Superhero Horror

This would horrify Bruce.

There's the Weird West for when horror meets the Western and there's Sci-Fi Horror for when Horror meets Science Fiction. Superhero Horror is when the Superhero genre meets horror. At its most basic level, typical Superhero Tropes are Played for Horror.

Heroes will sometimes have a Lovecraftian Superpower, and the tone is generally Darker and Edgier than the usual superhero comic (not to mention often Bloodier and Gorier, too). It often mixes Capepunk with horror tropes (Capepunk being more cynical or deconstructive takes on the superhero genre). There's also frequently a strong overlap with Action Horror.

See also: Beware the Superman.

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Examples:

Comic Books

• Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth is a Batman graphic novel written by Grant Morrison set in the titular asylum. Batman arrives during a takeover of the asylum by its inmates and explores a layered, disturbing supernatural/psychological horror tale involving the dark history of the asylum.
• Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham is an Elseworld story that asks "what if H. P. Lovecraft wrote a Batman story?"
• Dark Nights: Metal introduces the Dark Multiverse, where worlds are created from every bad decision or choice that someone makes (or more precisely, their fears about such), and said worlds are filled with malformed contents of nightmare and despair, until they're doomed to rot apart. To illustrate, Batman has about eight Evil Counterparts of himself coming from the Dark into the Prime Multiverse, with their backstories ranging from being driven to madness due to losing his entire family to becoming twisted and psychopathic whilst retaining his technological and intellectual prowess after killing the Joker out of pure rage.
  • Dark Nights: Death Metal incorporates the ramifications of Doomsday Clock, showing that Dr. Manhattan's essence has bonded to the fabric of the DC Multiverse, and thus is exploited by the Dark Knights.
  • Finally, Tales from the Dark Multiverse is a collection of stories from, well, the Dark Multiverse. All these stories take place in worlds where important events like Blackest Night, The Judas Contract or The Death of Superman all went horribly wrong due to one wrong small thing changing.
• DCeased is a comic miniseries about a Zombie Apocalypse happening in an alternative DC Universe, similar to Marvel Zombies. The plot kicks off when Cyborg arrives on Earth from Apokolips carrying a corrupted form of the Anti-Life Equation which turns humans into ravenous undead instead of brainwashed slaves. The remaining superheroes now must find a way to stop the chaos before it is too late.
• DC House Of Horror is a oneshot comic collecting various creepy tales across the DC Multiverse, including Bruce Wayne having Batman and the Joker as dual identities, a girl being possessed by a murderous Amazon, and the Flash spreading a zombie apocalypse across the world, with Superman as the sole survivor of Earth.
• DC vs. Vampires is about the world getting blindsided by the vampires making an organized effort to take over by converting key superhumans. The heroes are manipulated into suspecting each other so they'll be busy fighting each other until it's too late to stop.
• Ghost Rider has always been rooted in horror, but the 2022 series practically lives and breathes this trope, featuring a Lovecraft Lite storyline where the demons of hell have slowly risen up to take over America by corrupting the country from within, underneath most people's notice until their horrifying activities begin taking full effect. The only reason this crisis doesn't quite enter Cosmic Horror Story levels is because the titular Anti-Hero proves more than capable of fighting back against the otherworldly menace and their nightmarish influence.
• Immortal Hulk deconstructs the nature of Comic Book Death, and explores psychological and even supernatural angles to The Incredible Hulk's powers, all of which have been given a sufficiently horrifying twist befitting of a darker narrative. With the cast of the character's world reimagined, it becomes clear that Hulk's place in the Marvel Universe will never be the same.
• Irredeemable is about a Superman-like figure named the Plutonian who one day snapped and begins a rampage to destroy humanity. A group composed of the Plutonian's fellow superheroes must find a way to stop him and understand why he became the world's bloodiest mass murderer. The comic deconstructs the nature of superheroism by exploring the assumption that a superhuman must do the right thing automatically without being emotionally prepared for the role. It also shows how horrifying a superhuman's capacity for destruction would be when unleashed.
• Leaving Megalopolis tells a story about a ragtag group of survivors trying to find a way out of the city while avoiding detection by the bloodthirsty former superheroes.
• Marvel Zombies: An alien virus carried into an Elseworlds version of the Marvel Comics universe by a zombified Sentry has transformed the Marvel superheroes and supervillains into cannibalistic zombies who, by the time we're introduced to them, have already consumed every living thing on their own Earth.
• Alan Moore describes Miracleman as Superman (or, perhaps more fittingly, Shazam!) retold as a horror story. It contains themes that Moore later developed in Watchmen such as Beware the Superman, the alienation of superbeings, and the horrific effects of superhumans on modern society.
