By Svetlana Fedotov
When I was a kid, I used to go to a day camp during the summer. It was your standard affair with plenty of crafts, nature exploration, weird camp food, and the best swimming pool in the tri-cities. Of course, like any good camp, we had plenty of urban legends to keep the children from wandering off on their own, like the Monster of the Lake. Rumor had it that a monster made out of gunk and slime would snatch children that wandered too close to the lake and drag them in, never to be seen again! Logically, that just didn’t make sense, especially after the counselors told us that a perfectly good couch that sat in our rec center came from the depths of the monster’s lake, but you find me a kid that sat on that couch and I’d show you a kid with no fear. We were terrified of that damn couch. I suppose it was that kind of irrational fear that really fed my love of horror.
I feel as the comic reporter of Brutal As Hell I should tell you about a horror comic that unnerved me as a kid; one that I read in the middle of the night, like those 50s kids reading Creepy that forced me to sleep with the lights on, but it wouldn’t be true. I didn’t actually get into comics until I was fully swinging into boy-obsessed puberty, dreaming of JNCO pants and Marilyn Manson, but that’s a story for another day. My first experience with horror was like a lot of kids in the US: Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark. Now, I knew what horror was, don’t get me wrong. I knew about Freddy and Chucky and that weird, floating hand on the cover of the movie House and boy, was I terrified. I had a wild imagination and could just as easily imagine those guys lurking in my living room TV just as well as them lurking in my bedroom, watching me sleep. But Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark was a whole another experience.
The great thing about those two series is that they were specifically aimed at kids. They weren’t super serious about putting the fear of God in their young audience (unlike that unholy Stories to Tell in the Dark), but mostly they existed to entertain as well to spook. That’s not to say that there weren’t genuinely terrifying moments, such as the red ghost in the pool episode of AYAOTD. In fact, I’m sure I’m still scared of dripping, bloody skeletons reaching for me from the bottom of the pool while I float there at the mercy of the water (well, that and the chick from The Ring.) Goosebumps, as well, was a nice little introduction to the larger fandom of terror. Looking back on it now, its super cheesy and pretty low key on the horror, but it was effective. Hell, if my day job as a library assistant proves anything, is that it’s still as popular now as it ever was.
Despite any successful attempt into terrifying me to turn on all the lights in the house as I crept to the bathroom in the middle of the night, it really wouldn’t be until I got into comic books did I really embrace the potential of horror. As stated, by then, I wasn’t so much as a kid and I wasn’t as easily tricked into believing in monsters under my bed. Also, I’m sure I was a gross teenager. The point is, my childhood horror experiences were pretty boring. I rolled with the thrill of word-of-mouth urban legends and watched a thirty minute show every Saturday night and that was really about it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got some Beanie Babies to dig up and a Hanson tape to dance to…