddy--was cut up and torn apart on some psycho's operating table was...unsettling. Didn't sleep soundly for a couple of days after that one...
 * In my opinion, Detective Comics #881 does a great job reminding us that Nightmare Fuel in the DC verse doesn't necessarily come from galactic horrors or super powered zombies, but from ordinary humans who don't have powers but are downright psychopaths and James Gordon Junior was terrifying.
 * The Swedish comic book artist and writer Åke Forsmark did a short story in the 70's (maybe 80's) called "Självstymparen" (the self-mutilator) that is downright terrifying. It revolves around a German performance artist who travels to Sweden to perform his craft in front of a live audience. Initially the audience is very enthusiastic and excited about it. Then the artist starts doing precisely what the title said he was going to do. The crowd starts screaming, vomiting and begging the artist to stop as he castrates himself with a knife, saws of his own legs and arms and pokes out his own eyes until there is nothing left but a torso, gushing with blood. What really makes this disturbing is that the performer is visibly nervous about it, sweating profusely and also the fact that there is really no dialogue or plot to speak of, save for the audiences cries and the extreme detailed gore. Forsmark intended this to be a critique against the fanzines and underground publications that he worked in during those days since he felt that they focused to much on offensive material simply for the sake of being offensive. Ironically it was a big hit in more "cultural" publications.
 * Starro, the Justice League of America villain. An alien starfish that latches onto someone to steal their free will and can replicate an army of itself. Its brief appearance on  was quite scary. If   could be overpowered and controlled by it, what hope would anyone else have against it? It's basically the Anti-life Equation incarnate, and Darkseid proved how scary that was in Final Crisis. Heck, real starfish are already disturbing enough.
 * Then you don't wanna watch the recent episodes of Batman the Brave And The Bold. The teasers, instead of being a short Batman adventure, . Seeing it in action, and seeing.
 * Sonic the Hedgehog #210, OR the issue where Dr. Eggman got serious.
 * The Sonic comics have had plenty of Nightmare Fuel before, though. A good example is in issue 50/Super Special 6, where Robotnik tested the Ultimate Annihilator, a weapon that literally erased something from existence. And his test subject? A human.
 * Sonic the Comic is good at this too, especially when Super Sonic came into the mix. He's an unstoppable Complete Monster full of rage and a lust for blood, who could have easily killed Sonic's friends.
 * Issue 60 had a black cover, with Sonic in the foreground and in the back was the silhouette of the villain, towering over our heroes.
 * This Archie cover from the 1940's. Archie does not look good with the body of a large fish and a hook caught in his mouth.
 * Ratchet and Megatron experience Tele Frag, like so. The cover proudly declares, "The Ultimate Autobot/Decepticon Team Up!"
 * The Polish comic book Kajtek i Koko w Kosmosie ("Kajtek and Koko in Space") had a couple of creepy moments, but the one that takes the cake is when one of the astronauts heads into a derelict alien ship they found in deep space. Once inside, he finds it completely lifeless, and coated with some formless biological mass. When he comes back to his starship, he accidentally brings back a tiny little bit of that mass. Which then proceeds to grow. Exponentially, and hungrily. Very quickly it overtakes over half of the ship, and the ship's robots are desperately trying to at least slow it down (and failing), while the two astronauts are forced to temporarily evacuate in an escape capsule. For added fun, all communications with the starship soon cease, and the astronauts conclude that the biomass has completely overrun the ship, the ship's computer is toast, and they are doomed to die a slow death inside a tiny capsule in the middle of empty universe. (Everything ends well, of course, but it's still creepy.)
 * The Spectre's been Nightmare Fuel for a long while now. Check out these highlights from the 1970s comics.
 * Paperinik New Adventures: in one of the episodes of the summer special issue Zero Slash One, a knocked-out PK has a brief nightmare about some of his closest relatives (his nephews, Daisy, and Fethry) being turned into Coolflames. While the nephes and Daisy are drawn with just a blue flame on their head, Fethry's transformation is more detailed and, therefore, creepier.
 * A particular moment from issue 40,"Agdy Days".We learn this comic version of The Tunguska Event .However,we also learn that the Evronians went after the MacGuffin and had a run in with the Russian Army.Aliens invaders versus 1908 army:try to think of what happened to the humans...
 * Another Transformers example, the first two issues of one of the new ongoing series More Than Meets The Eye have a few good ones. The first comes at the end of the first issue when Prowl receives a message from the future to warn Rodimus and his crew not to leave Cybertron


 * The second issue has an amnesiac Skids waking up onboard a shuttle with hazy recollections of maybe having just escaped something...completely missing the message painted on the ceiling of said shuttle; YOU HAVEN'T ESCAPED. THEY'RE ALL AROUND YOU.

Newspaper Comics

 * Of all things, there's a Peanuts cartoon that's pretty freaky, despite it being All Just a Dream. Basically, Charlie Brown decides to fly Snoopy like a kite. It all starts funnily enough, as the wind under Snoopy's flapping ears lifts him higher and higher. To Charlie's initial delight, until he suddenly reacts with a horrified "NO! Oh, NO!!!!" And Snoopy plummets from the sky, impacts with the ground, and smashes (albeit bloodlessly) into fragments like a dropped vase. Cue a terrified Snoopy waking up in a cold sweat: "Man! I've GOT to stop eating those 30-inch pizzas before bedtime!"
 * Date of the strip, please. I tried looking for "Kite" and "Dream" in the back of every The Complete Peanuts book the bookstore had, and found nothing.
 * Sorry, but I can't help with the date. It was in one of the Coronet reprint volumes issued in the UK: I think that it must have been quite early on, as the Snoopy depicted was partway between his original quadripedal self and the present-day version.
 * The entire "Mary Kay Commandos" storyline from Bloom County. Especially the bit where Opus meets rabbits with their eyelids stapled open!
 * The really scary part?
 * Garfield. Specifically, Garfield, Halloween, 1989. What the hell was Davis thinking? "Oh, I've had enough of doing jokes about a fat cat eating lasagna... how about a week of existential terror where we imply that not only is his life not the perfect idyll we thought it was, but he's actually slowly starving to death in an empty house and every other strip is a hallucination born out of loneliness and denial! Yeah, that'll do nicely." Thanks, Jim. Thanks a lot. Garfield Minus Garfield's got nothing on that.
 * It was really something like that. He aimed to scare with the worst thing possible: loneliness.** There was a Sunday strip wherein Garfield started eating massive amounts of food, and gained a great deal of weight, eventually ending up big enough to grab Jon and flip him into the air, and then swallow him whole on the way down.
 * It gets worse from there. Garfield becomes so humongous that he can eat whole cattle and even entire freight trains full of food in one gulp. (He even commands the hapless humans and cattle like a dictator: "Hurry! I'm hungry!") The very last panel is a now Jupiter-sized Garfield floating through the vastness of the universe and thinking, "Dessert!" The kicker, though, is when Garfield wakes up and tells us that he actually enjoyed his fetishistic food dream!