Just In Time For Halloween Season

Split Lip, a new monthly horror webcomic, that aims to deliver scares both psychological and visceral launched today. The series, which will post one new story a month, is written by Sam Costello, a horror journalist (Rue Morgue) and blogger (www.DarkButShining.com), and drawn by artists from all over the world. New stories, which vary in length from about 8 pages to about 25, will be posted onto the Split Lip website on the third Sunday of every month.

“I wanted to create stories that tried to bring some of the deep strangeness of Asian horror films like Ringu and A Tale of Two Sisters together with the visceral horror of David Cronenberg and the atmosphere of Joyce Carol Oates or House of Leaves,” said Costello. “Split Lip is my attempt at that.”

Split Lip is influenced by comics including the EC horror library and the works of Junji Ito and Kazuo Umezu.

“I consciously chose not use to the standard horror archetypes – vampires, zombies, werewolves – in these stories, because I wanted to try to venture into new territory, areas that frighten thanks to both ideas and actions,” said Costello. “Fear is often generated by the unknown, by the strange, so by using less-familiar ideas, I hope to catch readers with their guards down.”

The first comic in the series, “The Executioner is a Lonely Man,” was illustrated by Brian A. LaFramboise, whose work has appeared in Trailer Park of Terror and Opi8.com. The comic tells the story of two men who become neighbors on death row. Barrett, the row's newest arrival, is marking time until his execution. Transformed by guilt, he has accepted his fate, and waits for death. The other man, Doc, a long-time death row resident, asserts his innocence and strikes up an understanding, if not exactly friendship, with him. But one of the men has a dark secret — A secret that the other will only learn in the execution chamber, at the end of the gallows rope.

About Sam Costello

Sam Costello has published articles on business, technology, music and culture in print and online. His work has appeared in CNN.com, PC World, Rue Morgue, InfoWorld, Bitch, and Punk Planet. His comics have appeared, or will appear, in Variants (Variance Press), Tales from the Plex (Futurius), and Shivers (Onyx Cross). He is a writer and editor for the horror, science fiction, and fantasy blog Dark, But Shining (http://www.darkbutshining.com).