While many genres offer the potential for theological reflection and exploration of religious issues, the nature of horror provides unique ways to wrestle with these questions. Since EC Comics of the 1950s, horror comics have performed theological work in ways that are sometimes obvious, sometimes subtle, but frequently surprising and provocative.

This collection brings together essays covering the history of horror comics, from the 1950s to the present, with a focus on their engagement with religious and theological issues. Essays explore topics such as the morality of EC Comics, cosmic indifference in the works of Junji Ito, the reincarnated demons of the web-comic The Devil is a Handsome Man, religion and racial horror in comic voodoo, and much more.

Conventional wisdom has it that the origins of the horror genre are found in the nineteenth century, in works like Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this paradigm-shaking new book, Bible scholar and cultural historian Brandon Grafius argues that the Bible is, among other things, the world's first work of horror literature.

The tropes and themes that we find in slasher movies, body horror, folk horror and zombie apocalypses were kickstarted by the Bible. Before Godzilla, there were the monsters arising from the sea in the book of Daniel. Before The Wicker Man, there was the folk horror violence of the book of Judges. And before The Fly, Leviticus and Paul understood that our bodies are untrustworthy. Sometimes, the Bible has decided that the best way to help us understand the world in new ways is to scare us.

Grafius's book is a revelatory work of biblical scholarship as well as a cultural analysis of the contemporary horror genre. It is a book that will make readers revise how they see the Bible and impact how they consume horror literature and cinema. It is guaranteed to make them wiser consumers of both.

Praise for Lurking Under the Surface: Horror, Religion, and the Questions that Haunt Us

Grafius's surprising, and often insightful, eclectic intellectual enterprise in Lurking Under the Surface brings into stark focus Ligotti's understanding of unreal horror as being sublimated ruminations about real horror. --Los Angeles Review of Books

Grafius teaches us how to welcome horror as a constant companion in a world plagued by real evil. --Sojourners

Grafius' easy writing and gentle touch will lull the reader into an educational trance that makes diving into the slim book more like watching a movie than reading an informational text. Grab the popcorn. --Booklist

Brandon Grafius combines biblical scholarship with a fanboy's love of horror to create a fun, fascinating book you won't be able to put down. I've never read a book quite like this. --Reza Aslan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth

No matter how many times you've seen Night of the Living Dead, The Thing, or Sinister, this book will come to you as a revelation. Brandon Grafius not only knows horror--he understands the deeper questions dark fictions ask. --W. Scott Poole, author of Dark Carnivals: Modern Horror and the Origins of American Empire and Monsters in America

What a tasty book! It dives deep into what terrifies us, entertains us, and awakens the awe inside us. With a scholar's knowledge of both theology and every kind of horror movie, Grafius takes us on a tour of our soul with thought-provoking analysis, personal reflection from his own journey, and a healthy helping of humor. --Owen Egerton, writer/director of Mercy Black and author of Hollow

Lurking under the Surface rightly argues the hope of horror and the horror of hope within the overlapping and at times problematic circles of Western religion and the horror film. A thoroughly engaging read. --Paul Tremblay, bestselling author of A Head Full of Ghosts and The Cabin at the End of the World

These chapters work to bridge the perspectives of traditional scholarship and more postmodern ideas of monsters as cultural and rhetorical constructions. There are chapters on the Ghosts of Mesopotamia, Leviathan, and the Giants, but also on the Monstrous Jew in the Gospels and the Monstrosity of the Crucifixion. They serve both as foundational pieces of research for scholars looking to familiarize themselves with monsters and discourses of monstrosity, but also as creative and provocative examinations of how these monsters generate meaning. While working to summarize the research that has been done on biblical monsters up to the present day, this Handbook points the way forward towards new and exciting studies in unnatural creatures and the rhetoric of horror.

Through an exploration of theology and horror, this book explores how questions of spirituality, divinity and religious structures are raised, complicated, and even sometimes answered (at least partially) by works of horror.

Seeing the Apocalypse: Essays on Bird Box is the first volume to explore Josh Malerman's best-selling novel and its recent film adaptation. The essays in this collection offer an interdisciplinary approach to Bird Box, one that draws on the fields of gender studies, cultural studies, and disability studies.

Horror can be a valuable conversation partner for the spiritual questions that animate so many of us.

Whether through a movie, television show, novel, or even myth, horror as a genre has always spoken to our deepest human fears and anxieties: fear of death, of the unknown, of knowing too much. Whether you're looking at classic narratives like Frankenstein, which shows us the consequences of stretching knowledge farther than it's safe to go, or contemporary films like Get Out, which explores racism and white guilt, horror provides a window into our culture and what makes us human. The same can be said of religion.

Horror movie buff and religion scholar Brandon Grafius finds common ground between these two seemingly disparate bedfellows--horror and religion--in Lurking under the Surface. What parallels can we draw between The Walking Dead and sacred texrts? How do the stories of Hebrew Christian scriptures and apocalyptic films like A Quiet Place and Bird Box help us find hope when it's in short supply? When we treat them both seriously, we see that horror movies and religion lead us through the same sets of questions. Both explore questions of justice, hope, and our relationship to the world and the cosmos. And both offer us ways to make meaning out of the contradictory pieces of our world--a world filled with so much hope and so many recognizable fears lurking just beneath the surface.

Through an exploration of theology and horror, this book explores how questions of spirituality, divinity and religious structures are raised, complicated, and even sometimes answered (at least partially) by works of horror.