Stephen King's N

This horror comic is brilliantly adapted from a Stephen King short story, published in his recent collection, Just After Sunset. King readers will recognize the rural Maine setting, the menacing tone, and the constant threat of evil lurking, just waiting to break into the everyday life of unsuspecting normal folks. In this world, those with OCD behaviors are actually right, the world will fall apart if they don't count and arrange their surroundings to precise specifications, because "the gate in our heads... [the] one that keeps insanity in all of us from flooding our intellects" has been breached. Not only that, but the disease is catching, as one obsessive compulsive passes his or her disorder on to whomever they reveal it to. The storytelling is tight and utterly, creepily effective, while the gritty, detailed drawing style pulls the horror from even the most innocent setting, inky abstraction of nightmare energies rising from the earth contrasting, to horrifying effect, with near photo-realistic drawings of characters' faces. A gripping, masterful story that anyone who doesn't scare easily—and many who do—will relish. (Nov.)