Courtesy of Ink & Drink Comics
It all started when the “Ink and Drink” crew, an informal gathering of area comics creators, agreed to create their first group project—an anthology of horror comics with a St. Louis flavor.
Now, just in time for Halloween,Spirits of St. Louis has moved to the material plane. The compilation features two arresting alternate covers—one of a zombified Charles Lindbergh, the other a zombie Miles Davis with part of his upper lip rotted away. (And the drawing of a zombie Chuck Berry on the title page is just priceless.)
The book has a field day with local spook lore, including comics tales based on the Lemp family suicides and supposed haunting, and the exorcism of a boy at Alexian Brothers Hospital that inspired the story of The Exorcist. Among the 13 unlucky tales, you’ll also find the legend of “The Ozarks Witch,” two stories inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, a story inspired by a macabre Japanese folktale, and a story in which a woman gets creeped out by reading a Stephen King book and finds she might just be living one.
Spirits of St. Louis features the work of no less than 22 former and current St. Louisans, (and a few of their helpful friends). Many of those are connected to the much-loved Star Clipper Comics and Games shop, to the comics review section, and, in one case, to St. Louis Magazine (former SLM editor Bryan Hollerbach edited the project).
Buy the book—if you dare—at Star Clipper, the St. Louis Curio Shoppe, Fantasy Books in Belleville and Fairview Heights, Ill., and Hometown Comics in Edwardsville.
