New horror comic Creeping plays on social media fad challenges
Kids, don't try Creeping at home!
Fresh off the reveal of a secret room behind one person's bathroom mirror on TikTok, Dark Horse Comics is introducing an even creepier new fad: Creeping. It is an online challenge to spend the night in a frightening location - an abandoned house, a poky cemetery, a foreboding cave... whatever. Would you do it?
For now the challenge is fictional, but it's the subject of a new graphic novel titled Creeping by writer Zack Keller and artist Doug Wheatley. Based on an original story by Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson, Creeping mixes thrill-seeking with social media into a modern-day horror story that might inspire imitators.
"I caught the end of a news clip about college kids staying overnight in an abandoned house and that got me thinking about a new story - a fad in which people sought out the scariest places to camp while live-streaming themselves," Richardson says in the announcement. "The fad, 'creeping', turns into a competition as each group seeks to outdo the last. What could be more frightening than an abandoned asylum avoided by locals for 100 years? Of course, this location has a secret…"
Richardson pitched the idea to Keller, who published his 2016 horror series Death Head at Dark Horse. Keller quickly picked up on the idea, and Dark Horse connected him with Wheatley, a long-time artist at the publisher.
The Creeping OGN goes on sale October 13 in comic shops and on digital platforms, and debuts in bookstores on October 26.
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Chris Arrant covered comic book news for Newsarama from 2003 to 2022 (and as editor/senior editor from 2015 to 2022) and has also written for USA Today, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Publisher's Weekly, Marvel Entertainment, TOKYOPOP, AdHouse Books, Cartoon Brew, Bleeding Cool, Comic Shop News, and CBR. He is the author of the book Modern: Masters Cliff Chiang, co-authored Art of Spider-Man Classic, and contributed to Dark Horse/Bedside Press' anthology Pros and (Comic) Cons. He has acted as a judge for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards, the Harvey Awards, and the Stan Lee Awards. Chris is a member of the American Library Association's Graphic Novel & Comics Round Table. (He/him)