“Wicked witch of Coffin Hill, buried in the woods and lives there still. Hide your face and close your eyes, if you see her you will die. Only the crows to hear you cry…” So goes the nursery rhyme at the heart of the Coffin Hill comics by Caitlin Kittredge, with art by Inaki Miranda and coloring by Eva de la Cruz. This comic series, published by Vertigo between 2013 and 2015, consists of twenty issues which have been collected in three trade volumes: Forest of the Night, Dark Endeavors, and Haunted Houses. With stunningly macabre artwork and a storyline that features black magic, bloody murders, and generational curses, this series is the perfect gateway into comics for any Gothic literature lovers.
As a teenager, Eve Coffin reveled in the dark magic that her family has been known for ever since her ancestor fled Salem and built an estate on a lonely hill amidst darkened woods. But one night when Eve and her friends performed a ritual to call on the dark powers of the forest, they awakened something far more powerful than they could handle. Dani disappeared, Mel went mad, and Eve left town to start her life over far away from her family’s legacy. But ten years later, Even finds herself returning to Coffin Hill after her brief career as a police officer ended in disaster. It seems like little has changed: girls are once again going missing in the woods, people are meddling with magic they shouldn’t, and whatever Eve and her friends awakened is out there still, haunting the town. Eve must confront her past and unlock the secrets of her family’s history if she is to put to rest the Coffin curse once and for all.
One of the best things about this series being in graphic format is that you get to see the truly gorgeous architecture and decadent details of the setting. Eve’s ancestral home, Coffin House, is an elaborate manor that has been added to, updated, and then largely abandoned over the course of generations. At its entrance is an intricate wrought-iron gate with pillars on either side bearing carved crows, which seem to be the family’s mascot. Massive and castle-like, the house features conical turrets, stained-glass windows, plush furnishings, and a labyrinthine basement. Throughout the grounds are a maze garden, a greenhouse, and a small graveyard with stately mausoleums. Coffin House is not only—as the title of the final volume suggests—haunted, but it also holds the weight of the terrible deeds that have been committed on its lands and by its inhabitants for the last several centuries. The series also showcases several other spooky homes belonging to Eve’s friends and fellow townsfolk, as well as other classic Gothic settings like an insane asylum and a spooky forest.
The supernatural elements of the story are also fun to explore in the visual medium. The books don’t bother to get much into the mechanics of the magic used by the Coffin witches, but instead present us with familiar occult imagery of grimoires, candles, summoning circles, and potions. More interesting are the powers of the antagonists, which often appear as tendrils of darkness or ghastly visions of the dead. Emma Coffin, the original witch of Coffin Hill, is suitably spooky in herself, with her Puritan get-up and long, dark hair. Meanwhile, the spirit of Emma’s daughter Evelyn is her Gothic foil, floating about in a flowing white gown. And there is blood and gore aplenty in these books, sometimes supernatural amounts of it pooling on the floors and dripping from the walls.
If you like Gothic storylines paired with spooky aesthetics, definitely check out the Coffin Hill comics. (Thank you to dedicated blog reader Spencer for the recommendation!) You can find all three volumes (or twenty single issues) on shelves now at your favorite comics shop. If you’ve read these, let me know what you think in the comments! And feel free to suggest other comics I should try.