Graphic Content: Hauthology by Jeremy Haun

 When the pandemic hit, many people suddenly had a lot of free time on their hands. Some people baked

bread, some people caught up on all the Netflix and Hulu shows they never had time to finish, and some just squeezed themselves into a fetal position to futilely escape the crushing sense of existential dread. Writer and artist Jeremy Haun, creator of the body horror series The Beauty, took a different approach. He created a very unique collection of short graphic stories and collected them in the book Haunthology.

Haunthology is a large collection of very short stories. Many of these reflect the horrors of isolation, brief snippets of people suffocating under the weight of existential worry. Others are stories about haunted houses and horrifying curses that are lodged like a stinger in your mind before Haun delivers another one. Each story is its own little monster that’s guaranteed to burrow under your skin.

Haun is well-known in horror circles for The Beauty as well as The Red Mother, but he’s really flexing his creative muscles here. Some might think that writing super short stories is simpler than longer works when, in fact, the opposite is true. In a very limited amount of space and time, the author/artist (Haun is doing double duty here) must incorporate the setting, the characters, and the conflict, before delivering the climax that gives a tale its emotional punch. Each of these stories are great examples of how to create a short short story and should be read by those who want some prime examples of saying a lot with very little.