• Mister Miracle (2017) plays the character of Mister Miracle and the New Gods mythos for Psychological Horror, deconstructing the severity of the war between New Genesis and Apokolips as catastrophically bloody and politically obtuse, and delving into Scott Free's mental health and increasingly unreliable perception of the world as it spirals into both supernatural and mundane existential darkness.
• Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW) has the Metal Virus Saga, a Zombie Apocalypse-style story of Doctor Eggman unleashing a techno-organic virus which converts everyone it infects into mindless robots (dubbed "Zombots" by Sonic).
• Spawn is about a former hitman named Al Simmons who comes back as a demonic '90s Anti-Hero and fights demons, angels and the absolute worst that humanity has to offer, killing them in increasingly gorier ways.
• Spellbound (1988) is an early example in the genre and is completely bloodless, acting as a deconstruction of high-fantasy stories. The incalculable power a Spellbinder holds has potential for greatness and destruction, but will eventually drive the wielder mad no matter what, and Erica turns from fledgling magical superhero to a villain worse than the one she's trying to stop.
• Supergod is essentially a superhero version of a Cosmic Horror Story, which Warren Ellis describes as what happens when superhumans are no longer human at all. It describes an arms race between nations to create the most powerful superhuman, culminating the extinction of the human race and the planet overrun with a Festering Fungus.
• Swamp Thing mixes this with Body Horror and supernatural horror, especially stories written by Alan Moore.
• Terror Inc. is a dark series following an immortal assassin who replaces body parts by tearing them off of other people, also allowing him to copy their abilities — something like a Body Horror version of Rogue.
• Über deconstructs neo-Golden Age comics which depict World War II being fought with superheroes and mad science as an arena for Rule of Cool adventures. First Nazi Germany, and then other countries, develop superhumans in the final stages of the war. The result is an extremely depressing and sickening intensification of its real-world brutality, with Body Horror and floods of gore aplenty, and Super Weight differences being treated as something that can't be overcome by abstract "willpower" or "righteousness" — challenge a super more powerful than you are and you will end up as a smear of blood and ash... if you're lucky.
• Venom, Carnage, and the Symbiotes in general provide a dose of science-fictional Body Horror to the superheroic Marvel Universe, being capable of forming tentacles, spines, extra mouths, and other grotesque metamorphoses. Venom in particular bonds with the host's nervous system, causing voices to be heard, hunger for brains to develop and can't be detected by Spider-Man's danger sense because his body still considers the venom symbiote to be a part of it. Venom's specifically designed to make the reader fear for a protagonist who himself was designed to be comically creepy to the criminals of New York. Also, the reason Carnage's suit is red is that it's made up of a symbiote that bonded directly with Cletus Kasady's blood. Absolute Carnage turns Carnage into a cult god resurrecting Knull.
• Subverted in Wonder Woman (2006) #43 with the Citizenry. The issue starts with the Green Lantern Corps finding a planet they had just liberated systematically culled of all macroscopic life, save for one last holdout hiding among the wreckage of civilization. They are told to flee too late as these final survivors and Green Lanterns alike are swiftly slaughtered by a swarm that completely ignores the plasma produced by the Lanterns. The individuals of this swarm then turn on and cannibalize one another until the remaining survivors are the size of mountains before being extracted from the planet to be used as shock troops alongside others who went through the process on other worlds by Planet Looters who also begin to integrate the Oan Technology into their weapon systems. The aliens reach Earth, scramble communications Independence Day-style, isolate Washington DC from the rest of the United States and begin yet another culling, but it becomes a Mook Horror Show and clear all of this buildup was to show just how much more powerful Achilles Warkiller, who just so happened to be in the US Capital at the time of the attack, had become. The Citizenry are still horrific, but being shown someone who can beat them turns the comic from horror story to thriller.
• X-Men:
  • The Brood were conceived by taking the iconic horror movie monster from Alien, giving it an entire society of independent individuals who were all forced to not only be cruel and callous by a hivemind but forced to enjoy being so, and then giving them the means to travel the cosmos as they please. These were the villains that convinced the X-Men to (temporarily) abandon their Thou Shalt Not Kill rule and were so effective elements of them were copied by sequels to the movie they had been copied from. However, the horror is significantly reduced in Planet Hulk where its shown that a Brood Queen separated from the hivemind can be a perfectly decent individual with an unpleasant reproductive method.
  • The Brood have a Higher-Tech Species counterpart that are just as horrific in an impersonal way called the Technarc. They're so powerful that The Phalanx, the alien technorganic virus that Ultron used to conquer an entire galaxy as nothing but their food being allowed to roam free range. In someways the horror is reduced when a member of the species dubbed "Warlock" joins an X-Team after being dubbed a mutant among his kind, but where mutant X-Men are superhuman "Warlock" is a pathetically weak Technarc, so there are Cosmic Horror Story vibes when he/they have to deal with other members of his kind.

