It’s four colour moments like Headless Horseman that make me wish that I’d been around for EC Comics glory years, and serve as a reminder that the undisputed Colussuss of Horror and lurid comicbook guts, gore and more, burned briefly, but brightly. Why does this book make me long for the golden age of ghouls, ghosts, monsters and more? Since you asked, I’ll tell you… Because, when I read it, Headless Horseman invoked the same sort of grizzly pleasure in my soul and made every single nerve ending crackle with devislih electricty in the exactly the same fashion as my cherished collection of EC reprints do whenever I open their covers and dive deep into the gruesomely detailed pages.

A celebration of the spooktastic season that envelopes every horror hound at this time of year, Headless Horseman is a hearfelt ode to the haclyon past of the aforementioned publisher, the portmanteau films that put Amicus on the map in the early seventies and rthe anthology scare of the week radio and televsion shows of yesteryear, and tips it’s decapitated noggin to the most famous of hosts from beyond the veil, the Cryptkeeper.

Comprised of a number of shockingly good artistic and literary tales designed to titillate and terrify in equal measure, the opening and closing chapters of which, Entertainment System and Horror House, subvert the tropes that they’re built around in a delightfully devious manner are frighteningly good fun and are worth the cover price alone. Headless Horseman is a glorious throwback to the golden age of horror comics, and if you only read one four colour celebration of the regions beyond this Halloween, make sure it’s this one. It’s what Ichabod Crane would want you to do… Tim Cundle