As previously noted (see this article), KISS co-founder Gene Simmons and IDW are working together to publish a new quarterly comic/horror anthology called Gene Simmons House of Horrors. IDW has released the line-up for issue #1, which will debut in July.
The 64-page, full-color issue will have intro and outro pages illustrated by Matt Busch and written by Simmons, as well as a short prose story by Nick Simmons, and a cover by Todd McFarlane and Greg Capullo. The five stories in this issue include:
“Into The Woods” written by Leah Moore & John Reppion and illustrated by Jeff Zornow. “Into The Woods” is somewhere between Midwitch Cuckoos and Grimm’s Fairytales. A teenage pyromaniac with mismatched eyes who destroys her village but doesn’t know why. We follow the girl as she seemingly condemns herself and her neighbors to a gruesome death. We see wild animals and the forest itself turn on the hapless peasants as they fight for their lives. This is what might happen if Hansel and Gretel stumbled into The Evil Dead… they might need more than breadcrumbs this time.
“Circle Seven” written by Chris Ryall and illustrated by Steph Stamb. Dack is a new recruit to the Eternal Punishment Border Patrol, but he’s got too much to prove to let simple inexperience slow him down. So he’s set to be the Neil Armstrong of his generation, only instead of going up, he’s headed down—into the newly discovered gateway to Hell. He’s sent there alone, because you can’t trust a partner once you enter the Stygian depths. There have been doomsday cries of big plans being made in the worst area of Hell, Circle Seven, and Dack’s job is to see if a human being can successfully enter—and exit—Hell, and, most importantly, stop Hell from spilling into the real world.
“Crude” written by Tom Waltz and illustrated by Esteve Polls. In 1991, Desert Storm rages in the Kuwaiti Desert. Iraqi forces, in a desperate attempt to delay the overwhelming Coalition onslaught and turn world opinion against the campaign for liberation, ignite many of Kuwait’s oil wells, creating an unprecedented environmental catastrophe in the region. As the Coalition attack surges forward, pushing the Iraqi defenders back into their own country, an elite Delta Force team is sent in to investigate the damage done to the oil wells by the blazing, pollution spewing fires. The team goes in with six men, but only one man returns. Something massacred the Delta Force soldiers during the recon mission, and it wasn’t enemy soldiers. No, it was something far more sinister, vicious, and inhuman. It was something straight out of the depths of the earth itself.
“The Basement” by Dwight L. MacPherson and illustrated by Grant Bond. When Agnes Beecham’s nine-year-old daughter Rosa began telling fantastic stories about a visitor from another planet living in the basement, she dismissed them as childhood oneirism. One day, however, Rosa’s father Michael decided to step into the basement to investigate… and returned a vegetable. The doctors told Agnes her husband had suffered a stroke, but Rosa knew it was the man in the basement who made her father a helpless invalid. In the days that followed the incident, Rosa began drawing pictures of strange flying objects and telling her mother the man in the basement wished to take her to his home—and then she mentioned the name Aleister Crowley.
“Nymph” by Sean Taylor and illustrated by Jon Alderink. Jane is an eco-happy entymologist married to Dave, a commercial contractor who builds strip malls and parking decks. While celebrating their seventh wedding anniversary on a picnic in the mountains, Dave goes missing after an argument about his work. Jane looks for him, only to find him already consumed by the trees and herself the prey of a blood-thirsty tree nymph.