Films — Live-Action

• The Blade Trilogy, with its Dhampyr protagonist and its secret societies of vampires, is a notable example of this trope, being a hybrid of the superhero genre, the horror genre, and the action movie genre.
• Brightburn deconstructs the Superman mythos and turns it into something much horrifying, demonstrating just how dangerous and terrifying someone with Superman's powerset could be if they had no morality or humanity.
• Chronicle: The words "superhero" and "superpowers" are never used in the film itself, and its writer Max Landis rejected the idea of it being a superhero movie and described it more as a modern-day take on Carrie. That said, the manner in which Andrew, Matt, and Steve acquire their powers by getting exposed to a mysterious glowing object in a cave is evocative of any number of superhero origin stories, especially Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, and the film was otherwise heavily marketed as a dark superhero movie. Instead of becoming a hero, however, Andrew uses his powers for petty revenge and becomes the superpowered equivalent of a mass shooter, with Matt becoming the only person able to step in and stop him once he kills Steve. It ends with Matt in Tibet seeking to learn how to use his powers for good and what really happened to him and his friends, reframing the film as his superhero origin story.
• Darkman: Following a gruesome attack in his laboratory that leaves most of his skin burned off, scientist Peyton Westlake develops a synthetic skin that lets him impersonate others for a limited time, and enhanced strength from the constant adrenaline in his system. As Darkman, he takes revenge on his enemies more like a horror movie villain than a superhero.
• Fantastic Four (2015) is a much Darker and Edgier take on the Fantastic Four, attempting to merge the origin story of Marvel's First Family with Body Horror. The scenes in the climax involving Dr. Doom stalking through darkened corridors killing anyone in his path particularly give off horror movie vibes.
• The Flying Man takes a near-Lovecraftian approach to superhero fiction, by showing the titular Flying Man as an entity that just showed up one day and started enforcing its own justice without anyone being able to do anything about it.
• Glass (2019), a crossover sequel to Unbreakable and Split, utilizes both psychological horror and superhero elements.
• Hellboy (2004) dabbles in horror, combined with Dark Fantasy and Urban Fantasy (the sequel tones down the horror elements and leans more into fantasy). The titular hero is a benevolent demon who battles undead Nazis, Rasputin and other monsters to protect the world from Eldritch Abominations.
• Hellboy (2019) leans into horror even more heavily than the 2004 version, ramping up the gore and dark tone (notably, the 2004 movie is PG-13, while this one is a hard R rating). It features Hellboy fighting monsters to try and prevent the resurrection of an evil witch who seeks to destroy the world.

• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider: The First in 2005 and its sequel Kamen Rider: The Next two years later are reboots of the original two series made to celebrate the franchise's 35th anniversary that lean more into the subtle horror elements of the show on account of no longer being aimed at a younger audience, with some newer J-Horror elements thrown in.
  • Shin Kamen Rider: Prologue features our hero: the titular Shin gene-spliced with grasshopper DNA, becoming a grasshopper-monster hybrid himself.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is directed by Evil Dead mastermind Sam Raimi. It shows off plenty of Surreal Horror elements, there's the reanimated corpse of a Doctor Strange variant, and the Big Bad, Wanda Maximoff/the Scarlet Witch, has quite a gory body count by the end.
  • Werewolf by Night (2022) is a Halloween Special set in the style of classic Universal Horror monster movies and Hammer Horror films. The plot is centered on a group of monster hunters as they attempt to find a monster hiding in their midst and the climax is bathed blood and gore that you'd never find in other MCU properties. Notably, the only reason that it has a TV-14 rating instead of TV-MA is due to its black and white filter.
• The New Mutants is a superhero action film taking place in a Bedlam House and ripe with Jump Scares, demons, and a bit of Psychological Horror.
• Sony's Spider-Man Universe:
  • Venom (2018) was marketed as superhero horror, emphasizing Venom as a Horrifying Hero and the terror of Eddie's transformation into a man-eating monster. While those aspects are certainly there in the film proper, the actual story is much closer to a superhero-action-thriller with Black Comedy and horror elements, rapidly pinging across the Sliding Scale of Comedy and Horror with reckless abandon.
  • Venom: Let There Be Carnage is more strongly horror-focused, with a gruesome mass-murdering villain, some pseudo-gothic sensibilities, and a surprising level of violence and gore for a PG-13 venture.
• The Toxic Avenger might be the first superhero horror film yet (or at least superhero Horror Comedy). A 98-pound weakling named Melvin runs afoul of a local gang of hoodlums and ends up falling out of a second-story window at the gym — straight into a vat of toxic waste. The resulting mutation transforms Melvin into the Toxic Avenger, a deformed creature who proceeds to beat up baddies (and boy, are they bad!) in the goriest ways possible.

Literature

• In "Attack of the Mutant" from Goosebumps, the titular supervillain has breached his way into the real world and targets his biggest fan, a regular 12-year-old kid. The "heroes" are shown to be cowardly and powerless, while the Mutant's shapeshifting gives him the edge in getting him closer to his young victim. The book overall shows how terrifying it would really be to meet your favorite comic characters.
• Ex-Heroes is set in Los Angeles, several years after a zombie apocalypse has wiped out most of human civilization. While several heroes have survived the outbreak and work to protect a community of human survivors, several more have turned, which has created at least one truly terrifying monster and the whole damn thing is actually one of the heroes' fault.

Live-Action TV

• GARO is notable for having far more horror elements than most Tokusatsu.
• Helstrom follows siblings Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana (Sydney Lemmon) Helstrom, the children of an infamous serial killer who moonlight as hunters of demons. While not openly "superheroic" from that description, it was originally going to be part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe until backstage restructuring shut down Marvel Television.
• Kamen Rider Amazons is a dark and bloodier reboot of the 1974 series. 4000 lab-grown predators known as "Amazons" were unleashed into the world after a mysterious lab accident 2 years prior to the series, where they feast upon unsuspecting humans: their natural prey. The main characters range from Anti-heroes to outright Villain Protagonists, and most are just as violent and cannibalistic as the monsters they fight.
• Legion (2017) centers around a mutant who had diagnosed paranoid schizophrenia who has struggled with mental illness since his late childhood. The series uses Mind Screw to tell a story of Psychological Horror.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • Moon Knight (2022): The series talks about a meek man named Steven Grant who has insomnia and deals with issues of Dissociative Identity Disorder, him stuck with voices in his head and huge elements of Psychological Horror that makes it feel like the superhero version of either Perfect Blue or Black Swan. Cast and crew place it under the Psychological Thriller genre.
  • WandaVision is, on the surface, a throwback to classic TV sitcoms (including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Brady Bunch, and Full House). However, it's obvious that something is not quite right about Westview, and elements of Psychological Horror, Surreal Horror, and Paranoia Fuel only become more prominent as the series continues.^note As a side detail, those who've been following MCU-related news know that WandaVision is meant to lead into Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which has been confirmed to have heavy horror influence, including being directed by Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame. To top it off, there's a hint that Wanda may be on the brink of a Face–Heel Turn by the end, which is confirmed in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

Tabletop Games

• Trinity Universe shows a superhero universe that goes From Bad to Worse over the course of two centuries, with an event called "The Aberrant War" turning a significant chunk of the world into a wasteland when the superheroes go completely berserk in The New '10s. Like many White Wolf games, there's more than meets the eye. While many Aberrants went crazy, the War started because a Government Conspiracy named "Project Proteus" was going all CADMUS on them and they fought back.
  • The motive changes in Continuity Reboot Trinity Continuum, where it comes down to two things: one, that many supers never learned to moderate and control their development, and as a result became ever more dangerous to those around them, and two, that the supers discovered humanity had never really trusted them, and designed contingency plans to deal with them.

Web Original

• Truth in Journalism is a mockumentary about Eddie Brock and his unsavory reporting methods; throughout the story, we get disturbing glimpses of his infamous alter ego (including Brock babbling to himself and him attacking two junkies and stringing them up while the film crew is distracted). When he fully transforms into Venom at the end, we get a horrifying first-person taste of what it would feel like to be locked in a room with the symbiote.
• Worm goes into a lot of detail on the evil that supervillains can do and the damage fighting off regular Kaiju attacks takes on person, property and psyche. Some types of capes, like the mind-controlling Masters and the invisible or perception-altering Strangers, are played for all the fear factor they're worth. Bug-controlling protagonist Taylor is a Horrifying Hero at one point explicitly compared In-Universe to the Slaughterhouse Nine, a band of notorious Serial Killer supervillains, for her brutality and creepiness (which she really wished she didn't had, but she is just too good at it all the same).

Western Animation

• The Justice League story "The Terror Beyond" sees the League butt heads with "Icthultu", an incomprehensible old god from beyond reality, whom they defeat at the heavy cost of the life of Solomon Grundy, a recurring Anti-Villain who was making his first steps towards redemption.
• The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise often dips into this with the mutations and how serious Shredder can be. The 2003 and 2012 cartoons are especially notable of this with their Darker and Edgier tones.
• The What If…? (2021) episode "What If... Zombies?!" adapts the concept of Marvel Zombies into a version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, complete with magic and aliens in play. Granted, it also takes some liberties (like Spider-Man and the Hulk not being among the horde).

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